In this issue of ColdFusion conference and training news: 1. CFUNITED News - record number registered 2. ColdFusion Live! Thursday 5/5/05 12:30pm 3. "Leveraging Java Open Source Tools for CF Development" interview with John Paul Ashenfelter 4. "Variables and Conditions" interview with Melissa Lizmi
Happy coding - Michael Smith, TeraTech, Inc http://www.teratech.com/ "Creating excellent custom software since 1989" "I know why I want to come: I want to see my friends, I want to network, I want to learn. I want to BE there, I want to be involved. I need to be there... and can't imagine a world wherein I'm not. I want to be at the center of my profession, and by being at CFUnited 05, I'll take one more step in making that a reality. I want to speak to Michael Smith about cf.Objective(06), making sure that we're marketing our conferences in tandem, that we're able to cover different aspects of the technology (or even the same ones, but in a complimentary way). I want to be there for the Bloggers' Night Out, with Joe, Sean, Doug, Steven, et al, not just because it would be cool but because we're all out here "in the wild" and building something for Macromedia... and we need to know eachother. We're colleagues, and it doesn't do for us to never have met. I want to hear the "big names" speak on issues that are important to me, to my career, and to my business. I need to know as much as possible, because I'm independent and haven't got a large team backing me up... which means I need to garner every drop of information from those who have it so I can keep my business going. If you're alive, and you're breathing, and you're me, *that's* why you need to go to CFUnited." - Jared Rypka-Hauer 1. CFUNITED News **************** * Only 8 weeks until CFUNITED-05. Regular price $649 expires 6/10/05 * Look out for the 20 page CFUNITED brochure in the (postal) mail * 530 people have already registered for CFUNITED-05! That is 50% more than this time last year for CFUN-04! * Pre-conference classes are filling up fast. Check the schedule, descriptions and registration at http://www.cfunited.com/classes.cfm * The Mid-Atlantic Free Code Camp is on Sat May 7th. Covers Web Development, Smart Clients, Database, Process, Design, and Security. I will be speaking as will CFUNITED speakers Sandra Clark and Geoff Snowman. http://blogs.msdn.com/gduthie/articles/383561.aspx * Upcoming ColdFusion and Fusebox classes CF102 - Intro to ColdFusion May 10 2005 CF201 - Intermediate ColdFusion May 17 2005 FB101 - Intro to Fusebox May 24 2005 FB201 - Intermediate Fusebox Jun 7 2005 For more info http://www.teratech.com/training/ * Report and view bugs in CFMX 7 at the CF bug hunt http://www.cfbughunt.org/ * MDCFUG's May Event - Leo Laporte http://mmsupport.breezecentral.com/r46492774/ Tuesday 05/10/2005 6:30 PM - 9:30 PM EDT 2. ColdFusion Live! Thursday 5/5/05 12:30pm ******************************************** ColdFusion Live! A CFUNITED preview with Michael Smith on Personas and Simon Horwith on Design Patterns. Two 15 minute "preview" talks from CFUNITED speakers. They will provide an brief introduction to their topic during these sessions. 12:30 - 1:00 US/Eastern Time See also http://www.timezoneconverter.com/ Part 1) Michael Smith Personas for better apps. Personas are a way to make a better User Interface for your users without going crazy. Part 2) Simon Horwith Design Patterns and CFML. Design patterns are a way to making architecting your apps easier and to reuse common software designs. CFUnited - The premier ColdFusion conference, June 28 - July 1, 2005. http://www.cfunited.com/ RSVP here for the meeting location if you haven't already: http://coldfusion.meetup.com/17/events/4675400/ 3. "Leveraging Java Open Source Tools for CF Development" interview with John Paul Ashenfelter ********************************************************** Michael Smith: This time we are talking with John Paul Ashenfelter about his CFUNITED-05 talk "Leveraging Java Open Source Tools for ColdFusion Development". So why should a developer come to your session John Paul ? John Paul Ashenfelter: Many ColdFusion developers are familiar with ColdFusion- based open source tools, ranging from classics like Hal Helm's QuerySim custom tag to the hundreds of user-defined functions at Ray Camden's cflib.org website to full-blown applications like the FarCry CMS platform. These tools are certainly part of any good ColdFusion developer's toolbox, but the Java foundation underneath CFMX allows developers to integrate many tools that have become a standard part of the Java world into ColdFusion projects. This lets ColdFusion developers choose from a much wider range of open source projects to jumpstart new and existing projects. MS: Is it easy to find these tools? JPA: Of course if you're not familiar with the open source world world in general (or the Java world in specific), it can be hard to know where to even start to look for tools that can be useful. I'm going to briefly cover the basics of finding, evaluating, and using open source Java software before digging into some specfic examples of tools that can be useful to ColdFusion developers. MS: So what kind of tools will you cover? JPA: I'm going to cover two broad categories of open source Java tools: tools that are usable out of the box that are *built* on Java; and Java tools that can be *integrated into* your ColdFusion development projects. For example, many developers in the Java world use Eclipse as their integrated development environment -- that is an open source Java tool that is *built* on Java, but can be used as an alternative for traditional ColdFusion development tools such as HomeSite or Dreamweaver. An example of a Java tool that can be *integrated* into a ColdFusion project is the log4j library. MS: Are these tools used by any big companies? JPA: Yes! Macromedia is using both kinds of open source tools themselves. For example, the CFMX Updaters have used Ant build scripts under the hood to do a lot of the work of the actual update. And of course, many standard Java libraries are used by CFMX, log4j as an example. Macromedia even contributed a fair bit to the development of the Apache Axis webservices project, which is used to implement ColdFusion webservices. MS: What tools are you going to cover? JPA: I'm going to cover several tools for the programming lifecycle, specifically Subversion for source control and Ant for build scripts. And of course we'll talk about using Tomcat as the J2EE container for CFMX and about using the CFEclipse plugin to develop CFMX applications. MS: What about libraries? JPA: As far as pure development goes, we'll talk about JDBC libraries that can be used as alternatives to the drivers built-into ColdFusion (particularly drivers for MS-SQL and MySQL). We'll also take a look at rolling your own logging tools that are much more flexible than native ColdFusion methods. We may even talk about a few non-Java open source tools, things like open source databases and javascript libraries. I'm even thinking of covering things that are a little "out there"! MS: What kind of things?... JPA: Things like continuous integration and testing tools. Lazlo and other ways to integrate Flash into your development without using Flex. About how to use Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) with CFMX. And whatever else is interesting between now and the day I'm doing the talk... MS: Whooo Hooo! This sounds like a great talk - see you at CFUNITED. You can see more interviews at http://www.cfunited.com/interviews.cfm CFUNITED-05 is Wed 6/29/05 - Fri 7/1/05 in Bethesda MD, just outside Washington DC. It costs $649 until 6/10/05 then $749. For more information on CFUNITED see http://www.cfunited.com/ --- Leveraging Java Open Source Tools for ColdFusion Development ************************* The open source world can be a vast and scary place for those not familiar, yet the open source world can provide ColdFusion developers with tools that let them tackle projects quickly and efficently. This talk covers the basics of open source for the ColdFusion developer -- tools that are usable out of the box as well as libraries to handle specfic development tasks. We'll be specifically talking about using the Eclipse, Tomcat, Subversion, and Ant open source tools for the development cycle. And we'll talk about specific programming libraries, ranging from logging to Aspect-Oriented Programming. Speaker Bio: John Paul Ashenfelter is CTO of TransitionPoint.com, where he builds web-based business applications using a mix of open source tools, ColdFusion, and Java. He has been the technical lead on a number of ColdFusion projects for startups as well as regularly serving as an architect for existing ColdFusion sites converting to Fusebox. A ColdFusion developer since version 2.0, John Paul has written several books covering ColdFusion, contributed articles to CFDJ, and spoken at several ColdFusion conferences. 4. "Variables and Conditions" interview with Melissa Lizmi ********************************************************** Michael Smith: This time we are talking with Melissa Lizmi about her CFUNITED-05 talk "Variables and Conditions". So why should a developer come to your session Melissa ? Melissa Lizmi: This session is ideal for those that are new to the CFML language or those that just need a refresher. We'll start by covering the simplest CF variables (page variables) and progress to the more complex variable types such structures, arrays, and combination variables. Then we will discuss how you can program your application to make decisions; otherwise know as conditional processing or "if/then" statements. We'll also discuss a more efficient approach to lengthy if/then statements; the CFSWITCH statement. MS: So what exactly is a variable in ColdFusion? ML: Variables in ColdFusion are much like variables in any other language, except that CF variables are much easier to create and call. But if you want to know what variables are in general terms. You can think of a variable as a box that can hold a value. We give the box a name so we can easily retrieve the value. The value in the box can remain constant or, as the name variable implies, it can change. MS: So what kinds of things let you change a variable? ML: Well, we can explicitly change the value of a variable with the command. Or we can use variables to perform calculations, or values can change depending on which links our users click, or what records are retrieved from our database. There are many ways variable values can be changed. MS: Why would I need more complex variable types in my applications? ML: When we find ourselves using a lot of variables in an application it is often extremely helpful to "group" related variables together. (That's all complex variables really are, just a way to "group" related variables.) Once we group variables, we can call and manipulate each group of variables much greater ease than if we had created and named each variable independently. MS: That makes sense - so what kinds of variable groups does Coldfusion have? ML: Advanced variable types are lists, structures, arrays, combination variables (like an array of structures), and COM (component object model) variables. MS: I see you are also covering conditionals - what are they exactly? ML: Conditional processing gives your program the ability to make decisions. Believe it or not, with the help of some key commands, CFIF or CFSWITCH, your program can make decisions. We can use the CFIF or CFSWITCH commands to code the possible conditions we might expect (like UserAge GTE 65), then we can say (in code terms) if our condition evaluates true, we send the user to our retirement page, or, if the condition evaluates false, we send the user to the employee page. CF provides two main methods of implementing conditional processing. * CFIF (CFIF/CFELSEIF/CFELSE) - basic if/elseif/else processing. * CFSWITCH (CFSWITCH/CFCASE/CFDEFAULTCASE) - C-style switch or VB-style case commands. MS: Sounds like a great session for beginners to CF. See you at CFUNITED! You can see more interviews at http://www.cfunited.com/interviews.cfm CFUNITED-05 is Wed 6/29/05 - Fri 7/1/05 in Bethesda MD, just outside Washington DC. It costs $649 until 6/10/05 then $749. For more information on CFUNITED see http://www.cfunited.com/ --- Variables and Conditions ************************* Variables are at the heart of any CF program, but many people are confused about the different scopes and how they should be used. Learn about CF's data types, scopes and assignment rules. Then take a branch into conditionals. Conditionals let your programs make decisions from simple branching to more complex switch and logical comparisons, so that you can build more complex web applications successfully. Speaker Bio: Melissa Lizmi is a full-time professor at Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland, where she teaches web programming and database classes. In fall 2002, Professor Lizmi was the first to bring a data-driven web programming class to Montgomery College with her Introduction to ColdFusion course and has subsequently developed and teaches an Advanced ColdFusion course. Both courses are favorites among MC students. Professor Lizmi is active in the local ColdFusion community and fosters the same activism among her students by running a MC ColdFusion User's Group Discussion Board, taking students on field trips to local CF meetings, and developing and placing students in CF internships. Tell your friends about CFUNITED-05 - pass this email on ---- Check more about CFUNITED at: http://www.cfunited.com/ We have: * 3 days * 7 tracks * 20 sponsors * 64 sessions * 1000+ attendees * 100% nicer hotel * Includes lunch each day and open bar reception We have seven tracks this year: * Bootcamp - Basic ColdFusion and Flash topics * Advanced - Advanced ColdFusion topics (Blackstone included!) * Manager/Empowered - Fusebox and Project management topics * Integration - Flash, Flex and other technologies integrated with CF topics * Accessibility / usability - section 508, CSS and disabled access * Deployment - tuning, install issues, OS, picking a database * CF Platform Integration - interop with Microsoft and other technologies The timely bird price of $549 for CFUNITED-05 ends 4/30/05. Save upto $400 by registering now! * Early Bird $449 til 2/25/05 * Timely Bird $549 til 4/30/05 * Regular $649 til 6/10/05 * Late $749 til 6/28/04 * At the door $849 Register today at http://www.cfunited.com/ -- 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! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Discover CFTicket - The leading ColdFusion Help Desk and Trouble Ticket application http://www.houseoffusion.com/banners/view.cfm?bannerid=48 Message: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=i:4:207086 Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/threads.cfm/4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=s:4 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4 Donations & Support: http://www.houseoffusion.com/tiny.cfm/54
