Paul Thornton

Now that Flex certification is available, for those interested in becoming certified here is a link to Adobe Flex 2 DevelopmentEl jugador de texas jugar poker online no debe introducir la apuesta con dos cartas cualquiera. Exam - Preparation Guide.  It includes exam content and sample questions.

“The Adobe Flex 2 Developer Exam is based upon the most critical job activities that a Flex developer performs. The skills and knowledge certified by this examination represent a professional level of expertise for a certified individual.”, Adobe.com 03/2008

•  Adobe Flex 2 Development Exam - Preparation Guide

It appears Google is adopting Flex as a technology of choice. The new SearchMash website, which is operated by Google, is written entirely in Flex.

This is an interesting move as historically Google has primarily focused on Java, C++ and Python. Great news for us advocates of Adobe’s RIA technology and in need real-world substance to our business cases when trying to gain support.

References:

Yakov Fain article on sys-con
Google’s SearchMash

I’ve been reviewing ColdFusion log files recently and create custom ones, using cflog. This is all great, but it get quite tedious when you have to reload the relevant log file each time to check for changes.

I then discovered the CF Log Viewer, which I first though was part of CFEclipse, but in actual fact is part of the ColdFusion 8 Eclipse Extensions.

Among other things, including support for multiple log file folders and support for the ColdFusion log file format, by far the most useful aspect is the “live connection it keeps with the opened log file” allowing you to monitor any messages as they happen - without having to reload (this is quite similar to the Unix Tail command).

As part of Adobe’s AS3 tour, Colin Moock is leading a full day training session.  London dates to be confirmed.

Attendees will leave the day with:

• exposure to all major concepts of object programming
• an understanding of classes and objects
• an understanding of how to structure and write an ActionScript 3.0 Program
• exposure to the Flex Builder 2 development environment
• a pamphlet reviewing the days major concepts
• a discount coupon for Essential ActionScript 3.0 (2007, O’Reilly)

http://www.adobeas3tour.com/

I dropped using isDefined() many moons ago as well, I thought it was common knowledge that isDefined() was inefficient and structKeyExists() was the way to go.

Well, reading around and coming across Marcos Placona’s blog where he has conducted a test, it turns out, to my amazement, structKeyExists() is slower then isDefined()!

The key here is that isDefined() is super-fast when the scope exists, i.e. isDefined(”session.userID”), but mega-slow if a non-existent scope is used, e.g. isDefined(”unknownStruct.userID”).

structKeyExists() is consistent regardless of what you provide.

So, as long as you are asking for a SCOPED variable that is extant, isDefined will be faster on average!

structKeyExists(), may be comparatively slower, but forces scoping, which is good practice.

Eclipse is one of the most popular developer editors available. It is used for Java, SQL, regular expressions, HTML, and much more. Even Adobe Flex Builder 2 is built on top of Eclipse.

At Adobe MAX 2007, Mark Drew examined CFEclipse, a ColdFusion plug-in created by the community and supported by Adobe.

Here is a recording of the session:

Now that the ColdFusion development community is maturing, so has the way in which web application are being developed. Two popular frameworks, Mach-II and Fusebox, are now replacing the spaghetti code that was once prevalent - whereby the business logic and presentation code was mixed together.

Frameworks, in general, promote sound and proven software engineering principles and practices, and which provide a stable structure to build real-world web applications.

Mach-II and Fusebox seem to be the most popular at present and here is a comparison of each framework:

Comparison chart

Table Source: TechRepublic

This table lists tags, attributes, and attribute values that have been added to ColdFusion 8:

Never use CFFile to write files!  Although, like many things in CF, it’s easy to implement, it is really server intensive.

Use Java instead!  Classes: FileOutputStream, OutputStreamWriter, and BufferedWriter.  Much faster and consumes far less server memory.

Real world example: 15mins down to 20seconds!

Using Java Instead of cffile to Write to Disk

Before I’ve even got my head around ColdFusion 8, there is already talks of ColdFusion 9 codename ‘Centaur’.  Appareantly, Kevin Lynch, Adobe’s Chief Software Architect, gave the teaser during his keynote speech during MAX North America 2007.   No doubt there will be further AJAX, Flex and AIR support, but what else?

João’s Wish list

ColdFusion 9 and AIR