Roman astrology turned into the Greek alphabet recently, with the announcement that the previously named "Scorpio" has been released as the ColdFusion 8 Beta. Initial reaction from the most sophisticated members of the CF community was positive.

Gartner analyst Ray Valdes said, "the ColdFusion upgrade puts to rest questions about Adobe's commitment to the technology after acquiring Macromedia. People may have wondered if Adobe appreciated ColdFusion, and I think they do. I think it's part of their enterprise software strategy."

CF8 is, of course, the first version of ColdFusion to be branded with the Adobe label. Its general release is set for later this year. CF8, a server-side Java app, also has .NET support (something that's already been written about online at SYS-CON Media). This aspect of it means simply that "customers don't need to select one technology to the exclusion of the other," according to Adobe senior product marketing manager Tim Buntel. JBoss app server support is now provided as well for those who work within this open source technology acquired last year by Linux vendor Red Hat. CF8 can also generate and manipulate PDF docs.

Well aware of the growing client-side AJAX phenomenon, Adobe has also "leveraged" its own client-side Flex rich Internet application (RIA) technology into CF8 "for integration of complex environments with intuitive interfaces," according to Adobe.

ColdFusion guru Ben Forta noted the presence of an Eclipse-based debugger (the first interactive debugger in seven years), and has also blogged about this version's other Eclipse extensions, including RDS panels, a Services Browser panel, a CF Log Viewer, RDS support, help, and wizards. ColdFusion Developer's Journal editor-in-chief Simon Horwith has also noted all of the "cool" new features, and has said that there is "a nice performance boost over previous versions as well."

Simon also held forth recently about CF8 in an exclusive interview with SYS-CON.TV, which can be found online at www.sys-con.tv. He expressed real astonishment at how much faster CF8 was. He said that although he expected most of the new features, and had also expected some performance increase, he was really bowled over by how much faster CF8 was than previous versions. He also traced a brief history of CF, noting that there was trepidation among developers when the Allaire-born technology was first acquired by the much-larger company Macromedia, and how that trepidation only increased over the past year when the even-larger Adobe acquired Macromedia.

Simon also said any such fears were allayed, and that he and other developers to whom he has spoken were very happy with how Adobe has been treating these developers' favorite technology.
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