"ColdBox Framework" Presented By Luis Majano Introduction to the ColdBox framework. An in detail look... Read More
CFUnited Blog
We have a new speaker added to the RIA Track.
"Creating Images With Flex and ColdFusion" Scott Stroz
Scott is a Senior Software Architect at Alagad. He has been working with ColdFusion since version 5 and has been a Macromedia/Adobe Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer since ColdFusion MX. He has developed and fostered a passion for Flex, and her half-sister AIR. He is the author of Flogr, a Flex based ColdFusion log reader. Scott is also a blogger, author and frequent speaker at User Groups and conferences on various Flex and ColdFusion topics.
Read more about Scott's Topic at http://cfunited.com/go/topics/2008#topic-1709
Our first 2008 Bronze sponsor is Savvy Software!
Savvy Software is the developer of Savvy Content Manager - rapidly becoming the go to solution for web content management. Painless installation, ease of use and quick training times are its hallmark. Savvy CM is supported by many ColdFusion hosts, is low cost and incredibly easy for your end users. Easily extend the cms with your own code. Our partner program is growing quickly, and a great option for those in the web development field who don't wish to rebuild the wheel, but instead build upon it. Visit our website or call 866.870.6358
CFUnited 2008 USA June 2008
Here are two new topics added to the USA CFUnited Conference in 2008
"Charting with CF and Flex" Presented by Andrew Schwabe
Andrew C. Schwabe is currently the President of IEXP Software, LLC and is a veteran CFML developer since 1998. Prior to working with IEXP, Andrew worked for 10 years as the President and Chairman of the Board of Internet Expressions, Inc.
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"Creating, Manipulating and Printing PDFs" Presented by Sam Farmer
Since January 2007 Sam Farmer has been the Director of Engineering at Interfolio, a portfolio and dossier company based in Washington, DC.
Don't delay your registration for the premiere ColdFusion conferences any longer...
Register for CFUnited by Jan 05th 2008 and save $200 off the base registration rate.
Register for CFUnited Europe by Jan 10th 2008 and save $100 off the base registration rate. Also as a group discount, register 3 for the price of 2, for more details contact [email protected]
When you register for either conference by the above dates you are also automatically entered into a raffle to win one of two 8gb iPod touch!
Winners will be announced on Jan 11th 2008
CFUnited Europe Speaker Interview: "Testing CF Applications" with John Paul Ashenfelter
Michael Smith: This time we are talking with John Paul Ashenfelter about his CFUNITED Europe talk "Testing ColdFusion". So why should a developer come to your session John Paul ?
JP : I think most ColdFusion developers have *heard* something about testing over the past year, whether it's test-driven development, unit testing, or one of the myriad other testing topics that are being discussed in the web development community but don't quite know how to *use* those tools and techniques in the daily work. This session demonstrates several different testing tools and techniques and shows how to integrate them into your existing development workflow.
MS: What kinds of tools are you covering?
JP: Well, we're going to cover tools for each aspect of testing as well as the environments that glue all of those tools together. We'll start with the basics -- unit testing and functional testing, and then cover some of the supporting tools and more sophisticated topics like load testing.
MS: Let's hear some more about unit testing.
JP: Sure! Unit testing focuses on testing tiny *units* of an application. In the ColdFusion world, this means testing the methods of CFCs. I'm going to specifically talk about CFCUnit, which functions much as all the other xUnit testing tools in other languages -- JUnit in Java, etc. We'll look at using it standalone, integrating it into Eclipse, and using it in an automated build process.
MS: How should a ColdFusion developer get started with unit testing?
JP: First of all, unit testing is really only going to help the parts of the application that are implemented using CFCs. I think the easiest way to get started is to write unit tests for parts of the application that cause the most trouble or are the most sensitive to bugs -- tax and discount calculations in a commerce application for example.
MS: So what about functional testing?
JP: Functional testing is what we do as web developers all the time -- clicking through a login window, adding a blog post, or any of the many other functions that the web application performs. Computers are *really good* at handling boring, repetitive activities which I think accurately describes how many developers test their applications. During the session we're going to look at the open source Selenium functional testing tool. Selenium basically lets you script (or even record) interactions with a web page and play them back. And of course this can be done either standalone or integrated into an automated build process.
MS: Selenium sounds pretty interesting.
JP: It is! I find that many developers immediately put Selenium to use in automating their current browser-based testing so they can focus on other, more interesting things like development. QA teams have also use Selenium to let their testers developer more sophisticated testing plans with the time freed by automating all of the clicking. Not to mention the reduction in wear-and-tear on your mouse.
MS: What else will you cover?
JP: I'm going to cover a lot of related tools that improve your testing process -- tools like DBUnit for managing data during testing and testing the database itself is one good example. We'll also touch on load testing, but that's a far more complex topic that deserves it's own talk.
MS: You've mentioned automated testing several times -- tell me more about that.
JP: Automated testing is how all these pieces are pulled together. I typically use Ant to automate my entire build process, including tests. Once the testing process is automated, it's straightforward to use something like CruiseControl to *continuously* build and test the application, so as changes are made by any developer, problems are immediately detected and can be fixed early while it's still easy and cheap to do so.
MS: Anything else you want to say about testing?
JP: I'd like everyone to know that even though testing sounds boring, you'll learn things in this session that you can immediately put into practice that will save you time and improve the quality and reliability of your code. Unless you're in love with testing your application manually and dealing with bugs, you should be here!
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Testing CF Applications: Test-driven development is very popular in the Java and Ruby worlds and becoming moreso in the ColdFusion world. This session covers the tools that are available to test ColdFusion applications and discusses how to implement them into your existing workflow. We'll specifically cover:
* CFCUnit/CFUnit for testing ColdFusion code
* Selenium for testing web pages
* DBUnit for managing the database during testing
* Other testing for web applications Together, these tools can provide unit, functional, regression, and load tests for your applications. Finally, we'll touch on automating these tests so you can ensure that you are delivering higher-quality, well-tested code.
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.
CFUNITED Europe is Thursday 03/12/2008 - Friday 03/13/2008 in Hammersmith, West London UK. It costs $749 until 10/31/07 then $849. For more information on CFUNITED Europe see http://europe.cfunited.com/
CF Meetup: "Configuring, Using and Extending Savvy Content Manager", with Joshua Cyr
Thursday, December 20, 2007, 12:00 PM
Online meeting via Adobe Connect
Learn how easy Savvy Content Manager is to deploy, then learn how to extend with your own ColdFusion code. Savvy CM is the leading low cost commercial CMS in use by many CF shops today. More information on Savvy CM can be found at http://www.besavvy.com/
For more information about this CF Meetup visit: http://coldfusion.meetup.com/17/calendar/6907806/
CFUnited Podcast: Jeff Tapper - Flex 2 for ColdFusion Developers
Hosted by Christian Ready
Description
Using Flex 2.0, you can now deploy Flex applications using any number of backend technologies without the addition of a Flex server product. However, with the new ColdFusion-Flex connectivity features, ColdFusion will have a significant advantage over all other backend technologies; providing the most efficient data exchange, the easiest programming model, and specialized tooling that make it the fastest, easiest way to build Flex apps with or without the purchase of a Flex server. This session will provide information on RemoteObject and the CF-Flex connectivity features including the use of value objects to exchange data between ColdFusion and Flex. Previous experience with CF/Flex applications is highly suggested
Podcast link: http://podcast.cfunited.com/index.php?post_id=288270
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These badges can also be found on the spread the word page
Michael Smith: This time we are talking with Peter Bell about his CFUNITED Europe talk "Practical Code Generation". So why should a developer come to your session Peter?
Peter Bell: If they'd like to build maintainable applications more quickly and easily, they should learn the proven techniques that are allowing other developers to substantially improve their productivity by generating more of their code.
Michael Smith: What will you be covering in the session?
Peter Bell: Code generation is becoming increasingly popular both in the ColdFusion world and within the wider programming community, but there are a number of key distinctions that can help you to get a lot more value from generating your code. For example, if you use "passive" code generation, it'll just save a bit of time upfront whereas "active" code generation will allow you to build and maintain your application more quickly. The difference is just the way you architecture your code and I'll be explaining what has been proven to work in projects around the world.
Michael Smith: Domain Specific Languages seem to be a hot topic these days. Will you be talking about those?
Peter Bell: Absolutely. Code generation is the easy part. The hard part is structuring the information you want to use to generate your code (your metadata). That is where Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) come in as they allow you to describe what you want your application to do more quickly and efficiently. We'll be looking at a wide range of techniques for editing, storing and consuming DSLs to provide attendees with a range of techniques for solving real world problems.
Michael Smith: And I believe you'll be talking a little bit about frameworks as well?
Peter Bell: That's right. Frameworks aren't just about community efforts like Fusebox and Mach-II. Often when you develop a code generator, you'll create some kind of core framework to use between projects. At SystemsForge, we've actually created a complete framework for taking our DSLs so we don't have to generate code to create new applications - the framework does all of the work. The important point to realize is that whether you write a framework to interpret your DSLs or a generator to generate code is a decision you can make pretty late in the process. The important thing is to come up with the right structure for your meta-data - and that brings us back to DSLs.
Michael Smith: So, what would be your final comments to someone who is still not sure about whether they'd like to attend?
Peter Bell: Code generation and Domain Specific Language are all about making programming quicker, easier and more enjoyable. You have probably used some of these techniques already, but in this session I'll help you to round out your toolkit so you'll be ready to generate more of your web applications - more quickly and easily.
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Practical Code Generation: Learn how to generate your applications in a fraction of the time by using the latest techniques proven to reduce application development times - from Software Product Lines to Domain Specific Languages.
Speaker Bio: Peter Bell is a passionate advocate of Application generation and meta-programming in ColdFusion and writes the popular Application Generation blog (http://www.pbell.com). He has lectured both locally and nationally on using ColdFusion for application generation and to create software product lines and runs a company (http://www.systemsforge.com) that generates custom applications quickly and cost effectively.
CFUNITED Europe is Thursday 03/12/2008 - Friday 03/13/2008 in Hammersmith, West London UK. It costs $749 until 10/31/07 then $849. For more information on CFUNITED Europe see http://europe.cfunited.com/
