Interview with Sponsor Joshua Cyr from "Savvy Software, Inc."

Michael Smith: This time we are talking with sponsor Joshua Cyr from Savvy Software, Inc about their ColdFusion based Web Content Management software. So what brings you to CFUnited this year?

Joshua Cyr: We have been a sponsor and exhibitor for the past few years. It is a great event for us to interact with our customers and meet potential new customers. It is also a great networking and learning event for us.

MS: Tell us a little about what Savvy software does?

JC: We have a ColdFusion based web CMS. It is known for being easy to install and easy for end users to use, while also offering developers a lot of flexibility. While we do work directly with both large and small companies, we also have a strong partner program for developers who regularly install CMS's for their clients.

MS: What exactly is a CMS and why would I need one?

JC: Definitions vary but generally a web based content manager allows multiple non-technical people to update a web site in a structured and controlled way. Many developers would rather that content contributors (customers, coworkers, etc) make text and content changes. That way they may focus on more important tasks such as implementing new features. Other benefits include historical storage of content, change audit logs and ease of site build-out / design changes.

MS: I thought Content Management Systems were expensive and hard to configure?

JC: Many are! However in the CF world we have many open source and lower priced CMS options. Regarding implementation, the complexity and difficulty run the gamut. We recommend you demo a variety of CMS options so that you can find the right CMS option for your specific needs. Our aim is to keep Savvy CM low cost and easy to install while keeping it flexible for the developer. All of this without cutting any corners on delivering a quality web site. In fact many of our partners use Savvy CM because it makes building web sites faster.

MS: How about SEO (search engine optimization)? Does Savvy generate search friendly pages?

JC: Absolutely! You have full control over real page names and your directory structure as well as your title, description, etc for each page. In addition our built in navigation object is very search engine friendly. The templates can be developed with table structured HTML or with CSS positioning. We work very hard to ensure that Savvy CM doesn't present a roadblock for SEO and helps enforce good SEO techniques when possible.

MS: Joshua, we look forward to seeing you at CFUnited and recommend everyone stop by and say hello and be sure to check out Savvy Software's Content Management Solution.

You can see more interviews at http://www.cfunited.com/interviews.cfm
CFUNITED-07 is Wed 6/27/07 - Sat 6/30/07 in Bethesda MD, just outside Washington DC. It costs $1049.
For more information on CFUNITED see http://www.cfunited.com/

Interview with Raymond Camden on "CFC Development"

Michael Smith: This time we are talking with Raymond Camden about his CFUNITED-07 talk "CFC Development". So why should a developer come to your session Raymond?

Raymond Camden: ColdFusion Components are really the main way a developer can take his or her code to the "next level" of development. In this 3 hour extended session I will cover both the syntax as well as show numerous examples and suggestions for using CFCs.

MS: How will my code be better if I use CFCs?

RC: Beginning developers tend to rebuild code they have used before. They do this because their earlier code wasn't properly abstracted, so it's not reusable. CFCs are one way within ColdFusion to reuse code.

MS: What do you mean by "abstracted" - that sounds complex!

RC: It really isn't. Here is a simple example. The total value of a shopping cart is each line items unit price times the quantity. That is one simple business rule. However - you use this logic in multiple places on your site. You "abstract" it by simply packaging it up into one file. Then every place that needs this logic calls that file. Let's then say that on Mondays you want a 10% deduction applied to the total. If you modify that one file, every place that uses it will see the new logic.

MS: So are CFC hard to learn?

RC: Like most things in ColdFusion, they are easy. Using them right though takes a bit of time. Once you learn the basic syntax, there is a lot of thinking that needs to take place on how to organize them.

MS: What tags do I need to use to write a basic CFC?

RC: There a few basic tags and functions. They are cfcomponent, cffunction, cfargument, cfproperty, cfinvoke, cfinvokeargument, createObject(), and I'm sure I forgot one or two. The CFML behind CFCs really aren't that complicated.

MS: Is there anything people need to know before they come to your talk?

RC: Nope! You can come to this session knowing nothing about CFCs and I will teach how to do it the right way from the ground up. Of course I assume you do know some basic CF code like CFOUTPUT and CFIF!

MS: Will you have any code sample or demos in your talk?

RC: Heck yes. I'm a big believer in code examples.

MS: Cool - see you at CFUNITED!

You can see more interviews at http://www.cfunited.com/interviews.cfm
CFUNITED-07 is Wed 6/27/07 - Sat 6/30/07 in Bethesda MD, just outside Washington DC. It costs $1049.
For more information on CFUNITED see http://www.cfunited.com/

CFC Development

This three hour session will delve into the basics of building ColdFusion Components (CFCs) as well as discuss various methods of CFC development. We will have many examples that you can take home with you to help you start building your first site with CFCs!

Speaker Bio:

A long time ColdFusion user, Raymond is a member of Team Macromedia and one of the managers of the Acadiana MMUG. Raymond is a co-author of the Mastering ColdFusion series published by Sybex Inc, the ColdFusion MX Developer's Handbook, and a co-author to the "ColdFusion Web Application Construction Kit". He also presents at numerous conferences and contributes to online webzines. He is a contributor and technical editor of the ColdFusion Developer's Journal. He and Rob Brooks-Bilson created and run the Common Function Library Project, an open source repository of ColdFusion UDFs. You can reach him at ray@camdenfamily.com. Raymond’s blog is at http://ray.camdenfamily.com

Interview between Michael Smith and Chaz Chumley

Michael Smith: This time we are talking with Chaz Chumley about his CFUNITED-07 talk "Creating and Consuming WebServices". So why should a developer come to your session Chaz?

Chaz Chumley: Web Services make up such an integral part of the web framework when developing applications today. Such technologies as ColdFusion, Flash and Flex make working with XML data easier and quicker than could have been conceived. If a developer plans on sharing data with external customers or consume data from such clients like Google, Yahoo or RSS feeds then they don't want to miss this session. I will be sharing real world examples of just how easy it is to produce and consume web services utilizing ColdFusion.

MS: Can you tell me more specifics about some of those web services and why they are cool to add to my app?

CC: No one wants to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. Web Services are "cool" because we can build some great functionality once and reuse it by sharing it with the outside world just by specifying where the Web Service lives and how to interact with it. Imagine if a client asked you to pull in all the local news into a portal or web site. Do you want to statically write the news items down each day and then republish it. Of course not. Why not browse over to Yahoo!'s Web Services and tap into an already prebuilt API that does all the work for you. In addition to web search results, Yahoo!'s API includes the ability to fetch results for images, local information, news, and video.

MS: OK! So is it hard to create a web service in ColdFusion? What do I need to do?

CC: The great thing about ColdFusion versus other languages is just how easy it is to create a web service. More and more developers are writing ColdFusion Components to encapsulate their logic from their presentation. Following these best practices we can expose the logic inside a CFC simply by adding one attribute (|access="remote"|) to any of your component's methods to turn it into a web service. However if you want to learn more about it in detail you will have to come to my CFUnited session Michael.

MS: One parameter to publish a web service - that is easy! What about reading those cool web services that you mentioned above? That must be hard right?

CC: You might think that but actually it is very simple. Let's take the Yahoo API's for example. All that is needed to get started is to register with Yahoo, obtain an application ID which is just a string that uniquely identifies your application and send a request url to Yahoo. The information is then returned in the form of a REST (Representational State Transfer) response.

MS: Cool! Now it sounds like some of those web services might return complex data - how does ColdFusion deal with that?

CC: When a web service returns a complex data type you can write the return value directly to a ColdFusion variable. You can then access elements of the variable using dot notation the same way you would access a structure. So if we had a person object returned to us we could access the firstname element by specifying "person.firstName".

MS: Do I need CF 7 Enterprise to use web services or do other versions of CF work too?

CC: You can both create and consume web services with any version of ColdFusion.

MS: What about all this SOAP my java buddies keep telling me about? How does that relate to web services and does ColdFusion support SOAP?

CC: SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is just one of the XML-based protocols that you can use to write messages to send and receive web service requests and responses over the internet. ColdFusion does support SOAP thru the use of a WSDL (Web Services Descriptor Language) that describes the arguments accepted by a specific web service. The great thing about ColdFusion is that the WSDL is automatically generated when the ColdFusion Component is deployed.

MS: This all sounds so easy! Are there any gotchas to watch out for with web services?

CC: One of the biggest gotchas when developing web services is forgetting to refresh the web service within the ColdFusion Administrator. CFAdmin caches the web service when it is first generated so any changes will not be reflected until you refresh it. We will be looking at more gotchas in detail in my session.

MS: I am looking forward to seeing you at CFUNITED.

You can see more interviews.
CFUNITED-07 is Wed 6/27/07 - Sat 6/30/07 in Bethesda MD, just outside Washington DC. It costs $949 until 3/31/06 then $1049.
For more information on CFUNITED.

Creating and Consuming WebServices

Web services provide us a channel to communicate using standard XML (Extensible Markup Language) to users over an internet, intranet or extranet without exposing all of the functionality of your application. Using ColdFusion you can easily publish a web service - to make application functionality available for remote use as well as consume a web service - to access remote functionality to perform specific tasks. Join us as we discuss the basic structure of a web service, utilize ColdFusion Components (CFCs) to create simple data typed web services, how to consume a web service and the different data types you may encounter, take a look at working with soap requests including nillable arguments and CFMX7's new isSoapRequest function, error handling and finally best practices to ensure that your experience with ColdFusion MX 7 and web services is a memorable one.

Speaker Bio:

Consultant, Instructor, Author, Husband and Father. Chaz has been specializing in web development and database design since 1995. He currently resides as an Application Developer for Lucidus Corporation, an Internet Application Development & Hosting company as well as an Instructor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas teaching XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, Fireworks, Photoshop and ColdFusion. Chaz is also a contributing author and parnter at CommunityMX as well as as a frequent speaker at Adobe User Groups and such conferences as Todcon and CFUnited.

The Premiere ColdFusion Conference

If you are a ColdFusion developer and plan on going to any web conference this year, then you definitely don't want to miss CFUnited. Not that I am trying to self-glorify myself but I have the pleasure of speaking this year and can't wait to see all the great presenters and people involved in the ColdFusion community.

CFUnited is the only conference of its kind that is run by developers, for developers. What this means is that the topics are exactly what web developers need to learn now and are based on real world experience.

This year's conference is a 4-day event that includes a bonus on Saturday repeating the most popular sessions. You can purchase the 4 day package, 3 day package, or the Saturday only package. In addition to the keynotes and sessions you expect at any conference, this year will include Birds-of-Feather discussions in the evenings, panel discussions, a community area, and many other social and networking events. If 4 days isn't enough for you, there is a User Group Manager event on the day before the conference, and full-day hands-on classes, instructed by CFUnited presenters, during the two days prior to the conference. Read More...

Sunday morning and football usually rings true in my household but this morning brings me away from the television (what is the world coming to) and into a sports bar. I know where you think this is going but actually I am sitting around a room of fellow web developers and designers at the CFUnderground conference. Some really cool items were handed out during registration like a limited edition CFUnderground t-shirt, logo emblazon beer mug and from Adobe a cool usb light/fan combo.

First glance around the room would think we were waiting for a blind date in a dark bar, the only exception being the tables laden with laptops and a hugh Adobe banner hanging on the wall. The first announcement was that unfortunately Simon Horwith would not be available to speak on "Putting Bread On The Table - Improving Your Marketability" but would be available later for the Q&A session.

Session 1: Understanding Database Performance

Very interesting discussion on indexing, query plans and optimization. The availability of database interaction between ColdFusion and some tools to help monitor the performance like SeeFusion. I consider myself pretty database proficient and discovered a few interesting factoids.

• Too many joins effect performance and will result in table scans regardless of indexes being used.
• Use Union's instead of a global "OR" statement when filtering on multiple columns.
• Watch out for merge joins in query plans (these are a red flag for performance).

Session 2: Top notch testing techniques

Discussion on various testing techniques, the importance of performing testing and tools like CFUNIT. Just a sample of techniques discussed included:

• Unit testing
• Integration testing
• Regression testing
• Acceptance testing

Session 3: Troubleshooting and Optimizing CFMX Performance

Discussion of tuning your ColdFusion applications from a JRUN platform. Various topics included:

• JVM tuning
• Threads and garbage collection
• Memory leaks

Session 4: Object Oriented ColdFusion

A discussion on Object Oriented terms and definitions surrounding CFCs, the different ways to instantiate a component and how to invoke methods. Topics included:

• Instantiation.
• Encapsulation.
• 3 ways to invoke a class and it's methods.

Session 5: Confessions of a CF Assassin

Why projects fail and why you already know how to resolve the issues but just don't know you know the answers. A interesting discussion on small to large scale projects and such topics as cross-side scripting, sql injection and self introduced errors that just shouldn't be there and can easily be fixed with a little thought and consideration when developing. Topics included:

• How to recognize you have a problem
• Case studies and examples of application failure
• Security, performance and maintainability

Session 6: ColdFusion Q&A

Panel of 4 including Jason Delmore Product Manager for ColdFusion at Adobe Systems Incorporated share with us upcoming ColdFusion 8 features, the always heated framework discussion and general questions and answers of anything and everything ColdFusion.

CFUnderground

Tomorrow is Sunday and instead of watching the obligatory football game and wondering if my fantasy football player is going to score, I will be attending CFUnderground.

With such great topics as: "Confessions of a CF Assasin" to "Understanding Database Performance" what else could you ask for.

We'll it does take pace at the Beach Nightclub in the best party town in the U.S. - LAS VEGAS!!! I guess that means not only can I geek out but I can still grab a beer and watch a game.

There will be great presenter the likes of Simon Horwith and Michael Smith just to mention a few. If you get a chance please stop by and enjoy a great Sunday of ColdFusion, Football and a prelude to the MAX conference at the Venetian Resort Hotel and Casino.

Mini-MAX

The party before the party. Mini-MAX is being held right after the CFUnderground conference and is a great chance to meet and greet fellow geeks before the MAX conference starts on Monday.

Join dataTV's Adam Bell, Adobe's Scott Fegette, Humber College's Tom Green, AboutWeb's Simon Horwith, 086 Studios' Todd Sanders and Community MX's Stephanie Sullivan for the prelude to the Adobe MAX Conference on Sunday Night, October 22th at 7PM PT at the The Beach Nightclub in Las Vegas, NV.

Stop by and say hello to me or Stephanie and ask about Community MX for a free trial to a great resource of knowledge, articles and forum advice.

I will be blogging more from CFUnderground, Mini-MAX and the MAX conference in days to come. Hope to see everyone there.