The Future of ColdFusion Christian Cantrell ell

ColdFusion Evolution Before we talk about the future, let’s start with a look at the past.

Script-based User Defined Functions Query of queries Log analyzer CFFLUSH and CFLOG tags Generator integration ColdFusion 5: What Was New

XML support Tag-based UDFs Support for components SOAP-based web services Flash Remoting Try and catch in cfscript CFMX: What’s New Now

CFCHART and related tags CFCOMPONENT and relate tags CFIMPORT CFLOGIN, CFLOGINUSER, CFLOGOUT CFTRACE CFXML New CFMX Tags

createObject getPageContext getMetaData isUserInRole XML related functions New CFMX Functions

What does it mean to you? CFMX is Java Runs on other vender’s application servers: JRun Sun One WebLogic WebShpere Java Interoperability

So What’s Next? RedSky

Code name for the ColdFusion MX maintenance release Scheduled for release this summer Free upgrade for licensed users of ColdFusion MX What is RedSky?

Redesigned installer Enhanced upgrade/migration tools New web server configuration wizard What’s in RedSky? Streamlined installation and migration

Protocol tags (CFHTTP, CFFTP, CFLDAP) optimized, and more backward compatible New Unicode-capable MS Access driver What’s in RedSky? Increased backward CFML compatibility

Windows 2003/IIS6 RedHat 7.3, 8, 9; SuSE Linux 8 Solaris 9 What’s in RedSky? Updated platform support

Optimized CFML compiler Increased runtime performance and stability Updated JDBC/ODBC drivers New version of the Java Virtual Machine (Java 1.4.2) What’s in RedSky? Significant Performance Enhancements

Faster, more reliable COM integration Improved database error messages Expanded and updated documentation Enhancements to the scheduler. What’s in RedSky? Addresses Outstanding Product Issues

CFEXECUTE's and CFHTTP's timeout attributes now work CFLOGIN can be tied to sessions Fixed more than 400 customer-identified bugs (2,700 in the JVM) What’s in RedSky? Addresses More Outstanding Product Issues

Latest version of Flash Remoting Latest version of JRun 4 Updated CFCHART engine Axis 1.1 Web Services engine What’s in RedSky? Updates to Integrated Products

Transactions can span multiple functions Included files now have access to the arguments, localvariables, and this structs You can now pass arguments to components as attributes to cfinvoke and by passing a struct into the argumentcollection attribute simultaneously What’s in RedSky? ColdFusion Component Fixes and Updates

pageContext bug is fixed (cached CFCs can output and access shared scopes) Component names can be mixed case on Unix now Addition of the keyword "super" What’s in RedSky? More ColdFusion Component Fixes and Updates

Dramatically improved performance Support for backup mail servers Support for multi-part mail messages with the new CFMAILPART tag What’s in RedSky? Improvements to CFMAIL

CFPOP now supports retrieval of both text/plain and text/html message parts CFMAIL now takes a username and password so it can authenticate against an SMTP server What’s in RedSky? More Improvements to CFMAIL

a Production, anyone? See For Yourself What’s New in RedSky Apply to Join the RedSky Beta

Beyond RedSky What’s Next?

Additional deployment options Advanced data aggregation and reporting Tighter integration with other Macromedia products and technologies Support for any technology that keeps ColdFusion developers building high- performance, feature-rich applications in the least amount of time After RedSky Based on Customer Feedback...

The Future of ColdFusion Christian Cantrell ell