Charlie Arehart

The Event

On Saturday, June 26 in Bethesda, Maryland, several hundred CF developers gathered for the first annual DC ColdFusion User Conference. Created and organized by TeraTech, which sponsors the Maryland CFUG, and co-sponsored by several other notable CF firms including Fig Leaf Software, Infusion, CF Advisor, and of course Allaire, the conference brought together folks from as far away as Illinois, New York, and Georgia. With a day-long menu of presentations and demonstrations from some of the leading contributors in the CF community, it was a CF extravaganza, free to all participants with 10 speakers each offering their time and talent at no cost to the group.

Setting the Scene

 
Michael Smith, organizer of the conference, in front of the Masur Auditorium stage.

At 8:30 a.m., people were lined up waiting to file into the huge 550-person Masur Auditorium on the Bethesda campus of the National Institute of Health, just outside Washington DC. Just after 9:00, conference organizer Michael Smith of TeraTech called the meeting to order. By 10:00, the theater was filled to capacity, which was quite an impressive feat given that this was held on a beautiful Saturday morning!

Appetizers for the Newcomers

The first half of the day was devoted to beginner topics, starting with Dave Goldfield, also of TeraTech. His "Getting Started in CF in Five Minutes" expanded to fill the 30 minute timeslot allocated to each of the speakers. Dave led newcomers through the rudiments of setting up and using CF. He also fielded questions that demonstrated that the audience was enthusiastic and ready to learn more.

 
Ashley King of Allaire explains how to fortify your CF system against attacks.

The next speaker was Ashley King of Allaire, who spoke on several of the important security issues that should be of concern to CF users. He highlighted the Allaire Security Zone web site, and more specifically he listed several possible attacks that Allaire has identified. He covered issues and identified solutions for various web servers, database servers, and operating systems.

After Ashley, the group took a break, and the aisles and hallways were abuzz with folks chatting and discussing all things CF. People who had only emailed each other finally met face to face. Before starting up again, Michael Smith began to give away some of the $25,000 in doorprizes ranging from new and classic CF books, to t-shirts and products from various vendors, to lots and lots of Allaire software, including Studio, CF Server, and the "Skillbuilding with ColdFusion" CD.

The next presenter on the agenda was Don Bellenger, also of Teratech, who described several techniques for building more effective web forms. Besides covering the basics of checkboxes, radio buttons, and drop down lists, he went on to show some introductory Javascript to make form elements more interactive.

 
Steve Drucker wows the audience with his data entry wizard.

At 11:00, with the next speaker unable to attend, Steve Drucker of Fig Leaf Software stepped in at Michael Smith's request to present a quick overview of a data entry wizard he had built. This tool, available from Fig Leaf, is a significant improvement over a similar wizard included with CF. It incorporates advanced Javascript and integrates with stored procedures to create a very robust data entry interface.

After another break and still more doorprizes, Gabe Roffman of Netric Systems, and one of the founders of FuseBox, presented on the FuseBox approach to CF application development. He introduced the concept and described how the FuseBox development standard can be used to create highly reusable applications and components.

 
Bob Siegel, explaining the uses of pound signs in ColdFusion.

Bob Siegel, founder of the NYPC CFSIG (New York PC User Group ColdFusion Special Interest Group), brought some comic relief to the morning's introductory topics, with an elaboration on when you do and do not need to use pound signs in your CF code. The gist is that when you're between CF tags you need them (CFOUTPUT, CFQUERY, etc.) whereas when you're coding inside a single CF tag, you usually do not need them (CFSET, CFIF, etc.) One twist is that within a tag, if a variable is used in an attribute of a tag (CFLOOP, CFHTTP, etc.), it usually must be both quoted and surrounded by pounds. Bob's presentation style and manner made this topic more fun and more interesting than it may sound.

Just prior to breaking for lunch, Ashley King presented again on some of the latest news from Allaire. He described the new CF Express product now in beta, which offers a free limited functionality version of CF to help further spread the CF gospel. He also discussed the recent acquisition of Live Software and their Jrun product line as well as the status of the CFJ beta, two announcements that demonstrated Allaire's recognition of the growing importance of server-side Java processing.

A Main Course for Advanced Developers

After lunch, the group settled in for an afternoon of more intermediate and advanced topics. Charlie Arehart of Fig Leaf Software led off with a review and demonstration of the Studio interactive debugger. Many developers find they are unable to use the tool, and Charlie described several of the most common mistakes that trip new users of the debugger. He demonstrated how to set up and use it as well as some hidden features.

Michael Smith stepped to the front again, this time with his own presentation, going into more depth about security issues and common pitfalls and mistakes in setting up the OS, Web server, CF server, and database servers. He presented additional challenges and solutions to extend the topics with which Ashley had opened the morning.

Steve Drucker followed him to present his scheduled topic, on developing highly scalable CF applications. He demonstrated clever interfaces leveraging Macromedia Flash, Javascript, hidden frames, and WDDX. The latter is an open standard developed by Allaire for sharing complex data structures between disparate platforms. The crowd was wowed by a demonstration that enabled dozens of records to be edited on the browser with minimal server interaction.

 
Shlomy Gantz, of JenCom Digital Technologies, showed us that Israeli pizzazz with his emphasis on "cool."

Shlomy Gantz of JenCom Digital Technologies carried that theme further, with a discussion of using Javascript, custom tags, DHTML, and advanced interface design to make applications more alive. His light-hearted, enthusiastic manner brought chuckles as he implored folks that "it doesn't matter if your application sucks; if it looks cool people will buy it." He also described the cfmljs library, a set of javascript functions which emulate the functionality (and syntax) of CF functions, as well as some code to do browser detection and enable cross-browser DHTML.

Ashley King spoke again with yet another take on integrating WDDX, custom tags, and structures, to perform tiered application development on both client and server. Throughout the afternoon, Michael and others continued to hand out a seemingly endless stream of valuable and much sought-after doorprizes.

Howie Hamlin, of On-Line Data Solutions, Inc., followed to talk about a set of CF add-ons centered on "cfengine" and the enhanced Infusion engine which is the core of Infusion Mail Server. He described it in the context of competitive mail servers and its use in the site www.yourwebmail.com

Finally, with diehard CF fans hanging on to the very end, Steve Greene of Washington Square Associates gave a presentation on the integration of ColdFusion and open source software. He explained the pervasiveness of open-source software, how it's a significant development model and platform, and how CF developers can participate in the movement.

Dessert for the Hard Cores

While many had filed out of the theater as the afternoon wore on, full from their multi-course CF meal, several folks relished the camaraderie and carried on the bonding with drinks and snacks at a popular Bethesda watering hole, the Rock Bottom. The evening capped off what will be remembered as a well-attended and--for many--a valuable day of CF goodness.

Shlomy Gantz and Steve Nelson having fun at the display tables.

Hundreds thronged Masur Auditorium to hear the presenters talk CF.

(The presentations as well as more photos from the conference are available online at http://www.teratech.com/cfconf/.)

 

Charles Arehart is a full time programmer/teacher in his role as Director of Education for Fig Leaf Software, the Tips Editor for CF Advisor, and a contributor to the ColdFusion Developers Journal. You can email him with comments and/or tips at tips@cfadvisor.com.