I mentioned Gartner's coverage and recommendation of ColdFusion previously. That report is now publicly available.

RIA Unleashed Boston is New England's only conference focused on building rich internet applications using the Adobe Flash Platform including Flex, AIR, ColdFusion, Catalyst and more. RIA Unleashed is built on top of the former Flex Camp Boston events run the past two years. The event will be held at Bentley University in Waltham, MA, on November 13th, 2009, from 8:00am to 5:30pm.

The Triangle Area ColdFusion User's Group has announced ColdFusion in North Carolina 2009 to be held October 17-18, 2009 on the Centennial Campus of NC State University in Raleigh, NC. This free conference is aimed at ColdFusion and Flex developers, as well as anyone interested in web design using these technologies. Registration is open, as is the call for presenters.

I still remember the first time I discovered an IDE. This was over 20 years ago, and I was working on a personal project (a DOS based game), and picked up Turbo Pascal on the advice of a friend. Yes, I know I am dating myself now, but Borland's Turbo Pascal was revolutionary. Aside from featuring a fun language and featuring lightning fast compilation (this was in 640K and 286 processor days), the real game changer was the development experience. File and project manipulation, a real editor, integrated help, F9 to compile and any errors or warnings instantly identified in code, a profiler, even an integrated step-by-step debugger ... all things we take for granted nowadays, but back then this was revolutionary. The beauty, the simplicity, the sheer elegance, Borland got it right. And when they then added Turbo C and Turbo Assembler and more to the mix, they had found a winning formula and they dominated the landscape (right before making a whole series of superbly dumb business decisions that effectively killed the company and thereby handed the lead on development tools to competitor Microsoft, but that's a whole different topic).

So why this trip down memory lane? Lately I've been thinking a lot about IDEs and the ideal development experience. And I've been thinking about the fact that there is no ideal development experience, at least not one that is ideal for all developers. We coders take our IDEs very seriously, and rightfully so. When you spend so much of your time writing code you should indeed be using tools that help you be more productive (as opposed to tools that trip you up). And once we find something that we like, we resist any changes. IDEs rank right up there with politics and religion as topics that only the brave would dare debate. Which brings me to ColdFusion IDEs. Or rather, the lack thereof. Or ... Well, let's briefly look at the popular options to date:

Back in Cold Fusion 3 days (yes, back then it was Cold Fusion, two words) we realized that CFML developers needed a development tool. We bought HomeSite from Nick Bradbury, and created a version of it called Cold Fusion Studio (eventually renamed to HomeSite+). This tool enjoyed a very loyal following, and the fact that it was Windows only was not much of a concern as so was Cold Fusion itself (and back then we did not see the sea of shiny silver Macs that we see at ColdFusion events these days). HomeSite (including Cold Fusion Studio and HomeSite+) was not an IDE, it was an editor, and an exceptionally good editor at that. It was lightweight, responsive, extensible, and mostly intuitive. But it was also written in Delphi, a language that is tough to keep supporting. And most importantly, it was never really a profitable product. Considering what it cost to maintain, and the number of copies sold, HomeSite was always more important because ColdFusion needed it than it was as a product unto itself. But that was a long time ago, and we've done nothing (ok, almost nothing) with HomeSite since Macromedia acquired Allaire close to a decade ago. ColdFusion has evolved significantly in that time, but HomeSite has never kept up with it (it does not even know what a CFC is!). Between the fact that HomeSite was written in a language basically not used anywhere else in the company, and the fact that it was never a profitable product, and the fact that Macromedia had demonstrated phenomenal success with Dreamweaver, HomeSite just suffered from neglect. Still, HomeSite has fans to this day, and many ColdFusion developers love it and still swear by it.

I mentioned Dreamweaver, the award-winning and highly rated Web design and development tool, a Macromedia creation, and now part of Adobe's Creative Suite. Way back in Allaire days I flew to San Francisco to meet with Macromedia to discuss them adding CFML support to Dreamweaver, and offered guidance around their initial ColdFusion support. Since then, Dreamweaver has continued to add ColdFusion integration, more enhancements in some releases and less in others, but always supported. At one point there was an aggressive push by the Dreamweaver team to make that product the best tool for ColdFusion developers, and support was added for CFCs, RDS, debugging, and more. And many ColdFusion developers, including myself, did indeed jump on the Dreamweaver bandwagon (and, to be very fair, many developed a sort of love-hate relationship with the product, what it did it did well, but there was too much it did not do, and much of what it did well we did not care about). Like HomeSite, Dreamweaver is not an IDE, but for many developers it worked and worked exceptionally well. Dreamweaver is a big, powerful, and extensive product, the undisputed leader in its space. But for many ColdFusion developers it didn't work as well, especially the hardcore coders who never wanted a design view and never wanted color palettes and never wanted most of what Dreamweaver focuses on (those same developers who may feel more comfortable in an Eclipse or Visual Studio type world). In short, many coders find that Dreamweaver is better suited for web design and development than actual coding. And they are right; this is not in any way a criticism of Dreamweaver, the product just has a different purpose and target user base. In fact, the most recent Dreamweaver updates have focused primarily on CSS and XML/XSL and JavaScript, and rightfully so, that's what most Dreamweaver users need. So, while Dreamweaver is definitely not for all ColdFusion developers, many of them, especially those without a strong coding background, find Dreamweaver to be an ideal ColdFusion development tool.

The third ColdFusion development option is Eclipse. Eclipse is an open source software development platform comprised of an IDE and a plug-in system to extend it. It is written primarily in Java, and is used to develop applications in Java and numerous other languages (as well as development that isn't even language based at all). Eclipse itself does not support CFML, but the community leveraged the plug-in system to create CFEclipse. This project was initiated back in 2004 by Rob Rohan, and since then many others have gotten involved to varying degrees, with Mark Drew most recently taking the lead. Adobe, and the ColdFusion team specifically, actively supported the CFEclipse effort, and contributed code to the project. CFEclipse is designed for developers not served by Dreamweaver, and does not support any of the design centric features that Dreamweaver boasts. CFEclipse is definitely a tool for coders, and many ColdFusion developers do indeed rely heavily on this tool. The real beauty of CFEclipse is the openness of the Eclipse platform and the extensive array of plug-ins available. Need support for HTML, JavaScript, Regular expressions, SQL, version control systems, XML, DBMS front-ends, and more? No problem, download the right plug-in and you're all set. That's pretty compelling, a real IDE that gives developers complete control is highly appealing, and lots of ColdFusion developers have indeed gone this route. But, it's not all rosy, and Eclipse based development has lots of detractors who find it slow and sluggish, inconsistent, not quite polished, buggy, and worse. And there is validity to those concerns, and regardless of how you feel about Microsoft, taking Visual Studio for a ride makes you quickly realize that Eclipse is a perpetual work in progress. Still, as many ColdFusion developers have discovered, Eclipse + CFEclipse + whatever other plug-ins you need = a powerful ColdFusion development platform, and the closest we've ever gotten to a real ColdFusion IDE.

So, three options for ColdFusion development, HomeSite, Dreamweaver, and Eclipse. And all three are in use. We've been researching and polling this for years while trying to figure out what we need to do to best serve the ColdFusion community, and no clear winner has emerged. All three have loyal bases who love (or at least like) what they use, and who don't like the alternatives. The exact ratios vary based on the venue, ask the crowd at cfObjective and Eclipse is the clear leader, ask at MAX or many usergroups at Dreamweaver comes out ahead, and visit many of our customers and you'll find lots of HomeSite in use, and even these generalizations have exceptions. The reality is that there is no one size that fits all, and despite the very strong opinions and emotions on the subject, there is no clear leader when it comes to ColdFusion development tools.

This has proven to be a very difficult situation for the ColdFusion team. We know that ColdFusion developers need an IDE now more than ever. As ColdFusion has become more capable, as ColdFusion applications have grown in complexity and scope, as the skills of ColdFusion developers have increased, and as the Enterprise and mission-critical use of ColdFusion has mushroomed, so has the need for a real IDE. And so we argued and discussed and researched and debated long and hard to come up with a plan, looking at all the options, and weighing their pros and cons.

It became clear that Dreamweaver is not the ColdFusion IDE, and that trying to make it so would not be in the best interests of Dreamweaver or ColdFusion users. Dreamweaver should, and will, continue to support ColdFusion, and those who are happy doing their ColdFusion development in Dreamweaver must be served and supported. But Dreamweaver needs to focus on where web development is focused, as it is indeed doing now. Forcing full blown ColdFusion IDE functionality into Dreamweaver will not be advantageous to either ColdFusion users or Dreamweaver users.

Many of the ColdFusion team wanted to resurrect HomeSite (yes, I know it was not truly dead so resurrect may be a strong word, but let's be honest, it was not quite alive either). This option has merit. HomeSite is small, tight, fast, and we'd fully control the environment allowing us to create a truly ColdFusion specific experience. But in the end this option was deemed unworkable, particularly after this much time. In addition to all of the ColdFusion support that we'd have to have written, we'd still be faced with having to support all other related web technologies (HTML, CSS, XML/XSL, JavaScript, and much more), being Windows only, and having to maintain a team of developers who could not share any work or resources with any other development teams in the company because they would be the only ones writing in Delphi. As much as we all loved HomeSite, its continued development was impossible to justify.

Which left Eclipse. As already mentioned, there are some very compelling arguments for the Eclipse platform. And on top of those, Adobe as a company has committed to Eclipse as made evident by Flash Builder, LiveCycle Workbench, and now Flash Catalyst. Building a ColdFusion IDE that could leverage other work within the company, and more importantly, could align with those projects (especially considering how many developers are writing ColdFusion powered Flex apps) makes lots of sense. But, as already noted, Eclipse can be awkward and inconsistent, and addressing this is anything but trivial.

When weighing all of the options, and removing emotion from the discussion, it becomes abundantly clear that Eclipse is indeed the right platform on which to build a ColdFusion IDE, which is why we're doing exactly that for ColdFusion Builder. Doing so allows us to support CFML and ColdFusion development, it allows us to support all supporting Web technologies, it allows support for everything from FTP to version control to SQL and more, it perfectly aligns with other Adobe offerings, and it provides a platform that we can truly commit to and build on as we plan the future. Between Flash Catalyst, Flash Builder, ColdFusion Builder, and LiveCycle Workbench, we've got an end-to-end development workflow on the same platform, and building on Eclipse is the only way to accomplish this. We've had to figure out what plug-ins to use, what to license, and what to write ourselves, so as to deliver the best experience for ColdFusion developers. And I'm not sure that we'll get it right for version 1 (ok, I am sure we'll not get it right, there, I said it). ColdFusion Builder is definitely a 1.0 product, and users should understand that. But they should also understand that we are building the tool to allow for rapid improvements, constant updates, and flexible extensibility. Version 1 will be good, and subsequent versions will be better, it's all upside from here.

Having said that, we fully understand that not all ColdFusion developers will want to use an Eclipse based ColdFusion Builder. And that's fine. There is no one size fits all when it comes to developer tooling, and that would be the case whatever option we chose. And recognizing this, we do plan on updating Dreamweaver for ColdFusion 9. CFEclipse is not going away, and there are other 3rd party tools that offer varying degrees of CFML support. There are now more options for ColdFusion developers, and that's a good thing. And most importantly, ColdFusion developers are getting a long overdue addition to their toolbox, the ColdFusion IDE we so deserve, and one that is well positioned to grow and evolve along with the product it supports.

I'll be back in India next month to present at the Adobe Devsummit in Bangalore on August 4th. Fellow Adobe evangelist Serge Jespers will be joining me, along with the local evangelism team, for a full day event that will cover Flex, Flash, Catalyst, ColdFusion, Data Services, and more. They are expecting 1000 attendees at this event, and they expect it to sell out, so register quickly!

Wave is an AIR based notification tool, one place to receive alerts and notifications from all sorts of apps and sites. Adobe Wave is now on Labs. You can also watch this video for a quick intro.

PaperThin has announced the release of CommonSpot 5.1, the latest edition of their ColdFusion powered CMS. New features include support for new Office file formats, remote editing capabilities, RSS and ATOM feeds, and improved performance.

The MAX 2009 team has created an augmented reality promotional piece featuring Dr. Brown and me. Shooting this one was fun! :-)

The Flash Platform team is blogging at http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplatform/.

While in China last week, I had the chance to chat with a reporter from IT168, a leading Chinese IT site, and a top 1000 web site (as per Alexa). IT168 has posted a story based on that interview (in Chinese, of course).

The newly formed U.K. based Adobe RIA Usergroup has launched, and fellow Platform Evangelist Andrew Shorten will be presenting an introduction to Flex at the inaugural meeting on August 19th, 2009, at Skills Matter in London. Registration is now open.

ColdFusion Product Manager Adam Lehman, Evangelist Terry Ryan, and EMEA ColdFusion Specialist Claude Englebert, will all be taking part in a ColdFusion 9 event in London on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009. Register to attend live or to take part online.

Kai Koenig has written an article for SitePoint entitled What's New in ColdFusion 9?, and Raena Jackson Armitage admits to warming up to ColdFusion.

The ColdFusion Builder development team is now blogging at http://blogs.adobe.com/cfbuilder/.

eWeek's Darryl Taft has written an article on the ColdFusion Builder and ColdFusion 9 entitled Adobe Delivers Beta of ColdFusion 9 and ColdFusion Builder IDE.

Lee Brimelow hass got some incredible prizes lined up for his next dead drop, a full Adobe MAX 2009 conference pass ($1495), a copy of Master Collection CS4 ($2499), a one year premium subscription to the Lynda.com Online Training Library ($375), and one year subscriptions to both Layers Magazine ($30) and Photoshop User Magazine ($30). The NorCal Super Dead Drop begins Sunday July 19th at 11:00pm West Coast time.

ColdFusion engineer Jayesh Viradiya has posted an explanation of the new offline AIR support for ColdFusion 9 applications.

I am in China for the week. I arrived late last night, and am spending the day in Beijing today, and then flying to Shanghai this evening. The week will be non-stop meetings, but we do have one public event scheduled, an Adobe Developer Tech Day in Shanghai on Thursday, July 16th. Also presenting at this event will be fellow Adobe Platform Evangelists Enrique Duvos from the European team and Zerlot Ma from the Chinese team.

Buy Adobe software from the online store, and Save $400 on Adobe MAX 2009. This promotion only applies to the North America store and expires September 28, 2009, and includes ColdFusion, Acrobat, Flex Builder, Creative Suite, and more.

Public beta versions of ColdFusion 9 and ColdFusion Builder are now available!

In conjunction with the public beta of ColdFusion 9 and ColdFusion Builder, Ray Camden and I recorded a series of videos for Adobe TV, all of which are now live.

One of the most exciting enhancements in ColdFusion 9 is actually not a ColdFusion 9 feature at all. Rather, it's the introduction of a dedicated ColdFusion IDE, ColdFusion Builder, available today as part of the ColdFusion 9 public beta. This new Eclipse based development environment has been built from the ground up with ColdFusion development in mind, and this post will help you get started quickly and easily.

ColdFusion Builder is a ColdFusion IDE built in Eclipse, the same platform which powers Flash Builder (and Flex Builder, previously). There are some important reasons for this:

• ColdFusion Builder and Flash Builder are designed to work together, and can greatly simplify the development of ColdFusion powered Flash and Flex applications.
• Eclipse is already popular with ColdFusion developers, thanks to community projects like CFEclipse.
• Eclipse is a proven platform with extensive support for all sorts of development, and all Eclipse plug-ins can be used with ColdFusion Builder. So, if you need something that we did not provide, a third-party plug-in may do the trick.
• Eclipse is supported on multiple platforms, including all of the platforms supported by ColdFusion itself.

• If you are unfamiliar with Eclipse, and are not already running an Eclipse installation (including Flex Builder and Flash Builder), then the ColdFusion Builder installer can install a complete Eclipse configuration for you, all ready to use.
• If you do have an existing Eclipse installation (including Flex Builder and Flash Builder), then the ColdFusion Builder installer can add ColdFusion support to that existing Eclipse. This is the preferred configuration if you are using Flash Builder.

ColdFusion Builder is an IDE, it is not ColdFusion itself. To use ColdFusion Builder you'll need access to a ColdFusion server (ideally ColdFusion 9). ColdFusion Builder can work with local or remote ColdFusion servers, but it is highly recommended that you use a local development server (ColdFusion Developer Edition is free, so no real downside, and lots of upside). You'll also need to know the ColdFusion Administrator and RDS login information for some ColdFusion Builder functionality to work properly.

When you first start up ColdFusion Builder, you may see a splash screen (well, one of several) which you can close. You'll then be presented with the IDE itself. Depending on what Eclipse plug-ins are installed, you may or may not be in "ColdFusion mode". Let me explain.

As noted above, Eclipse can be used for all sorts of development, Java, HTML, CSS, MXML, PHP, and much more. As each type of development needs different screens and panels in an IDE, Eclipse supports the defining sets of configurations called "Perspectives". A perspective is a specific screen setup, with windows and panels and toolbars all configured in a specific way. Switching perspectives is easy, and Eclipse can even auto-switch perspectives for you as you switch between projects and file types.

The Eclipse title bar should show you the perspective in use. In addition, there are buttons on the top right of the screen for switching between perspectives. If the title bar says "ColdFusion", and if you see tabs at the bottom for Servers, TailView, and more, and if you see RDS tabs in the panel on the right, then you are in the ColdFusion perspective. If not, open the Window menu, and select Open Perspective, Other, and then ColdFusion. Perspective selections are saved automatically in your Eclipse workspace, and so the next time you open ColdFusion Builder, the right perspective should be open and ready to use.

Before you can do anything useful with ColdFusion Builder, you need to tell it about the ColdFusion Server you'll be connecting to. You do this in the Servers tab at the bottom of the IDE. Here are the steps:

1. Click on the Add Server button (the one with a server and a yellow + sign).
2. Select ColdFusion as the server type.
3. Enter a unique server name, this need not be the actual server name, it's what shows up in the server list so you know which server you are referring to. If you are using a local server you may want to just set it to "localhost".
4. Enter the Host Name, this is the IP address or DNS name of your ColdFusion server, and it'll be "localhost" for a local development server.
5. Enter the Web Server Port, this is usually 8500 for development servers using the integrated HTTP server, or 80 for servers connected to external HTTP servers.
6. Enter the Context Root and Application Server Name only if using ColdFusion deployed on a J2EE server.
7. Enter the RDS User Name and RDS Password. If you did not specify an RDS username then the default will be "admin".
8. Click Next.
9. Next, specify the Server Home (not the web root, this is the folder into which ColdFusion itself is installed, on Windows machines using a local development server this may be c:\ColdFusion9).
10. Enter the Document Root (this is the web root), on Windows machines using a local development server this may be c:\ColdFusion9\wwwroot.
11. Click Finish.

You'll now have a server listed in the Servers tab. You can click on the server to stop it, start it, access its Administrator, and more. These options are available via a toolbar and via right-click menu options.

Now that you have a server defined, the next step is to create a Project so that you may start development. Here are the steps:

1. Select File, New, ColdFusion Project (or right-click in the Navigator panel on the left and select New, ColdFusion Project).
2. Enter a unique Project Name (project names can have spaces in them).
3. By default, Eclipse stores projects in a workspace folder, and these are typically not under the web root. For ColdFusion development, especially when working with a local development server, this is not optimal. So, uncheck the Use Default Location, and enter the path for your project in the Project Location field. The folder should be under the ColdFusion web root, and you may need to actually create a new folder.
4. Then click Next.
5. You'll then be asked for the server to use with this project. Select the server you just defined in the Servers drop down list box.
6. Click Next.
7. Then click Finish.

You now have a ColdFusion project ready to use. You can open and close projects in the Navigator panel (obviously, a project must be open to be able to use it).

Now let's create a quick application to make sure everything is working. Here are the steps:

1. Open the new ColdFusion Project, if it is not already open.
2. Make sure the project is selected (clicked on, otherwise you may create the file in another project).
3. Create a new ColdFusion page by selecting File, New, CFM Page (or right-click in the Navigator panel on your project and select New, CFM Page).
4. Enter a page Name, perhaps "index" (the .cfm extension is optional, and will be added automatically).
5. Click Finish.
6. The page will now be open for editing, enter some CFML code, perhaps the following:
   <cfoutput>
   Hello, it is #DateFormat(Now())#
   </cfoutput>
   
7. Save the page.
8. Below the editor window you'll see browser tabs (the exact list of browsers present will vary based on your OS and the browsers installed). Click on any browser to run your code, and you'll see the generated output.

Assuming you made it this far, congratulations, you are now using ColdFusion Builder.

We've packed lots of features into ColdFusion Builder, but here are some you should be aware of:

• As you type code in the editor, notice that your code is automatically colored. If you are typing a tag and hit space and pause briefly, you'll be presented with a pop-up of available attributes or values.
• The editor also features lots of built-in intelligence. For example, if you are typing datasource="" you'll be presented with a list of available datasources, and when you type query="" in a <cfoutput> you'll be presented with a list of queries already defined. You'll discover lots of other shortcuts like this as you work.
• On the left edge of the editor, you'll see a - sign next to each tag. You can click this to collapse and expand blocks of code.
• Above the editor window you'll see a CFML toolbar. Mouse over each button to see what they do. The rightmost button serves two purposes, if a tag is selected it'll display the attributes for that tag, and if not it'll display a wizard to help you find the tag you want.
• In the panel below the editor you'll see a tab named TailView. This useful tab can show you changes in server log files as they occur. By default no log files will be listed, but at a minimum you'll want to add application.log, server.log, and exception.log (you can add others, too). To add these click on the Add Log button (it has a picture of a document with a plus in a green circle) and select the log files to add. ColdFusion log files are in a folder named "logs" under the ColdFusion root.
• The panel on the right of the editor contains the RDS Dataview tab. Use this to browse datasources, run data wizards, and more.
• The same panel contains the Outline tab which shows you the outline of your code and lets you easily jump to specific code blocks by clicking on tags.
• All panels can be moved, as can panel tabs (which can be moved from panel to panel, for example, I find that the Services Browser tab a better fit for the panel on the right than the panel at the bottom).
• ColdFusion Builder includes an FTP plug-in that you can use to deploy projects via FTP.
• Earlier I mentioned ColdFusion Builder extensions. These are distributed as ZIP files that can easily be installed into ColdFusion Builder (visit RIAForge to access a growing list of extensions, including Ray Camden's invaluable QueryParam Scanner). To install extensions, simply download the ZIP file, then open the Window menu and select Preferences, ColdFusion, Extensions, click Install, and then follow the prompts.

I've only touched the ColdFusion Builder surface here, but as you can see, this new tool can already simplify your ColdFusion development, and we're just getting started. ColdFusion Builder can be used with earlier versions of ColdFusion, but it ideally used with ColdFusion 9.

Both ColdFusion 9 and ColdFusion Builder are now available as part of our public beta.

I meant to post this yesterday, oops!

July 10th 1995 is the official date of birth of ColdFusion, which makes our favorite development platform 14 years old! Happy Birthday!

Earlier this year, the Adobe Platform Evangelists started handing out copies of Flex Builder 3 to developers who are out of work, the idea being that they could use their new free time to learn a new skill. It started off as an informal grassroots initiative, but we were so inundated with requests that Adobe launched an official program around the idea. Over the course of the next few weeks we handed out 15,000 licenses of Flex Builder, and many of the recipients have contacted us to tell us that they are now writing Flex apps for a living!

Well, as much as we'd rather that no one was eligible for the program, the response was so overwhelmingly positive that we're doing it again.

Go visit the site, accept the terms, fill in the form, and you'll be on your way to learning a new, and much in demand, skill. The program even includes an offer from Safari Books Online. They are providing developers with free 60 day access to an online version of the Adobe Developer Library, which includes some of the most popular books for learning Flex.

Please, spread the word!

Microsoft SharePoint has grown into a collection of servers and technologies for collaboration, process management, search, document-management, as well as portal type functionality. And as use of SharePoint has grown within enterprises and organizations, so have the requests for ColdFusion SharePoint integration. Indeed, some of the biggest ColdFusion deployments on the planet have asked for just that, which is why I posted an entry a while back soliciting input and feedback on the subject. (And yes, the responses to that post were all read and reviewed by the ColdFusion team, so those of you that weighed in actively helped to define the solution, thanks!).

The big challenge we faced with SharePoint integration was understanding what exactly users wanted. What we didn't want was to release a feature only to find that it does not solve most problems for most users (we've done this before, and it's no fun at all). And each time we asked for specifics we got slightly different answers. But, thanks to lots of research, we were able to come up with a list of features that seem to address most user needs, and the following is what is planned for ColdFusion 9.

• The most common request is for single-sign-on (SSO) support, so that ColdFusion applications running under SharePoint can leverage SharePoint authentication and security, removing the need for logins and authentication in ColdFusion applications themselves. In ColdFusion 9 this is accomplished via SharePoint integration files included with ColdFusion (a WSP file and a supporting CAB file). With these files installed and configured, SharePoint can pass credentials to invoked ColdFusion applications providing SSO support.
• So, what do I mean by "ColdFusion applications running under SharePoint"? One way to build SharePoint applications is by using Web Parts, ASP.NET server controls, to build Web Part Pages. Web Parts may be pre-written Microsoft provided controls, 3rd party controls, or your own controls. And in ColdFusion 9, Web Parts can be ColdFusion applications, too. Combine that with the SSO support just mentioned, and you have the building blocks for solid ColdFusion SharePoint integration.
• But what if you just want to be able to access data in SharePoint? What if you don't need your application running as a Web Part, you just want to take advantage of SharePoint user lists and views and groups, or to work with SharePoint stored images and document workspaces, or use SharePoint search? Some of this is already doable via SharePoint exposed Web Services, but for increased control and performance we've added a new tag that accesses exposed SharePoint features directly. This is a huge, powerful and sophisticated tag. And I do mean huge, it supports close to 50 actions and hundreds of possible attributes and parameters (depending on the operation being performed, most actions take just a few parameters).

Between these three options, SSO, ColdFusion applications as Web Parts, and access to SharePoint services via , we believe we've addressed most of what users are asking for in ColdFusion SharePoint integration. This not only further solidifies ColdFusion as an integral part of the Enterprise, but also allows organizations using SharePoint to leverage the power and productivity of ColdFusion without abandoning their adopted Enterprise architecture and platform. It's a big win-win all around.