At tonights meeting I'll be going over some new features and bug fixes in CF 7.0.1 (Merrimack). We will also be going over some details of upcoming product updates announced at MAX. Color commentary by Sean Corfield.

7pm tonight
601 Townsend at the corner of 7th St
1st floor meeting room on the left (Kojak)
San Francisco

This meeting will also be broadcast via Breeze

What sort of topics would you like to see covered at future meetings?

We are excited to announce that this update includes support for Mac OS X as a new supported production platform for ColdFusion MX 7. For Mac OS X support, we included a new set of turnkey installers, similar to the Windows installers. As the OS X platform continues to gain traction in the industry, we are excited to see ColdFusion applications take advantage of the power on the OS X platform.

And although you can't see it easily (hey, it's a teaser!), the URL is just http://localhost/CFIDE/administrator/index.cfm - Apache configured via the installer which automatically placed the CFIDE directory into my Apache web root!

[standard disclaimer about beta software being subject to change etc etc]

Simon Horwith's session on architecture and design patterns was next. I like Simon's pragmatic approach to these topics and I agree with him on the broad strokes of his recommendations (even if I may disagree with one or two of the fine details). He's very passionate about software architecture and he likes to share it - by publishing code on his blog that he writes "for fun" to "practice, practice, practice" good design principles.

During the break, I reconfigured my machine ready for my session on frameworks, having one last run-through of the demos (running on a Merrimack build - oh, the excitement of life on the bleeding edge!) and the source code I'll be showing.

Ben went through some of the "non-marquee" features: Application.cfc and the application event model, the administration API, Verity enhancements and charting enhancements as well as a number of "smaller" but very important enhancements (XML processing, data validation, <cftimer/>, <cfntauthenticate/>, SOAP handling etc).

Next up was Amit Yathirajadasan from Georgetown University who showed an application his group have built that leverages many of the new CFMX 7 features: a sophisticated Flash form-based web hosting console that lets their users manage their data sources and generate high-level reports based on log file analysis, as well as an interactive customer support chat (using the event gateways). Very slick.

Then Ben talked about the upcoming CFMX 7 Updater, codenamed "Merrimack", that is in beta and will be released later this year. The updater will provide, in addition to bug fixes, improved platform support and will surface the "CFCProxy" machinery to allow Java code to call ColdFusion Components. The platforms mentioned include: Mac OS X native installer, RHAS 3.0 / 4.0, SuSE ES 8 / 9, WSND, OAS 10g).

Next up Tim talked about IDEs, emphasizing how Dreamweaver MX provides excellent support for visually-oriented designers and developers as well as wizard-based assistance for new ColdFusion developers but that there is another class of developers that prefer a more code-oriented environment. He noted that Macromedia announced its intention to join the Eclipse Foundation and produce an Eclipse-based product for Rich Internet Application development (codenamed "Zorn"). He also said that the ColdFusion product team had been talking with the CFEclipse project team about how Macromedia can best support this effort to help provide the best possible experiences for ColdFusion developers. He introduced Simeon Bateman, the CFEclipse project manager, who announced the new cfeclipse.org website (content in progress!) and said that the team would be bringing the "stable build" up to date with the "nightly builds" to incorporate all the new features that have been developed and tested recently. They are also aiming for a 2.0 release in the fall that will provide improved packaging and more of the features that are being requested by developers. Tim said that Macromedia plan on becoming contributors to the CFEclipse project and will help support the project's goals. Lots of applause for this announcement!

And...

Ben announced the codename for the next release of ColdFusion: Scorpio! He said it's very early days yet in terms of planning but two of the areas that the team are looking at, based on requests from customers, are:

• enhancing the presentation features and functionality
• monitoring and access to the server internals

Ben closed by showing the updated CFMX 7 tag / function poster which is available from the Macromedia booth here at the conference.