Adobe sponsored a whitepaper from IDC called “Turning Up the Heat with ColdFusion,” and it’s mostly what you would expect from a company-sponsored analysis of its own software. There’s heaps of praise thrown upon ColdFusion for its ease of use while offering all the tools professionals need to build and scale enterprise grade Web sites.

That’s all fine and dandy, but the whitepaper gets really interesting once it gets into future developments. It provides some early details on where Adobe is heading with future versions of ColdFusion. For ColdFusion Server, Adobe has two new releases on the horizon that will add a number of features and enhancements:

Adobe has discussed the broad outline of the next two releases of ColdFusion server — Splendor and Dazzle. In between releases, the team has continued to work on other aspects. For example, support for the popular Amazon cloud in the form of a Splendor AMI was released in early 2013, providing users with a quick and simplified approach to deploying ColdFusion applications in the Amazon cloud. The key thematic areas of improvements for Splendor include bringing ColdFusion into the era of mobile
application development and support for social applications. Special emphasis is planned for additional security features, building on the significant security work done for release 10 and taking its priorities from the OWASP Top Ten Project. Improved manageability and deployment as well as revamped and new PDF integration functionality are also planned.

For the Dazzle release, expansion of the mobile platform support capabilities and support for multiscreen content are planned. Dazzle is also expected to carry the water for Adobe’s aggressive push into the digital marketing space by introducing deeper Web, mobile, and social analytics functionality. A customizable enterprise video portal is also planned, and capabilities that will enable ColdFusion to run in cloud environments in major cloud platforms are expected in the Dazzle release. Finally, the improvements are expected to be accompanied by a strong focus on security, extending the work done with Splendor and prioritizing mobile security according to the OWASP Mobile Security Project.

As for ColdFusion Builder, Adobe plans to also release two new versions to coincide with the Server releases:

Adobe has also identified key work areas for two future releases of ColdFusion Builder. The Thunder release is expected to play a key role in the end-to-end development workflow for mobile application development as well as provide a professional JavaScript authoring experience. Focus on new developers will be delivered with new workflows around a “getting started” scenario. The following release, code-named Blizzard, is expected to coincide with the Dazzle server release and to feature one-click multiscreen support, deployment support in line with Dev/Ops integration trends, and improved test and debug workflows.

The rest of the whitepaper catalogs the various challenges facing ColdFusion, and how Adobe can turn those challenges into opportunities. It also contains a variety of case studies from various software development houses. You can read up on all of that here.

Adobe’s Rakshith Naresh shared the following program description:

The ColdFusion 10 – New Platform Support Prerelease program is intended to get feedback from the pre-release participants on the new platforms that we are supporting for ColdFusion 10. The scope of this prerelease is to ensure that ColdFusion 10 is functional on the new platforms – Windows Server 2012, Windows 8 and OS X 10.8 just as on the existing platforms that ColdFusion 10 is currently supported on.

“If you are interested in participating in this pre-release, send an email to rakshith@adobe.com indicating that platform (Windows Server 2012/Windows 8/OS X 10.8) that you will be able to give us feedback on. The pre-release will open to a limited number and for a very short duration. So do send in your interest soon. We are also looking to get a balanced feedback across all the three platforms and that is the reason indicating the platform that you will be able to test on becomes important.”

One person commented, “That’s a great way to help out folks on those O/S.”

Another added, “With CF10 was possible to install the latest JRE (NOT the JDK) 6 over the installed version used by CF. (after stopping the CF and Jakarta services).Yes happily running JRE 6 Update 39. Does this apply with the Jave 7 JRE? Don’t want to break a happy server (having CFSHEDULER ISSUES however).”

It’s unclear whether the “very short duration” to be accepted into the pre-release is already over.

Today, a Security Bulletin (APSB12-21) has been posted in regards to a security hotfix for Adobe ColdFusion 10 and earlier versions for Windows, Macintosh and UNIX. Adobe recommends users update their product installation using the instructions provided in the security bulletin.

That was on September 11th.

As Michael Lee at ZDNet noted at the time, “The fix is not available in a patch, meaning that administrators will need to follow Adobe’s set of instructions for their specific version of ColdFusion and mitigate against the vulnerability manually.”

“The hotfix has been rated as important and has a priority rating of 2, so administrators need not apply the fix immediately but should do so within 30 days.”

Well, it’s already October, so if you haven’t addressed this by now, you may want to start thinking about it.

This applies to versions 10, 9.0.2, 9.0.1, 9.0, 8.0.1, and 8.0.

Adobe announced today that ColdFusion 10 is available to Web developers. If you’re familiar with ColdFusion, then you should know that it’s Adobe’s server side technology for developers to create Web applications using the Java EE platform. The big addition this time is increased HTML5 support.

Adobe boasts that the newest version of ColdFusion 10 accelerates the Web development process by reducing “complex business logic into a few lines of code.” It does through the power afforded by HTML5 including Web-sockets, video players, geo-tagging and interactive charting.

“In the world of rich internet applications, the latest HTML5 standards are pushing the limits of what developers can achieve on the Web,” said Tridib Roy Chowdhury, senior director of Products & GM-Web and eLearning, Adobe. “With the increase of content consumption on mobile devices and tablets, it has become critical for companies to provide a rich and consistent brand experience on mobile. Adobe is at the forefront of the HTML5 revolution, and ColdFusion 10 delivers the first server side solutions to help develop interactive HTML5 applications to deliver richer user experiences across multiple screens from desktops to tablets and smartphones. In ColdFusion 10, we’ve focused on helping enterprise Web developers improve their productivity in development, deployment and maintenance and helped them easily leverage the latest technologies of the day.”

As mentioned, the biggest new feature is HTML5 integration. While providing all of the above technologies powered by HTML5, it also gives developers a choice in terms of publishing. They can either push out data to multiple clients or go for a point-to-point data push.

ColdFusion 10 also promises to be the fastest version of the software yet. It has replaced Adobe’s JRun software with the open-source Tomcat to increase the performance of ColdFusion. The move to Tomcat brings with it a large development community that will keep it up to speed with the latest Web standards.

The newest version of ColdFusion also comes with access to a large repository of client-side HTML5 charts. Developers can easily implement them into their apps using the built-in chart functionality. These charts can also run in Flash so more reason to integrate CS6 with ColdFusion 10.

Following the example of Flash’s latest update method, the ColdFusion Administrator will now notify developers when updates are available. Developers can also opt-in for the one-click Hotfix installer to save time.

As always, new versions of Adobe products come with a wide range of security enhancements. ColdFusion 10 is no different as it utilizes the latest security standards to protect applications from cross-site scripting and cross-site request forgery.

ColdFusion 10 is available in three editions with one of them being free. The Enterprise edition of the software will set you back $8,499 while the standard edition is a bit more manageable at $1,499. The developer edition which can only be used for development purposes is free to download and use. As with other Adobe products, customers who have previous editions of ColdFusion will be able to upgrade at a much lower cost.

If you want a more visual guide to the new features in ColdFusion 10, check out Adobe’s video guide.

Stephen O’Grady over at RedMonk compiled a ranking of programming language popularity based on an interesting set of metrics: StackOverflow questions and GitHub projects. Comparing Stephen’s findings from September 2011 and February 2012 show a significant improvement in ColdFusion’s position.

There are two ways to interpret these scatter plots. On one side, we can assume that ColdFusion’s move up in rankings in both StackOverflow and GitHub indicates an increase in usage. However, we also see that the February 2012 graph includes additional languages on the plot. Whereas the original September plot included 53 languages, the more recent February graph includes somewhere around 70 languages. Although numerically higher in rank, ColdFusion appears in a relative position with regards to the other programming languages. It seems that ColdFusion may have simply benefited from the inclusion of less popular programming languages.

What do you think? Is ColdFusion on the rise, or one foot in the grave? Let us know in the comments.

• view:timeline – displays a graph indicating the number of results by date so you can track trends, e.g., coldfusion view:timeline
• view:map – displays a map highlighting top search results, e.g., sean corfield view:map
• view:info – displays additional ways to highlight parts of the results based on dates, measurements, locations and images, e.g., sean corfield view:info (then select "Locations")

In addition, from the experimental page you can choose keyboard shortcuts (to navigate your search results) or left-hand / right-hand search menus (they’re slightly different).

You can choose to "join" one of the experiments which makes it your default Google results format (assuming you’re logged in). I picked the left-hand context menus which seem to be richer.

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After talking with Adobe’s Brian Wick and Marc Eamon about LiveCycle ES, I’ve found it difficult to think of the product as just automation for processes, which is its essential function. I worked with EDI for a company over a decade ago, when the federal government was threatening its vendors to go paperless and switch to EDI or lose its business.

As anyone who has done business with the government knows, paper hasn’t gone anywhere in the past ten years. Had they been doing then what Adobe is doing now with LiveCycle ES, I think there would be a lot less paper in the federal RFP/RFQ processes now.

Adobe’s first task with LiveCycle ES involved taking what had been a multi-product line requiring multiple servers, and turning it into a single disc installation. From there, an enterprise can license the services it needs, provided on LiveCycle’s service-oriented architecture.

Then they had to make it more useful for the people who would interface with it the most: the users. Doing this required updates to the way developers build applications. Adobe built in features like its Form Guides for assembling interactive documents, and their LiveCycle Workbench is an Eclipse-based IDE, which customers demanded.

Once constructed, an application can make its output available electronically with persistent rights management in place. This security feature allows the output creator to restrict access to a document like a completed insurance form to the login of a valid policyholder.

That persistence extends beyond just login requirements. Developers can enable users to create time-expiring documents. The EDI situation I mentioned earlier could be one place to use it for RFPs; once the due date passes, the RFP expires and cannot be opened.

Policy creation is available to designate content for certain users and groups. Information on members can be pulled from a LDAP server, making it easier for administrators to control who can access what applications.

The essential idea behind LiveCycle ES should make enterprises using it much more likely to draw help-seekers to the online process, rather than picking up a phone to call for assistance. Paper-heavy sectors like finance and government can make themselves more efficient by giving people the ability to get what they want, when they need it.

Eamon called the barrier to this self-service concept "the engagement gap." While paper is still required, people cannot help themselves effectively. Closing the gap means providing engagement services to one’s customers.

Adobe already has the front end of their engagement in front of potential application-using clients. Flash and the Adobe Reader are on millions of desktops, and they cross platforms. That’s certain to be part of Adobe’s enterprise pitch: customers already have the tools they need to use the apps you create.

Developers should be intrigued by the output possibilities for their LiveCycle ES applications. HTML exists as one option, of course, but they can also create output in Accessible HTML for speech-reading browsers, or Compact HTML for mobile devices.

Those options open what government or financial industry developers can promise their managers in terms of the audience an application can reach. Accessible HTML should be especially pertinent to government designers, whose agencies have to be available to all citizens, not just those with good vision.

A lot exists for LiveCycle ES developers and their company or government managers to consider. I don’t think the paperless society has arrived, but any broadening of paperless efforts across government and financial creators has to be beneficial.

Adobe senior product manager for ColdFusion, Tim Buntel, discussed with WebProNews some of the changes and growth associated with the newest version of the product. He’s been with the product for seven years, and he opened up by acknowledging the difference in the web development environment today.

Since there are more choices today for web application development than there were at the end of the last century, Buntel indicated that ColdFusion’s approach would be to interoperate with other technologies.

The main example of this is demonstrated through ColdFusion’s ability to tap some Microsoft technologies. Buntel said both .NET and Exchange Server are natively supported, thanks to integration performed on the ColdFusion platform.

ColdFusion shares data with more technologies now, according to Buntel. RDBMS, Java, HTML, Perl, Ruby, and PHP all merited mentions here.

Developers using Eclipse should find plenty of excuses to play with ColdFusion 8. An Eclipse plug-in delivers debugging capabilities for ColdFusion applications. Programmers can set breakpoints, watch variables, and step through code that doesn’t run in a browser to find bugs.

Those applications can utilize Ajax or Adobe Flex on the client-side to access logic on the server. Developers will be able to combine and merge PDF documents and forms as desired, to turn static documents into interactive ones.

Buntel noted how Adobe has received a number of requests for virtualization support for ColdFusion over the past couple of years. Once a trickle, those requests became more numerous as security concerns about web applications increased.

Adobe also improved thread performance, always a concern when creating an application. Thanks to new server monitoring capabilities, developers will be able to see where bottlenecks are happening with slow pages, queries, and threads.

Memory and database usage can be tracked to find potential problems. ColdFusion 8 can provide alerts and snapshots with its server monitoring to aid the diagnosis of issues too. Adobe also plans to expose an API for monitoring, so administrators can pull that information into whatever tool they prefer.

Along with the ColdFusion 8 release, developers should start hearing more about Adobe’s LiveCycle Data Services 2.5 as well. Those Data Services allow for data synchronization and “pull.”

I asked how the two technologies, Cold Fusion and Data Services, might reach the mobile market. Buntel said that ColdFusion can be used to build mobile-specific applications, while Data Services may get into mobile applications by being part of a Flash app, for example.

Search optimization pros should appreciate the continued inclusion of the Verity search product in Cold Fusion. It’s embedded within the new release, and can be used to enhance the SEO tweaks developers perform.

While the public beta of Cold Fusion 8 is available today, the commercial release will probably hit in the third quarter of this year.

Well, I am very happy to say that Yahoo has just updated their Search SDK, and guess what language makes a brand new appearance??.

Yep – that’s right. COLDFUSION! Sorry to "yell" but I’m just that happy about it. The SDK includes both a simple search example and my ColdFusion Yahoo package.

And there is more coming soon…

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Here is a quick tip for another method to use. It’s ugly – but effective.

Modify your onError to dump the errors and log to a file like so:

<cffunction name="onError" returnType="void" output="false">
   <cfargument name="exception" required="true">
   <cfargument name="eventname" type="string" required="true">
   <cfset var temp = "">

   <cflog file="my app" text="#arguments.exception.message#, #arguments.exception.detail#">
   <cfsavecontent variable="temp">
   <cfdump var="#arguments#">
   </cfsavecontent>
   <cffile action="write" file="c:kuler.html" output="#temp#">
   <cfdump var="#arguments#"><cfabort>
</cffunction>

I wrapped a dump of the arguments (which contain my exception) and simply save it to the C drive as an HTML file. I then have this file open in my browser.

As I debug, I can simply reload the tab in Firefox to see what the latest error was.

I find this especially useful when the exception message is a bit too vague.

With the dump I get the full trace of files where the error occurred.

Let me be absolutely clear: Do not use this code in production. It isn’t nice. It doesn’t play well with others. It runs with scissors.

You get the idea. But I thought I’d share.

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Raymond Camden, ray@camdenfamily.com
http://ray.camdenfamily.com

Raymond Camden is Vice President of Technology for roundpeg, Inc. A long
time ColdFusion user, Raymond has worked on numerous ColdFusion books
and is the creator of many of the most popular ColdFusion community web
sites. He is an Adobe Community Expert, user group manager, and the
proud father of three little bundles of joy.