cookies and code

This session was really cool, especially in spite of the fact that I have never used Transfer and didn’t go to the intro course. I’ve got an idea about how ORM’s work, so with that in mind, here’s my summary.

Mark Mandel went over the following features in Transfer:

• Caching – Ability to define the scope in which Transfer will cache, in what quantities, and for how long. Cloning is also available so you don’t have to work with the copy of a domain object in the cache. Once you’re done with the clone, you can force its state onto the cached object that generated it and perform operations. Also provided a means to recycle cached objects rather than delete them for later re-creation.
• Observable Events – Aspects associated with events in Transfer : beforeCreate, afterCreate, beforeUpdate, afterUpdate, beforeDelete, afterDelete, afterNew (no ColdSpring integration for AOP yet)
• Decorators – Ability wrap a domain object retrieved from Transfer with additional functionality (i.e. – make a value object, heavier weight)
• Transfer Query Language (TQL) – Mark pretty much said he was trying to copy HQL from Hibernate and from what I could tell, it looked good

In all honesty, the coolest part about this talk was the lack of intimidation you usually see in CF programmers when faced with sessions like this one. They understood the building blocks used in the examples (i.e. – ColdSpring, Transfer, etc). Mark even went into an explanation of how garbage collection works in the JVM as it relates to “soft” references of objects. It was really interesting and there weren’t any jackasses raising their hands saying, “Well I wrote my own garbage collector”! I feel a proud of the ColdFusion community; it really seems like people are starting to get a clue. Well, at least this group of developers.

• Does object persistence complicate architectures with existing data models?
• cf.objective() 2007 : Real World SOA: Building Services with ColdSpring and Transfer
• Where is the OCFUG (ock-fug)?
• The CMS Saga Continues
• Thanks to the Acadiana Adobe User Group