CFUnited Podcast: Simon Horwith: Success From The Trenches - Building Better Applications

Hosted by Christian Ready

What is it that makes some applications successful while others fail? What causes server performance and stability issues and how do you avoid and troubleshoot them? Can ColdFusion applications really scale? In this session, Simon will explain the traits that make some applications a success and others fail. He will explore the things that developers can do to ensure that their applications will scale. He will walk you through the thought process when architecting and/or code reviewing a ColdFusion application. Simon's 11+ years of experience developing, designing, reviewing, and troubleshooting ColdFusion applications has exposed him to some of the largest enterprise CF applications and most rigorous demands on the planet, and he has seen first-hand what does and doesn't work in the real world. In this session, Simon will divulge many of the tricks of the trade that will lead to success for attendees.

Podcast link: http://podcast.cfunited.com/index.php?post_id=298561

This entry was posted on January 21, 2008 at 3:32 PM and has received 3563 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

CFUnited Podcast: Sandy Clark - CSS: Back to Basics

Hosted by Christian Ready

With more people jumping on the CSS bandwagon and with Internet Explorer 7 finally released, its always good to review the basics. This session will cover semantic and structural HTML with an eye toward how to use the DOM to create simple HTML and put the complexity of selectors into the Cascading Style Sheet. It will cover all selectors that are now available in all browsers and how to use them effectively.

Podcast link: http://podcast.cfunited.com/index.php?post_id=290309

This entry was posted on January 8, 2008 at 1:12 PM and has received 3412 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

CFUnited Podcast: John Paul Ashenfelter - Testing CF Applications

Hosted by Christian Ready

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

* Grinder (and similar) load-testing tools

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.

Podcast link: http://podcast.cfunited.com/index.php?post_id=288428

This entry was posted on January 1, 2008 at 9:33 PM and has received 3262 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

This week we begin the first of our preview interviews with speakers at CFUnited Europe. Our first guest is Peter Bell.

Peter Bell is a passionate advocate of Application Generation and meta-programming in ColdFusion and is author of Application Generation, blog dedicated to best practices in application development and how to get our projects done quicker and easier. He has lectured both locally and nationally on using ColdFusion for application generation and to create software product lines and runs Systems Forge a company that generates custom applications quickly and cost effectively.

Peter discusses his upcoming talks at CFUnited Europe, Prectical Code Generation, RAD OO, and Using The Iterating Business Object.

Podcast link: http://podcast.cfunited.com/index.php?post_id=290207

CFUnited Europe will be held March 12-13 2008 at the Novotel London West, UK. Learn more at europe.cfunited.com. We want to hear from you!

If you have any feedback on the podcast, please feel free to drop me a line at [email protected] or [email protected].

This entry was posted on December 24, 2007 at 7:57 PM and has received 3402 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

CFUnited Podcast: Interview with Ben Forta

Hosted by Christian Ready

Description

At CFUnited 2007, I spoke with some of the speakers and attendees alike to talk about how they were enjoying the conference, what they found exciting in ColdFusion 8, and what they got out of CFUnited.

In this interview, I sit down with Ben Forta from Adobe Systems on Wednesday morning just after his keynote address. Ben talks about the then-upcoming release of ColdFusion 8, its impact on the community, and the future of ColdFusion.

Podcast link: http://podcast.cfunited.com/index.php?post_id=288268

This entry was posted on December 24, 2007 at 7:53 PM and has received 3327 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

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

This entry was posted on December 17, 2007 at 5:07 PM and has received 2797 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

CFUnited Podcast: Pete Freitag - Working with RSS in ColdFusion

Hosted by Christian Ready

Description

Adding RSS Feeds to your web sites and web applications is becoming more important every day. We will start from the ground up and explain what RSS is, and why it is important. Then you will learn how to build a RSS feed from scratch using your data. Along the way pick up several battle hardened tips and tricks for implementing standards compliant RSS feeds.

Podcast link: http://podcast.cfunited.com/index.php?post_id=285158

This entry was posted on December 10, 2007 at 3:38 PM and has received 2715 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

CFUnited Podcast: Tyson Vanek - Are You "Cashing In" on Caching?

Hosted by Christian Ready

Description

The implementation of a well-planned caching strategy can make the difference between a scalable enterprise-wide application and an application that crushes under the weight of 3 or 4 simultaneous users. A good caching strategy should incorporate many facets of caching as they apply to ColdFusion application design and development. Whether caching simple rendered content/output or caching complex data objects and variables, the key to gaining maximum benefit is properly identifying caching candidates and the proper caching solutions. This session will focus on methods used for identifying application bottlenecks, further identifying cache candidates, and designing caching solutions based on those findings.

Podcast link: http://podcast.cfunited.com/index.php?post_id=285169

This entry was posted on December 10, 2007 at 3:35 PM and has received 2475 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

CFUnited Podcast: Matthew Woodward - OO Architecture Back to Front

Hosted by Christian Ready

Description

Many of the materials currently available for learning object-oriented programming in ColdFusion do an excellent job of explaining the basic concepts, but leave a bit to be desired in terms of teaching developers how to truly architect an enterprise application in ColdFusion using object-oriented principles and processes. This session will bridge this knowledge gap by outlining an object-oriented architecture in ColdFusion from back (your database) to front (your presentation layer) and everything in-between. Come to this session to learn how to better architect your OO ColdFusion applications.

Podcast link: http://podcast.cfunited.com/index.php?post_id=281636

This entry was posted on December 4, 2007 at 4:15 PM and has received 2771 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

http://podcast.cfunited.com/index.php?post_id=281386

In this practical introduction to object orientation with ColdFusion components, well-known trainer Hal Helms will lead you through the architecting and coding of a project using CFCs. Along the way, we'll cover UML class diagramming, Model-View-Controller applications, and best practices for working with CFCs. If you're unsure of how to use CFCs in your applications -- or simply want to better integrate them into your applications -- this long session will help you.

Audio of presentations given at CFUnited, plus interviews with conference attendees, speakers, and more. Hosted by Christian Ready.

This entry was posted on November 26, 2007 at 7:29 PM and has received 2494 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.