CF.NET with BlueDragon

The first category is people working in an organization (or who have clients) moving to the .NET framework. Such CFML developers will be faced with the prospect of rewriting all of their CFML applications in ASP.NET. Now they don't have to; they can keep their CFML and simply redeploy it on .NET.

The second category contains those who don't have a pressing need to move to .NET, but who could find advantages in moving to .NET, or in moving to BlueDragon. There are advantages that BlueDragon gives you over CFMX, and there are additional advantages to running CFML on .NET that you can't get with ColdFusion.

Beyond that, there are many advantages.

First, you can integrate the CFML with ASP.NET pages. This includes sharing session variables and application and request scope variables, so, for instance, you can have a login application on a CFML page and then transfer control to an ASP.NET application and vice versa.

You can also include pages between the two environments. So CFML can include ASP.NET and vice versa. (This is similar to our support of including JSPs and servlets on our Server JX and J2EE editions, where we support the getpagecontext() function introduced in CFMX, as well as a new PAGE attribute we've added to CFINCLUDE.)

Second, the CFML pages will be able to call upon .NET classes, libraries and components, just as we have CFML calling Java.

Finally, the CFML running in the .NET framework will be able to leverage the benefits that ASP.NET would get, including leveraging replication of sessions across a cluster and persistence of sessions across server restarts.

The CFML running in that environment gets to take advantage of those capabilities. In fact, I wrote a several page article in the April 2004 CFDJ ["Making the Case for CFML on J2EE", at http://www.sys-con.com/story/?storyid=44481&DE=1 ] extolling the benefits of running CFML in a J2EE environment-just the benefits. The same notions apply to .NET, so CFML running on .NET, like CFML running on J2EE, is supercharged. Yet it's still just CFML, and you can still edit it with your favorite tools, like CF Studio, HomeSite+ and Dreamweaver.

BlueDragon.NET enables the .NET framework to run CFML files through a three-step process, which will be done for you by our installer in the final edition of BlueDragon.NET:

1. The first step is to map the CFM and CFC file extensions within IIS, to be handled by the .NET framework.
2. The .NET framework is then designed to look for a special file called web.config. We provide that file with the appropriate XML entries defining what .NET calls an "HTTPhandler". That tells .NET to hand CFML files to the Blue Dragon engine.
3. The third piece, that Blue Dragon engine, is provided as a BlueDragon.DLL. That's the real .NET component, a managed assembly, and that can be configured for either a given web application, website, or for all websites on the server.

1. Can I expect my existing application to run on BlueDragon?
2. What advantages might BlueDragon offer over ColdFusion?

Of the 70+ CFML tags in CFMX, we do not support the following 6:

1. CFAPPLET
2. CFGRID
3. CFREPORT
4. CFCHART
5. CFTRACE
6. CFLOGIN

We offer a compatibility guide free on our website that details all compatibility issues.

And further, if you find a problem running your CFML on BlueDragon, let us know. We want to help you get your application running.

For instance, BlueDragon offers the only way to deploy your CFML in a protected form so that your source code cannot be exposed. ColdFusion's CFENCODE utility has been compromised, but there is no way to revert protected templates in BlueDragon back to source. This is important, not just for product developers, but for developers of any applications whose intellectual property must be protected.

We have also added some additional CFML tags to address the needs of developers, including CFIMAGE, CFIMAP and CFASSERT (which adds assertions for unit testing for the first time in CFML.) In addition, BlueDragon now has the only way to use CFINDEX to do website spidering, while CF only allows spidering with a vspider command line utility. Also, our approach can spider external websites while CF's cannot. There are many other similar, small but powerful, advantages in BlueDragon, as outlined on our website and in our documentation (http://www.newatlanta.com/bluedragon/).

But the most important advantage of BlueDragon.NET is simply that it's the only way to run CFML on .NET. New Atlanta is in the business of protecting your substantial investment in CFML and CFML developers, and we make CFML the only language that runs on the two major standards for enterprise web development, J2EE and .NET.

During this prerelease phase, people are finding that they can often have issues addressed within hours, and we will continue to listen to customer feedback as the product evolves.

For those wanting premium support with telephone access and service level agreements, we offer cost-effective options for that, as outlined in the support area of our website.

"A rising tide lifts all boats," and we are making CFML a language supported in many environments, which also bodes well for sales of CFML development tools and related products.