John Paul Ashenfelter on "Leveraging Java Tools for
Fusebox 4 Development". We also have some Q and A from attendees and
a list of great prizes worth more than $5000 for attendees.
But first some news.
[Fusebox is a free methodology to program better in ColdFusion (and
other web programming languages) and how to communicate better with clients.]
*********
Conference and training news
* $199 price expires midnight EST 9/11/04 (it costs $249 after that)
* Only 16 days left to the conference!
* Book update - we are sold out of the Techspedition Fusebox 4 book, still have
copies of the Proton Arts Fusebox 4/Flip book.
* Monday Mach-II class is nearly full
* Attendee raffle for a Hal Helm's class worth $2495.
*********
Attendee questions
******************
Q: Hello there. I'm an intermediate/senior CF & PHP developer in Ottawa,
Canada. I am considering attending the upcoming Fusebox Conference in
Rockville. I hope there is still space.
A: Yes there are a few spaces left.
Q: The topics look good, and I'm sure I'll learn a lot. However, I do not have
any experience with FB4 yet. Lots of projects with FB3 (and earlier) but have
not had the opportunity to implement the new framework. Can you tell me if
there are any topics that may help me get up to speed? Obviously I'm interested
to learn about 4.1 and Mach-II, but I want to make sure I don't get "leap-
frogged".
A: We have a one day class on FB4 on the Friday prior to the conference for people
new to FB4 - you might check that out.
Q: Also, is it useful to have a laptop for the conference? I don't own one but
could borrow my wife's if need be.
A: If you want to take the hands on session by Jeff Peters Building your first FB 4
app then yes. You might find useful for other purposes but that is only time you
would need one.
Q: I see that Jeff Peters session "Building your first FB application (Hands on)"
is listed twice on Sunday. Are they the same session or a part 1 and part 2
like Hal's "Architecting FB" on Saturday?
A: They are part I and II. A hands on session needs to run for twice the time so
that attendees can get help with their code if they get stuck... We will be
making the class code available for attendees to download prior to the
conference.
Q: Also, at the conference, will there be anyone talking about how to implement
an Error/Exception Handling plug-in? If not, do you know of anything online that
would help me create one.
A: There's a large section of the Discovering FB4 book devoted to plugins. At the
conference I will be covering them in an Advanced Topic, after I introduce new
features of FB4.1. There is some discussion of *FUSEBOX* error handling in the
"what's new in FB4.1" part of my talk but not how to handle *DEVELOPER*
exceptions. If you catch me off hours at the conference I will spend some time
with you in private and cover how you might choose to handle errors/exceptions
in your FB app. - John Quarto-vonTivadar
Q: Are there any prizes or show specials at the conference?
A: Yes we have prizes and specials from several sponsors:
* TeraTech
* Hal Helms
* Synthis
* Fusebuilder
* CFDJ
TeraTech Class, Mentoring and Programming
*****************************************
We will have a drawing for one of TeraTech's world class one day classes on
ColdFusion or Fusebox (you pick). We will also have a drawing for TeraTech
project mentoring and one for architecting/programming services
In addition to helping you at FB Con, TeraTech works year round helping people
who are stuck in their projects, want expert mentoring help, or need ColdFusion
or Fusebox training. In fact, last year we won the CFDJ Readers Choice Award for
�Best ColdFusion Consulting Company Worldwide� for the second year in a row.
Recently we helped an organization that was swamped by telephone questions about
a complex paper application form that they used. We wrote a web-based
application using ColdFusion MX, SQL Server, and Fusebox that automatically
skips over irrelevant questions, validates all answers before saving, and
provides online help. The data was automatically transferred to their existing
legacy system, the number of telephone questions about the application dropped
90%, and the client received an award for the best IT project within the
organization!
On another project the programmers for a large law firm were new to Fusebox and
needed to use it to build a new room reservation system. We mentored the
programming team and helped them successfully architect the application using
the Fusebox Life Cycle process and code it in Fusebox. They were on a tight
schedule, but we finished the program in record time. And after the application
was deployed there were very few bugs or change requests from users.
Hal Helms Java Class
********************
How'd you like to attend Hal Helms's highly-regarded $2495 "Java for ColdFusion
Programmers" class for free? Sound good? Well, Hal's giving away a seat to
his class for one of the Fusebox conference attendees. Be there at his
kickoff talk and you might very well be the lucky person. And even if you're
not The One, you can still win: all Fusebox conference attendees who attend
one of Hal's classes will receive a rebate on the class equal to the
registration price for the Fusebox conference.
Adalon Professional Edition
***************************
There will be a drawing for one copy of Adalon Pro by attendees.
Special Offer for attendees:
Adalon Professional Edition for $750, normally $2500, which includes access to
Adalon 3.0. Free Evaluation CD's at the conference).
---
Yes, the offer is for conference attendees only who are at the conference.
More than pay for the cost of going if you are already interested in Adalon.
-$750 for Adalon Professional Edition License, including access to Adalon 3.0
-$250 for optional Gold Support/Maintenance Package - Maintenance portion provides
access to all releases for 12 months and 5 support instances
-limit 1 license at this price per conference attendee/organization
-if they win the Adalon Pro License in the raffle, then we would be happy to
return money
Fusebuilder
***********
FuseBuilder is a visual tool that runs in your web browser. Using
FuseBuilder to plan, present and develop your Fusebox projects will enable
your team to create custom applications up to 30% faster, with a more
complete picture than you ever thought possible. Your clients will know
exactly what they're getting, and more importantly they'll get exactly what
they wanted. Mike Ritchie, the developer of FuseBuilder, is an avid
Fuseboxer, and he has provided the Fusebox 2004 Conference with a
Single-User Licensed copy of FuseBuilder which attendees of the conference
will have a chance to win.
CFDJ
****
A free copy of CFDJ magazine to every attendee
A special offer price to subscript too.
John Paul Ashenfelter Interview
*******************************
Now back to the interviews
Michael Smith: John, I see that you are speaking on "Leveraging Java Tools for
Fusebox 4 Development" at the Fusebox conference. Why should a ColdFusion
programmer be interested in this?
John Paul Ashenfelter: Obviously one of the biggest changes introduced in
ColdFusion MX was the fact that ColdFusion is now a J2EE application that runs
on top of a J2EE server. And since Java can be integrated into CFMX applications
so easily, an enormous world of existing tools and components are now available
for use in your CFMX application.
MS: What kind of tools are available?
JPA: All sorts! There are tools for managing and automating the software
development process, frameworks for building applications, components for common
functionality that can be embedded in your application, and even integrated
development environments (IDEs) for building code. In fact, the real issue is
usually not being able to *find* an existing Java tool to meet your need -- but
instead how to *choose* which of several is best for the task at hand. More
importantly, there are many, many open source Java tools software that can be
leveraged in CFMX applications.
MS: What do you mean by "open source" Java software?
JPA: "Open source" means that the source code for the tools is freely available
under one of the many open source licenses, such as the GPL (GNU Public
License), Apache, or Berkeley licenses are to name three common ones. This is
especially relevant to Fusebox developers since Fusebox 4 is also open source
software. I just got back from teaching a tutorial at the O'Reilly Open Source
Convention and was thrilled to see a number of interesting and useful Java open
source projects.
MS: So where can you find open source Java software?
JPA: Everywhere! ColdFusion MX itself uses a number of open source projects
under the hood, including everything from log4j for logging to xalan for XML
processing to the Axis web services framework that Macromedia jointly develops
with IBM and released as open source software.
MS: That is cool, but I meant where can *I* find some open source projects? :-)
JPA: There are literally thousands of open source Java projects. Good places to
start looking for them are the Jakarta site (jakarta.apache.org), tigris
(www.tigris.org), and of course Sourceforge (www.sourceforge.net).
MS: Can you give me some example projects that I might find useful?
JPA: Some of the most generally useful projects are: Subversion, a source
control system that was designed to replace the very common CVS source control
system Ant, a build tool that can be used to package and deploy applications,
including web applications, Jakarta Commons projects, especially the Commons-
Logging package plus many, many others for specific tasks, such as the Lucene
search engine, the XML libraries, and some visualization tools
MS: Why is all of this important to a Fusebox developer?
JPA: One of the things I've always liked about building Fusebox applications was
the possibility for reusing circuits in multiple applications. The large library
of open source Java tools provides many more ways to reuse code. Plus Fusebox
itself is an open source project, so using open source Java tools seems to
naturally make sense!
MS: Interesting... Is it possible to call a Java library straight from a
fuseaction?
JA: You can if you don't mind having things look a little messy. The [set] verb
in fusebox can be used to instantiate any Java class that is in the
CFusionMX/WEB-INF/classes directory or that is packaged as a JAR file in the
CFusionMX/WEB-INF/lib. You've got the two-step option where you create the
object and then call its methods if you don't need a return value. Here is an
example (I have used square brackets instead of angle brackets to get through
Michael's email program):
[set name="obj" value=CreateObject('java','HelloWorld')/]
[set name="msg" value=obj.greet()/]
and the ability to call a method directly
[set name="obj2"
value=CreateObject('java','HelloWorld').greet()/]
or even
[set value=CreateObject('java','HelloWorld').greet()/]
And all of these methods are equivalent to how you'd use Java objects in a
"normal" CFML template.
But... one of the new features of Fusebox 4.1 is an [object] tag that is
supposed to make working with Java classes easier. We'll just have to wait for
the release of Fusebox 4.1 at the Fusebox Conference to see how it works!
MS: Wow that is really cool. I can't wait to see your talk.
---
John Paul Ashenfelter - Leveraging Java Tools for Fusebox 4 Development
There are a number of open source Java tools that can be very useful to
ColdFusion developers in general and Fusebox developers in particular. In this
session, we're going to provide a quick overview of some of the more useful
tools available from the Apache Jakarta site, and show specific examples of
using Ant and the Commons-Logging (log4j) projects.
Ant is a build tool that can be used to automate the development and deployment
of Fusebox 4 applications. We'll take a look at how to use it as part of the
general development process and how to use Ant to configure Fusebox 4
applications.
The Jakarta Commons project contains a number of reusable components -- one of
which is the Logging component. We'll discuss how to use this logging component
in ColdFusion and how to build a Fusebox plugin to easily add logging to all of
your Fusebox applications.
Bio
John Paul Ashenfelter is CTO and Founder of TransitionPoint.com, where he builds
web-based business applications for startups and small companies. He has built
numerous Fusebox 3 and 4 applications that are in production for small companies
and educational institutions. He has written a number of online articles
relating to web development and databases as well as 5 books, including two on
ColdFusion.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Fusebox Conference is organized by TeraTech who received four CFDJ awards.
If you need ColdFusion project help, mentoring or training
then ask the experts at http://www.teratech.com/
Best Consulting - TeraTech
Finalist Training - TeraTech
Finalist Community site - CFConf
Finalist Web Dev Tool - CFXGraphicsServer
---------------------------------------------------------------
This year's conference has 12 nationally known speakers including
Hal Helms, John Quarto-vonTivadar, Jeff Peters, Sandra Clark, Michael Smith,
Steve Nelson,
Brian Kotek, Rey Muradaz, Matt Liotta, John Paul Ashenfelter
Fusebox Washington DC area 9/18 - 9/19/04:
* Learn Fusebox, Mach-II and more!
* Network with your peers and top national speakers
* Have fun exploring what is new in Fusebox
Tracks:
* Advanced Topics
* Basic Topics
* Optional classes on intro to Fusebox, Intermediate Fusebox and Mach-II
Pricing schedule - register today to save!
* Just $149 Early Bird Price from 1/1/04 - 7/31/04
* Ok $199 Regular Price 8/1/04 - 9/10/04
* Opps $249 Late Registration 9/11/04 - 9/17/04
* Onsite $300
Register today
http://www.cfconf.com/Fusebox2004/
--
Michael Smith, TeraTech Inc - Tools for Programmers(tm)
TeraTech voted Best Consulting Service by CFDJ readers!
CF/ASP Web, VB, Math, Access programming tools and consulting
405 E Gude Dr Ste 207, Rockville MD 20850 USA
Please check out http://www.teratech.com/ - email mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED],
or call us for more information; in the USA at 1-800-447-9120,
+1-301-424-3903 International, Fax 301-762-8185 Thanks!
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