what do I know

So we heard the keynote from Adobe ColdFusion’s product manager this morning about ColdFusion 8, aka Scorpio, aka cool F’ing S. I gotta say, it’s probably the buzz around the conference, but I think they’re finally starting to get it right. Below I’ve listed what they revealed about the product:

• <cfobject> can now be used to instantiate .NET classes given the DLL they reside in
• Integration of email and calendar events with Microsoft Exchange
• OS Support - Mac/Intel, Windows Vista, Windows Longhorn Server
• Application server support - JBoss now available
• Support for virtual environments - Virtual PC and VMWare
• Enterprise Server Monitoring - Snapshots of server state, robust alert system, thread management, memory usage monitoring, multiple server connections for monitoring. Hints were made at a potential Apollo app being used.
• Role-based permission scheme now used for built in authentication
• Intefaces added via <cfinterface>
• CFC serialization at least via JSON
• JavaScript operator support (e.g. - ++, –, <=, >=, etc) in <cfscript>
• Ability to pass attributes as a single collection to any tag
• Illuded to possible unified support in <cfscript> and tag-based markup
• SFTP support
• Integration of FIPS-140 strong crypto library based on RSA implementation
• Per application settings (e.g. - cfmappings)
• Native AJAX support via <cfform> (FREAKIN’ AMAZING, check out my next blogs!!!!)
• AJAX Debugger added which distills output from <cfform> output
• Something about data services, but it was just a foot note on a slide
• Java 6 support which was mentioned as an aside but confirmed
• FUll PDF integration - extract data, populate a PDF form, manipulation, thumbnail images from PDF snapshots
• Adobe Connect integration - ability to add CFML code to a Connect presentation
• Amazing image library and the addition of an image datatype - Ability to choose multiple algorithms for processing, fast as S.
• Addition of the <cffeed> tag for RSS and Atom feeds
• CFReporting updated to use Livecycle Reporting, whoever the F will use that.

The big announcement for the conference was <cfthread> which wasn’t that exciting considering what we’re doing with Java. Adobe went public with it though, so hurray…

Let me reiterate, Scorpio looks amazing. With the functionality they’ve introduced, CF has really started to catch up to other web-based scripting languages. The data binding functionality alone really get me siked up. Adobe Marketing (1), Brian (0).

• cf.objective() 2007 : Top Secret Scorpio!
• cf.objective() 2007 : AJAX Integration With Scorpio! - Take that JSF!
• Uses for non-visual Flex components
• Thanks to the Acadiana Adobe User Group
• October IECFUG Presentation Complete