CU210 - Leader of the Pack (strategies for building better software)

In this full-day hands-on session, Simon will teach the theories, techniques, and strategies that lead to building better software.

The target audience for this session consists of developers who lead other developers, developers that fill the role of technical lead on projects, and any developer aspiring to become capable and competent in either or both of those roles. Topics are based on what really works in the real world and will include but are not limited to:

• Leveraging the benefits of OOP (Object Oriented Programming)
• Design Patterns and Anti-Patterns
• SAM - the Sensible Assembly Methodology
• Frameworks
• Object Think
• Paper Prototyping
• Software development lifecycle process
• Tips to successful leadership of developers and projects
• Pros and cons of agile development
• Architecture and other considerations for next generation web applications (Flex, AJAX, etc.)
• Development and planning tools and other useful utilities
• Refining and redefining your skills for success

Monday 6/26
9am-5pm

CU211 - Fundamentals of Relational Database Design
Your Mission: To create a solid mission critical business application.
My Mission: To help you understand the best practices for organizing your companies data to help you build that mission critical application.

Over the years I have been asked to re-write several large scale mission critical applications that were not working correctly. The one thing that all of these applications had in common was a poor database design. At the end of the day you will understand why a solid database design is critical if you want your project to succeed, the difference between a good design and a poor design, and most importantly you will be able to identify and redesign a poorly designed database!

We will cover the following topics in the Fundamentals of Relational Database Design class:

• 1st, 2nd, and 3rd levels of normalization
• The Primary Key, Foreign Key, and relationships (associations)
• Creating a database schema
  

Data types:

• Rules for creating indexes
• The basics of the SQL Language

At the end of the class we can get together in a BOF type of setting to discuss your individual database design – so bring your database with you on your laptop!

Monday 6/26
9am-5pm

CU212 - ColdFusion Server Administration: JRun J2EE Deployment
Do you want your ColdFusion server to be more reliable and scaleable? One of the main advantages of ColdFusion MX 7 Enterprise edition is that you can install it as a Java application on a standards-based Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) application server. In addition to greater flexibility, this lets your ColdFusion applications leverage features of the J2EE architecture, such as support for multiple application instances and clustering.

This course will cover the recommended setup, clustering and administration of ColdFusion MX 7 on JRun4 (multi-server mode).

Monday 6/26
9am-5pm

CU213 - Testing ColdFusion
Learn how to make your ColdFusion software more robust, your QA process more reliable, and your development able to better support changes through unit, regression, functional, and load testing. We'll start with an overview of the testing process and jump right into tools to help your development process immediately -- CF(C)unit to test your ColdFusion code and dbUnit for resetting the database to a known state to support testing from a known good state. We'll spend a good bit of time on automated functional testing with Selenium to avoid all the repetitive testing tasks you are probably doing by hand. Load testing tools will be on the list as well -- so we can help find those nasty race conditions and have some confidence about what kind of load the site can support. Finally, we'll pull it all together with automated tools to build, test, and release your software on a regular basis so you can spend more time coding and less time worrying.

Note: All of the software used in this class is open source *and* cross platform -- you'll go home with everything you need to start implementing the testing tools that are relevant to you immediately.

Monday 6/26
9am-5pm

CU214 - Ajax intensive for ColdFusion Developers
Ajax, Web 2.0, RIAs, single-page-applications are just a few buzzwords that every developer needs to know in 2006. Learn the history of Ajax, what it means to you, why you should pay attention, who is using it, what is available, and how to implement it. This session will get you up to speed with Ajax, compare the different existing frameworks, and provide you helpful tips of do’s and do not’s with Ajax.

Learn how to enrich your users experience by the use of AJAX. Examples start at --hello world-- and build up all the way to object oriented MVC applications. By the end of this session, you will know how to enhance your site through simple AJAX widgets or build full AJAX application including enhanced security and debugging techniques. Learn common mistakes such as delegating business logic to the client side, and learn to avoid them by keeping your logic in the server and loading scripts on-demand.

Tuesday 6/27
9am-5pm

CU215 - XML, XPath, and XSLT for ColdFusion Developers
XML is an increasingly important part of the web application development landscape. It is often used for data exchange or storing configuration information (the ColdFusion admin uses XML for just this purpose!). This hands-on workshop will introduce XML object for ColdFusion, and how to leverage related technologies. Learn how to use XPath to extract data from XML datasets, and how to use XSLT stylesheets to power up your XML-based applications. Bring a laptop and leave the theory at the door--this course is for folks who want to do stuff!

Tuesday 6/27
10am-5pm

CU216 - Domain Modeling
Are your applications are built in one-off fashion? This causes repetition of similar code across applications and inconsistencies in implementation. Creating a domain model solves these problems. A domain model is not an application, but is an application-agnostic software model of the company or organization (the “domain”). The domain model exposes various public methods in the form of an Application Programming Interface (API) that is used by individual applications. In this presentation, I’ll explore the issues important to creating a powerful domain model and explain how CFCs and/or Java can be used to create the model. Starting with UML class diagrams and working through Object-Relational mapping, learn how to build a robust domain model for ColdFusion applications.

Tuesday 6/27
9am-5pm

CU217 - Advanced SQL Programming  *NEW TITLE*
Are your CF pages slow? If so it is probably due to poor SQL. This class will skip past the basics of using SQL with ColdFusion and dive right in to more intermediate and advanced topics. We will explore the many features, options, and practices available to developers besides just using basic queries. Find out that there is much more to using a database with ColdFusion than simply storing and accessing data. Find out ways to speed up your development time and ways to improve your application performance. Learn some great tricks (some even undocumented) for common data uses in your CF application such as pagination and data manipulation.

In this one day class Nate will also cover specific features when using a Microsoft SQL Database with your application. This includes items such as stored procedures, triggers, indexes, and Transact SQL. Learn some great uses for some of the internal system tables and procedures. Ever worked with an application using sensitive data such as social security numbers or credit card information? Learn how to properly store and access this information while keeping it secure.

Students who bring a laptop to follow along will get the best results out of this class. If you do not have one you can follow along with Nate.

Pre-Requisites: At least a basic knowledge of ColdFusion is required, Previous use of a database with ColdFusion will be helpful, At least a basic knowledge of writing SQL queries will also be helpful.
PRINT a copy of the AGENDA for this class.

Tuesday 6/27
9am-5pm