The key to successful build management in distributed environments is a foundational commitment to consistency, repeatability and portability. This is just as true for small, homogeneous development environments using in-house, scripted build systems, as it is for large, complex environments, where a new class of non-scripted, distributed build-management tools are now available.

It seems that there's a lot of talk in the ColdFusion community about data access objects and data gateway design patterns. Everyone talks about how great they are and why everyone should be using these patterns.

Hot Banana Software, Inc. (www.hotbanana.com), a leader in Web content management for marketing, today announced that it has launched Version 5.5, which takes Web CMS to the next level by integrating Web site optimization and marketing automation features. The company also made significant changes to its SaaS and licensed pricing, squarely focusing on small-to-midsize marketers.

JSEclipse is a new plugin for the Eclipse environment that helps developers code JavaScript faster and with no errors. With JSEclipse, you can complete a variety of tasks, from editing small sections of code to working with the next big AJAX library or developing plug-ins for a product that embeds JavaScript snippets.

After nearly a year in development, CFEclipse 1.3 has finally been released! It can be downloaded using Eclipse's Update Software feature, following the instructions in the Download page.

While recently channel surfing, one of the 'Geico caveman' commercials came on the tube to remind me that Geico.com is so easy to use, even a caveman can do it. Plenty of ColdFusion developers are not what some people might call 'real programmers.' This is not necessarily a reflection on the platform; I've met plenty of Java and .NET developers who couldn't code their way out of a wet paper bag either. The very idea that someone is 'not a real developer' is ridiculous. You're either a developer or you're not. If you get the job done and you do it fast and well, I don't care what you wrote it in - even if you are a caveman.

With the onslaught of excitement around AJAX and RIAs, incredible user interfaces that engage users in a passionate and sticky experience is paramount. Creating these experiences requires much more than just great developers or creative designers. It takes both sides working together in a very disciplined and choreographed workflow that empowers designers to create world class interfaces and enables developers to implement those interfaces to create rich and engaging experiences quickly and efficiently. The designer to developer workflow is the focus of the major players in RIA and will be the defining area that decides whether your RIA development succeeds or fails. Come hear from the industry?s experts in RIA design and development about approaches, experiences and lessons learned.

Hot Banana Software, Inc., a provider of Web content management for marketing, has announced that its Software as a Service (SaaS) hosted offering enabled Versa Management Systems, Inc., to relaunch its Web site in less than six weeks.

According to Adobe's senior technical evangelist and AJAXWorld 2006 veteran Christophe Coenraets, we're seeing today the first steps of the industry's journey down a path towards 'high definition' user interfaces. 'Real time data, in-context collaboration, vector graphics-powered expressiveness, rich media integration, and offline capabilities will soon become standard attributes of any client application,' says Coenraets.

Cynergy Systems delivers Web, RIA and Legacy Migration solutions to over 1,400 customers worldwide. Maintaining offices across three continents and leveraging over a decade of experience, Cynergy Systems focuses on the delivery of rich, powerful business applications to customers across dozens of verticals including Healthcare, Manufacturing, Banking, and Governmental Organizations. Partners include Adobe, Microsoft, Sybase, Percussion Software and Jive Software.For more information, visit www.cynergysystems.com.

'With Flex 2.0 and Flash Player 8.5, we can finally deliver the kinds of rich applications our clients demand without compromise. That's Web 2.0!' With these words, a VP at Cynergy Systems today gave his ringing endorsement of the Adobe Flex 2.0 product line and Adobe Flash Player 8.5.

The Adobe Engagement Platform enables great experiences through the following key elements. Cross-platform, cross-browser, cross-device clients, a composite-driven programming model, and server frameworks and tools that accelerate the development of compelling applications. Adobe Flex, part of the Engagement Platform, is a complete application development solution for creating cross-platform rich Internet applications. And by combining the best of AJAX and Flex, developers can now build next generation expressive, interactive applications that include vector graphics, audio, video, and charting.

Hot Banana Software, Inc., has announced that they have delivered a new intranet project to the European headquarters of Ingersoll Rand - helping the company to welcome new personnel through a customized intranet site.

Your boss tells you that he wants you to build a ColdFusion application based on his requirements, which will take you about a month to complete. You are now faced with two options, you can either start coding your application in spaghetti code fashion, or you can explore the many frameworks ColdFusion offers and choose one of them.

TapeTrader.com is a ColdFusion-powered, live music sharing community with over 50,000 members and a vast database cataloging hundreds of thousands of hours of live music recordings. The TapeTrader.com community connects fans together so that they can catalog, share and trade their recordings.

AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. It's not a single technology, but rather a combination of different technologies that are used to create a Rich Internet Application feel. You've probably seen examples of this kind of application. Google uses AJAX a lot on such services as maps.google.com. After bringing up a location, you can click and drag the map, zoom in or out, or even bring up directions to and from the location. All this is done without any screen refreshes. You have to admit that the interface is pretty sweet. (Note: Yahoo has a similar mapping application, built entirely in Flex at http://maps.yahoo.com/bet a.)

SWFAddress is a new open source project that provides deep linking and search engine indexing for Flash Websites and applications. In other words, it enables the Back, Forward, and Reload buttons of the browser and creates unique URLs that can be sent over e-mail or IM. Recently it reached version 1.0 and quickly gained the attention of top design agencies and interactive developers. SWFAddress started as a small experiment that aimed to enhance a typical Flash Website by presenting the portfolio of a fellow photographer. It adopted all the best practices available on the Internet and became one of the best solutions among the growing number of similar libraries.

You know the drill: a language is called object-oriented if it supports inheritance, encapsulation and polymorphism. And what do we do with interfaces?

Taconite is a framework that simplifies the creation of AJAX-enabled Web applications. It's a very lightweight framework that automates the tedious tasks related to AJAX development, such as the creation and management of the XMLHttpRequest object and the creation of dynamic content. Taconite can be used with all modern Web browsers (Firefox, Safari, IE, Opera, and Konqueror, to name a few) and can be used with any server-side technology, including Java EE, .NET, PHP, ColdFusion or any language that lets you return XHTML.

Adobe Flex and Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX (previously code-named ?Atlas?) were rated tops in security when rated by users of these popular languages, according to Evans Data Corporation's newly released 2007 Scripting Languages - Developers Choice Report. The research is based on developers ranking scripting languages that they use across thirteen distinct attributes.

Hot Banana Software, Inc. (www.hotbanana.com), a provider of Web content management for marketing, has announced that it has won 20 new clients and achieved a number of key operational milestones since August, when J.L. Halsey acquired the company.

In this AJAXWorld Conference & Expo session (March 19-21, in New York City), attendees will learn how Apollo will allow you to take your existing AJAX applications into the desktop. Install AJAX apps and give them online/offline capabilities, offline storage, chrome-less windows, and best of all, they work cross-platform - on Windows and Macs.

In the July 2006 issue of CFDJ, I wrote about the Directory Watcher event gateway, and how easy it was to set up and how powerful a tool it could be for managing files and external interfaces. While this is true, there are some potential hazards waiting for the unsuspecting developer who jumps into DW waters without a life preserver.

Even though I write for SYS-CON, I've never publicly complimented them. But this time they really deserve a credit. SYS-CON will present the AJAXWorld 2007 Conference & Expo 2007 East in March. Usually, attendees have very limited access to speakers during conferences, and SYS-CON Events came out with a simple but smart idea - yesterday they have created an Ask The Faculty Forum, where anyone can post questions to the conference speakers and faculty. And you do not even have to attend the conference to participate in this forum. It's a very nice idea, or rather 'Idea 2.0' Speakers should visit the forum and answer the questions to promote their sessions, and software developers will have a chance to correspond with well known people in the industry. Yours truly will run Adobe Flex Hands-on Workshop during this event, so feel free to post relevant questions - it does not matter if you are planning to be there or not. I'm sure, other event organizers will start copycatting SYS-CON, which is a win-win situation for everyone.

This is a part two of the prior blog where I described how to get data from JSP to Flex. This time we'll send data from a Flex application played by Flash Player to a Java Server Page. In the next version of our Flex-JSP application I'll show you how to post data from a Flex form to JSP. We'll place a simple form under the data grid above to enter the data about the new employee as in Figure below. Pressing the button Add Employee will submit the entered data to the JSP, which will attach them to existing employees and return back so the data grid will be repopulated to include the newly inserted employee.

Recently, I've been reading a book recommended to me by my friend, Clark Valberg. The book is A Whole New Mind; its author is Daniel Pink. In this article, I'll discuss why I think the premise of the book holds such promise for ColdFusion programmers - and how it challenges us to rethink how we define what our work is.

One of the many hotly contested items about ColdFusion in recent times that some developers have been clamoring for are the addition of interfaces to ColdFusion Components as part of the standard CFML language. At one time I was definitely in this camp myself - interfaces would indeed be a good way to make sure that components follow a given contract.

At the end of each year, when SYS-CON informally polls its globe-girdling network of software developers, industry executives, commentators, investors, writers, and editors, our question is always the same: where's the industry going next year?

I finished today the implementation of AjaxCFC for jQuery. It's the same Ajax <-> CF integration you already know, but using the jQuery Ajax engine. It supports full JSON and WDDX serialization, has improved error handling, improved log4javascript integration, still supports named and unnamed arguments, and just so you can use it right away, it's back compatible with the DWR syntax. The only incompatibility is the change of the $() function, which you can actually override if you wish, but I didn't on my release.

I can't wait to get started.' The sentiment struck me pretty hard as I struggled to get some sleep on a packed red-eye flight leaving Las Vegas at 11 o'clock at night.

As the Web develops, the need for easy and efficient Web site and portal management increases. Developing an easy-to-use future-proof content management system (CMS) from scratch isn't easy. The basic functionalities can be assembled in a reasonable timeframe, meaning that you will be able to edit the structure and the content of the Web site.

Adobe staged its MAX 2006 developer and customer conference under the theme 'Beyond Boundaries' to showcase the company's emerging technologies and provide a glimpse of future innovations. Adrian Bridgwater attended to drink it all in.

Keeping up to date with the most recent versions of software and programming languages is the toughest challenge for me as a developer. With each passing year it seems that the demands of being a top Web developer require proficiency in more and more tools and languages. Gone are the days of just knowing HTML and JavaScript Validation.

It's not often that I wish I was in America,'' writes one (UK-based) developer, 'but this week sees the MAX 2006 show in Las Vegas.' He was not alone in wishing he'd been able to make it: around the Web world, bloggers both outside the US and inside have been discussing the many announcements made at this year's MAX and their implications for working developers and designers everywhere.

By the time you read this, another MAX will be in the history books. In fact, with a record attendance of around 3,500 developers and designers, this MAX in Vegas will also be in the record books.

Once you've learned the syntax of cfcs, one of the hardest things to do is to figure out exactly how and where to use them. The goal of this article is to run you through the most common (and useful) ways to use cfcs to make your applications easier to maintain.

Dreamweaver's native Log In User server behavior combined with the Restrict Access to Page server behavior can help you protect your pages from prying eyes. However, when it comes for more fine-grained control of content on pages viewable by users from multiple access levels, Dreamweaver doesn't have anything built in to offer any assistance to you.

The book 'RIA development with Adobe Flex and Java' is written. Check out the book site. Do you know why we are smiling? Because the writing is over! It took us longer than planned because we had to work for a living, and the time for writing this book was just stolen from our families and our sleep.

Typically, Flex developers use Flex Builder IDE, but Adobe also offers free Flex SDK, and you should know how to build your applications without Flex Builder. Using a sample Flex project, this article shows how you can automate its build and creation of HTML wrappers for your swf files.

In any GUI tool, one of the most popular components is the one that shows data in a table format like JTable in Java or Datawindow in PowerBuilder. The Adobe Flex 2 version of such a component is called DataGrid. In any UI framework, the robustness of such a component depends on formatting and validating utilities as well as a whole suite of data input controls: CheckBoxes, ComboBoxes, RadioButtons, all sorts of Inputs, Masks, and so on. Using theatrical terminology, the role of the king is played by his entourage. Practically speaking, touching up the DataGrid is touching up a large portion of the Flex framework.