> -----Original Message----- > From: Charlie Arehart [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Saturday, June 14, 2003 5:48 PM > To: CF-Talk > Subject: RE: CF Compatability > > Jim, lots of interesting points. > > We absolutely agree that many shops are still at 4.5 (if 5), and they may > be > facing (as you) a "move" to J2EE. Are you sure that you have no hope of > preserving your CFML apps on the "pure WebSphere" standard? You can, with > either CFMX for J2EE or BlueDragon/J2EE. Many CF developers are still > unclear about the distinction of how those products work.
Unfortunately I'm pretty sure. My company (New England Financial) was actually bought by MetLife. Met is heavily IBM-centric and is following the IBM "How to deploy web applications" handbook step-by-step. Our (currently ColdFusion) apps are being sun-setted in favor of Web Sphere applications being built mostly by other areas. We are merely support for those efforts and not in a position to effect much change. I feel/hope that after a while of this the (to me at least) obvious ROI of CFML development will come clear (lord knows I've tried to make it clear). In my position the largest problem is attempting to commit enterprise-wide change (or lacking that at least acceptance) from within the structure of an acquisition. ;^) As far as everything else you said: believe me, you're preaching to choir. ;^) > Indeed, while some IT folks and managers see CF as a toy, partly that's > due > to the old notion of Macromedia's CF as a separate service, with all the > vagaries that have occurred with it in its carnations over the years. In my experience most criticisms of CF are based on old ideas/versions. I was told just recently that CF "didn't support threading" for example. Opinions set four years ago are still affecting acceptance today. > But another more substantial reason people see CF as a toy (or more > accurately, CFML applications as primitive and non-scalable) is really > about > coding practices more than the language or the server implementation. > Since > so many came to CFML from no or little programming background, they fell > into practices that were simple and natural, but not well-architected. In > the JSP world, they call it "model 1" programming, where both the query > and > the processing logic and the output of HTML all take place on the same > page. This another thing that I've talked about for a while, the double-edged sword: CFML is so easy that it's hard to learn. Adequate results come so quickly that mastery (or even moderate complexity) is only rarely attained. Of course that IS a strength. After all regardless of everything else what CF does well is exactly what's needed by 90% of web applications. But it also is a weakness even if only that the language is seen as being as amateurish as many of its users. > CFMX introduced CFC's, which are a step in the direction of gaining > clearer > separation of those things. But to be honest, they're not the only > solution. Even careful design using CFINCLUDEs and custom tags, or just > UDFs > whether by CFSCRIPT or CFFUNCTIONs can help. Again, we appreciate the > value > of CFCs and CFFUNCTION, and now that RedSky will improve on the design, we > look forward to implementing those features later this year. This again falls to the "CFML is a language" argument. Instead of seeing CF the app server, we could see CFML the language and promote the capabilities of that: can a CFML app follow standard design patterns? Sure it can! For the app server the questions are slightly different: Can it live peacefully with enterprise architecture? Sure it can! In other words questions posed at the language are those of design, capability, flexibility, etc. The app server gets questions of performance, compatibility, etc. > I'm surprised to hear the assertion that BlueDragon could be marginalizing > CFML. On the contrary, it would seem that both your arguments and ours > should do the opposite by bringing issues to clearer light. "Could be" remember, and not directly, of course. My concern is simply that the CF community is rather small (comparatively) to being with: anything that can fragment it may be problematic. Personally I think that BD is a great thing. But it is a risk. Success without standards could fragment the market, failure could stigmatize the market. Of course just because something is risky doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. It's a clich�, but nothing good can come without risk - and now, more than ever before, CF is in a position to withstand risks gone bad. Jim Davis President, http://www.depressedpress.com Webmaster, http://www.firstnight.org Webmaster, http://www.cfAdvocacy.org Senior Consultant, http://www.metlife.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?forumid=4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?method=subscribe&forumid=4 FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq Your ad could be here. Monies from ads go to support these lists and provide more resources for the community. http://www.fusionauthority.com/ads.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
