Congratulations ColdFusion (for topping the User Choice list.)

ColdFusion is among the top Applications servers in a "users choice" report created by Evans Data. http://www.evansdata.com/reports/viewRelease_download.php?reportID=20

http://www.cio.com/article/print/455845

Evans Data interviewed more than 700 developers asking them questions about the servers they have used. And ColdFusion is among the top!

But this is my favorite quote of the survey: "this survey felt that performance was one of the server's strongest points, along with scalability, security, and support"

So to the ColdFusion Team, keep up the good work!

RIA Debugging and ColdFusion (brainstorming)

I just posted about a post written about RIA Debugging by Simeon Simeonov, in this post: http://blog.mikenimer.com/index.cfm/2008/10/13/RIA-Debugging-and-ColdFusion-forgotten-feature

In Sim's post he talks about the need for a common place to see all of the debug data from the server and the client.

So my question to everyone. What would this look like?

Let's imagine that there was a way to send all of the client (flex, ajax, silverlight, etc.) logging data and all of the server logging data(ColdFusion debug data, etc..) to a common UI..

What features does that common UI need to have? What would it look like? What are some of the must do features?

RIA Debugging and ColdFusion (forgotten feature)

Some of you might remember Simeon Simeonov from the early days of ColdFusion. He was one of the original engineers and the architect of ColdFusion at Allaire. Needless to say, he is responsible for many of your favorite features in ColdFusion.

Sim, has recently posted a great blog post about the problems debugging RIA applications. And a possible solution. Definitely worth a read.

http://simeons.wordpress.com/2008/09/16/debugging-ria-ajax-flex-services/

However, there is one more way to do debugging missing from his post (unless it's been updated). One of the last things I added to ColdFusion 7.0.2 before I left Adobe was to make sure all of the ColdFusion debug data is sent with every Flash Remoting request.

This is one of the more common forgotten features in ColdFusion. If you are using ColdFusion with Flex, you can still get all of the information you are used to seeing at the bottom of a regualar .cfm. To turn this on, just turn on debugging in the cfadmin. And then in your result event, you can look at the result event header to see all of this information; sql, execution times, variables, etc..

Way back when, on mikenimer.com I posted a flex dump component that does know how to format this debug data. However, to be honest. I haven't opened the component in the latest versions of flex so the component might need to be tweak to work in flex 3.

But that's no excuse not to monitor this data. With RIA apps it's more important than ever to monitor your requests. It's too easy to write a bad query and not know it, since you can't easily see this debug data. But it's worth a little extra work.

FlexCamp Chicago presentation and examples

First I just want to thank everyone who attended the FlexCamp in Chicago. As promised here is the presentation I did and the two examples I walked through.

Presentation
Examples
(these use the sample database that ship with ColdFusion)

Flex Camp Chicago! - limited space available, sign up now while you still can

Are you a flex developer? Are you still learning new things about flex? Are you planning on learning flex? Do you want to meet other flex developers in the area? Do you live near Chicago, IL?

Then you need to register and come to the next Flex Camp right here in Chicago, on Jan 18th, before it sells out. Plus you get a FREE COPY OF "Adobe Flex 2: Training from the Source" - thanks to PeachPit Press.

Flex Camp is a one day, all day, conference about Flex with something for everyone - Flex Component development, Air development, CF Integration, and Java Integration. Plus I'm a speaker!

And it's easy to get to, Flex Camp will be located at the Illinois Technology Association, 200 S. Wacker Drive, 15th Floor. Which is right by Union Station in downtown Chicago.

Click here to learn more and register:
http://www.flexcampchicago.com/

Tapper, Nimer & Assoc. + Digital Primates IT Consulting

I'm happy to finally be able to tell the world that Tapper, Nimer & Associates and Digital Primates have decided to join forces. Now that the lawyers are done the merger is complete.

The new company will be keeping the name Digital Primates. If you'd like to learn more about Digital Primates check out our web site at http://www.digitalprimates.net

It's an exciting time in the RIA world and for us it just got a lot more exciting!

P.S. We are looking for a few great flex developers and flash video experts. If you're interested send me your resume.

CFForm xml forms

Sure it's a slow adoption feature in ColdFusion, but it hasn't been forgotten. And those that know how to use it - love it.

Wim Dewijngaert @ http://cfform.dewijngaert.be has created a number of great DHTML components that work with CFForm (format="xml").

So if you've already discovered the hidden power in xml forms or have been meaning to use them - go take a look and try some of them out.

I knew that people would eventually start posting components/xsl skins for cfform. Does anyone else have any that they would like to post (they aren't hard to make).

Motionbox.com launches flex app to manage multi-file uploads

It's not very often that we ("Tapper, Nimer, and Associates") do work that lives outside the firewall, so when we do it's great to be able to share it. This week Motionbox.com launched a new flex 2 multi-file uploader, written by our own Angela Nimer!

This has to be one of the best examples of flex doing what it does best; can you imagine trying to provide this kind of interaction and feedback with old-school html (or dare I say Ajax). You'd be in ActiveX/Applet hell. Instead with the flex components, lots of event listeners, and some css we were able to quickly build a rich interactive experience that does the job while informing the user about what is happening at all times.

If you?re not familiar with Motionbox.com, check it out! Motionbox is a video sharing site, but not any regular video sharing site, Motionbox lets you share whole videos, but, even better you can share just the clips of a video (aka, just the good parts). Plus they have a cool flex video player and filmstrip tool too.

DOJO/JSON requests in ColdFusion

Recently I was putting together a sample app for my presentation at AjaxWorld, and I decided to use the DOJO ajax library and ColdFusion together. However, there was one problem, DOJO does everything with JSON requests/response, instead of url/form variables and XML and it does it in such a way that you can't easily get to it from CF.

What I mean by that, DOJO will send the JSON request arguments in a string, in the body of the HTTP get request. Now this is perfectly valid in HTTP, however it is rare. And it means that the values don't end up in a FORM or URL variable either. So getting the JSON string can be tricky.

So I've put together a simple UDF that you can use to get this JSON request, technically anything in the http body of a request. Soon I'll put this on cflib, but for now, here it is. Hope it helps.

(Special thanks to Christian Cantrell, the byte array code is from his blog).

<cffunction name="getJSONRequest" access="private" returnType="string" output="no">
   <cfscript>
      var size=GetPageContext().getRequest().getInputStream().available();
      var emptyByteArray = createObject("java", "java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream").init().toByteArray();
      var byteClass = createObject("java", "java.lang.Byte").TYPE;
      var byteArray = createObject("java","java.lang.reflect.Array").newInstance(byteClass, size);

      GetPageContext().getRequest().getInputStream().readLine(byteArray, 0, size);

      createObject('java', 'java.lang.System').out.println("{GetJSONRequest} ByteArray.ToString=" &ToString( byteArray    ) );   
      return ToString( byteArray );
   </cfscript>
</cffunction>

<cfset jsonstring = getJSONRequest()>

Do you do freelance work?

Send me your resume!

As many of you know I recently joined up with Jeff Tapper to start a new consulting company, Tapper, Nimer and Associates. And we've already had a few opportunities come up where we need more people. A great sign of the market out there, I have to say.

So anyway, we are looking at building our Rolodex of people we can sub-contract work out to. If you are a ColdFusion, Flex2, or Flash contractor I want to know. I can't guarantee anything right away but if I know who you are I'll know who I can call.

What I'd like to know:
1) Your resume, skills and experience.
2) Your contact info.
3) Stuff you've worked on.
4) What your going rate is.
5) Can/Will you travel? 20%, 50%, 100%, etc.
6) Describe your perfect gig? What do you want to work on?

Send me an email at mikenimer@yahoo.com

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