ColdFusion 8: First Impressions and Cool Feature #1
Well, I was finally able to download the latest ColdFusion (see previous post). I installed under Linux (Kubuntu) and the installation was flawless.
I don't do a lot of HTML-based work anymore, so the highly-touted AJAX integration isn't on my radar in the near future. Same with the PDF improvements; I'm sure I'll be using them some day on a Flex project. Same deal with cfimage.
Being a fan of the old Flex Data Services product, I elected to install LiveCycle Data Services ES.
It took a bit of tinkering, but by far the coolest thing for me was the ability to have Flex and ColdFusion applications converse via the Data Services Messaging Gateway. And with LiveCycle Data Services installed as part of ColdFusion you can do something that was very tricky before: run both .cfm and .mxml files within the same context. Works great under the local webserver (port 8500); I hope it works as well using a web connector to Apache.
This opens up a whole new way to deploy applications that may have HTML/CF and Flex components. For example, I've built systems that have HTML entry pages, but then launch a Flex application running under FDS... and they were always a huge pain to deploy. Now we'll be able to install CF with LCDS-ES and simply deploy the files in whatever directory structure makes sense.
On the downside, I could not get the ColdFusion 8 Extensions for Eclipse installed under Linux.
UPDATE: When installing the extensions, you must de-select the checkbox "Ignore features not applicable to this environment"
stuff to work. Most people including myself are having
horror-story events, when moving from FDS2 to CF8 with
LiveCycle. First you get errors about "overriding subtopic",
then after spending half a day to find out that you need to
get the HotFix, and then install it, AND remove the fds.swc
from the project since you don't need it anymore....
THEN..... more errors come in your consumer and producer
fault handlers saying... "FlexClient is required and you need
to recompile your application", which is a joke since after
installing the so-called hot-fix, I created a "new" application
with the "new" SDK framework. Adobe really blew it on
this one. Flex 2 and CF7 and FDS2 were all working great,
this "upgrade" is a nightmare.
but not being a former fds developer, I didn't know where to start,
for just getting it configured and a simply "hello world' going.
I still don't. there's no info about it anywhere. so I've now lost interest.