charlie arehart, cto [email protected] bluedragon a new platform for fusebox 4
TRANSCRIPT
Charlie Arehart, [email protected]
BlueDragonBlueDragon
A New Platform for Fusebox 4A New Platform for Fusebox 4
April 18, 2023 New Atlanta Communications, LLC
About Your Speaker
6 yrs CF, 20 yrs enterprise IT experience Past accomplishments of note
Team Macromedia Member Allaire/Macromedia Certified Instructor Allaire/Macromedia Certified Adv CF Developer (4, 5, MX) Macromedia Customer Advisory Board Member Contributor to Macromedia Devnet Tech editor, ColdFusion Dev Journal magazine
Co-authored recent ColdFusion MX Bible With Hal Helms and Adam Churvis
Frequent writer for CFDJ (3rd most behind Hal and Ben Forta)
Frequent speaker to user groups, conferences worldwide Named CTO of New Atlanta in April 2003 Goal, as always in my contributions:
spread the word about valuable features in tools we can use every day
April 18, 2023 New Atlanta Communications, LLC
Any Challenges For You?
Are you an ISV selling your Fusebox app to multiple clients? Problem: perhaps high cost of CF 5/MX compared to your product What if you could serve your CFML app for less than your app’s cost?
Or even on a royalty basis?
Are you a contractor/system integrator building a FB app for a client?
Problem: clients are reluctant to pay for CFMX (“asp/jsp/php are free”) What if you could offer them a way to run the app for free
Are you a hosting provider supporting multiple clients/apps on each CF server?
Problem: clients can conflict with each other (poor coding, varying needs) What if you could make apps independent of each other on the one
server? Each with own admin, settings; segregated from each other’s impact What if the CFML runtime overhead for that was just 2MB per server?
Do any of these apply to you even if not an ISV, SI, or hosting?
April 18, 2023 New Atlanta Communications, LLC
How Can It Be?
Am I “peddling crack” (a favorite analogy of Hal’s)?
Is there a black market for CF licenses?
Have I cornered a market on EBay?
Many of you know I’m talking about BlueDragon
The alternative CFML runtime environment from New Atlanta Communications
What is it? Why should you care?
Will get to that, and more benefits
April 18, 2023 New Atlanta Communications, LLC
So Why Am I Here?
So why am I here? Besides introducing you to BlueDragon
I know that people don’t like sales pitches But is this really any different from my typical articles or
talks? Sharing something with you that you may not have seen
That you can use in your everyday CFML coding practices
Will show you what BlueDragon is about momentarily
Want to first talk to those already familiar with it
April 18, 2023 New Atlanta Communications, LLC
BlueDragon and Fusebox
First, want to say that Fuseboxers are already using BlueDragon
You can run fusebox apps on BlueDragon Indeed, we have a Fortune 50 customer about to release a
FB app We have vendors partnering to deploy commercial FB apps
Second, want to announce something very relevant to FuseBox
Indeed, specific to our support of Fusebox 4 You’re hearing it here first
Not even announced on our discussion list
April 18, 2023 New Atlanta Communications, LLC
The Key to Fusebox 4
Question: What’s been BlueDragon’s biggest knock?
Answer: Full compatibility with CF
Lack of CFMX features, like XML, web services, CFCs
What is the key CFMX feature used in Fusebox 4?
Answer: XML tags and functions
And our announcement…
April 18, 2023 New Atlanta Communications, LLC
BlueDragon 3.1 to Support XML
Our next release, 3.1, will support XML Due out in October
Will support CFXML, XmlParse, XMLSearch, etc. Let’s see it in action…
3.1 will have still other MX features Note: we already have some now in 3
java integration, j2ee sessions, UrlSessionFormat, forward, and more
See my blog: http://bluedragon.blog-city.com/read/136203.htm Will add more MX features in 3.1 Then the rest in 4 (goal: full MX 6.1 compatibility)
Will include CFCs, including 6.1 enhancements Perhaps some other enhancements, some requested by FB
community
April 18, 2023 New Atlanta Communications, LLC
3.1 Preview Available Now
We have released a “preview” of 3.1 Supports many improvements over 3 Has been made available to current customers Adds debugging output, whitespace suppression options,
and more Not yet supporting XML (will come out with beta in
October) But you saw it is working in our internal builds
Also, be aware of our CFDEBUGGER tag Traces lines of code executing CFML tags Let’s see it… Documented in my blog
http://bluedragon.blog-city.com/read/188000.htm
April 18, 2023 New Atlanta Communications, LLC
So What Is BlueDragon?
By now should be clear what BlueDragon really is
At simplest: just an alternative way to run your CFML apps Built atop Java server platform, just as is CFMX
Can integrate with Java (CFOBJECT, CFX Java custom tags, JSPs)
Substantially compatible with CF 4, 5 Lacks only a handful of tags and functions (documented at
our site) Many of these, and remaining MX tags, being addressed
Can even do Flash integration Did talk 2 weeks ago at FlashKit conference on the many
ways to integrate Flash with any web app server OpenAMF project even brings remoting to Java servers
April 18, 2023 New Atlanta Communications, LLC
Available in Three Editions
Mentioned free edition: BlueDragon Server Really is free, for deployment, not just testing
ALL editions are available free for testing and development Free Server edition is not at all crippled like CF Express 4.5
was See my blog entry for more:
http://bluedragon.blog-city.com/read/124577.htm
Hosting or redistribution require separate OEM license Again, for such partnerships, we will work to grow your business
See August 8 message “Growing a Business with BlueDragon” on our BlueDragon Interest mailing list (archive at “self-help” section of our site)
Next step up: BlueDragon Server JX ($549) Like Server, a standalone server Adds features not in free Server edition
Including CFEXECUTE, CFSCHEDULE, and the few others held back Java CFX’s, JSP/servlets integration, and more
Let’s discuss JSP integration more…
April 18, 2023 New Atlanta Communications, LLC
Sidebar: JSP Integration
Any CFML developer may be interested in integration with JSPs and Servlets
BlueDragon Server JX supports this Allows you to run JSP pages alongside your CFML Can share session, application, and request vars between
CFML and JSP/servlets Can transfer control from one to the other, include one
from other
In CFMX 6/6.1, is only possible with Enterprise BlueDragon Server JX offers it at $549
Can also do this, and lots more, in J2EE edition…
April 18, 2023 New Atlanta Communications, LLC
BlueDragon/J2EE Edition
Have not yet mentioned perhaps most important edition: BlueDragon/J2EE
Other editions are standalone servers Running atop our ServletExec java server, like MX runs atop Jrun
What if you already have another J2EE server Such as WebLogic, Websphere, Sun One, Jrun, TomCat, JBoss, etc.
May not want to install a CF (or BlueDragon) Server
May not want its other embedded Java server Question: is anyone coding on a J2EE server?
What is the standard means to deploy your code? Answer: a J2EE Web Application (or WAR or EAR
file) Our J2EE Edition IS a Web App
Can add in your CFML code and deploy it on any J2EE server Let’s see it…
April 18, 2023 New Atlanta Communications, LLC
Benefits of BlueDragon/J2EE
Can run your CFML wherever a J2EE server is supported
Mac, Linux, Unix, Mainframe, Windows, etc. Also exposes your CFML app to all the features
and benefits of that J2EE server Multiple independent instances on a single server Clustering on multiple servers EJBs, JMS, etc Weblogic: Portals, Page Flows, etc. The aforementioned integration of JSPs, servlets
As mentioned, overhead is just 2MB per web app If being told to move to J2EE, don’t have to get
rid of CFML Can move to J2EE server and run CFML as is Can choose to integrate with or eventually migrate to
JSP/servlets
April 18, 2023 New Atlanta Communications, LLC
Finally…
What if you’re a .NET shop? .NET framework is very similar to Java framework and JVM CFMX and BlueDragon run natively atop Java
Question: would it be interesting to run atop .NET?
Leverage .NET framework libraries, components? Native COM integration?
Answer: BlueDragon/.NET coming out soon In Alpha testing
April 18, 2023 New Atlanta Communications, LLC
Getting Started
Can download any of our versions www.newatlanta.com/bluedragon/
Can run it alongside CF 4, 5 or MX Doesn’t conflict with them at all, other than sharing web
server Includes its own web server (like CFMX)
Or can integrate with IIS, Apache, Iplanet, NES, and more Bonus: My September 2003 CFDJ article on running CF and MX
alongside each other, with both accessible via a single IIS (accessing same CFML)
Join our free BlueDragon Interest discussion list Email list, staffed by our engineers and customers Friendly, very supportive and responsive: low volume Sign up at web site, in “self help” area
Feel free to email me at [email protected]