One of the recurring complaints heard during my trip to Brazil last year was the lack of local ColdFusion hosting. That has now changed. The local Macromedia team worked with LocaWeb, the largest hosting company in Brazil, who is now offering both ColdFusion 5 and ColdFusion MX 6.1 hosting. To learn more visit LocaWeb at http://www.locaweb.com.br/.

Each time I release a new book, my publisher sends me lots of copies for my own use. I hang on to several, and send copies to some folks, but the rest sit in boxes in my office. I have lots of books stacked away here, copies of my ColdFusion books, SQL books, and more. I'd like to get these into the hands of teachers and students and school libraries, making them available to those who might otherwise not have access to copies, individuals who (hopefully) can benefit from them.

So, if you work for (or attend) a school or college or education institution, and can use copies of my books on ColdFusion, SQL, CF/Flash, CF/J2EE, or more, please e-mail me at ben@forta.com.

Lots of you have been asking about MAX 2004 dates and location. The official MAX announcement is due shortly, and I can't discuss the location until then. But, to help with scheduling, here are the dates (as they stand now, although nothing is final until the official announcement). MAX 2004 is scheduled for November 1st - 4th in ... oops, can't tell you that yet. :-)

Matt has jumped right into it with an excellent post on working with large data sets in Flex. See http://www.markme.com/mchotin/archives/004610.cfm.

To help ColdFusion developers better understand Flex and what it means to them, I have posted:

A Breeze presentation at http://www.macromedia.com/software/flex/productinfo/brz_flex_and_coldfusion/.

An article (containing both positioning and an example application) at http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/flex/articles/dashboard.html.

As many have already noted, Flex 1.0 is now available. To learn more, check out:

The Macromedia Flex page at http://www.macromedia.com/software/flex/.

The Flex Developer Center at http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/flex/.

MXEurope, originally planned for September 2004, has been rescheduled for January 2005. Details at http://mxeurope.org/.

Matt Chotin, a software engineer on the Flex team, is now blogging at http://www.markme.com/mchotin/.

Online in the sky at last? CNET News.com is running a story (see http://news.com.com/2008-1032-5178988.html) about the resurrection of Internet access on airplanes (originally hyped 3 years ago). Initially, 802.11 in the plane (your notebook talking to an onboard access point), and then possibly a RJ45 connection at each seat. "the link to the airplane from the ground is four channels at 5 megabits per second each, so that's 20 megabits per second total capacity. The length from the airplane to the ground is a 1-megabit-per-second link, and again, the actual speed you will see as the consumer depends on the number of people on the airplane and where the airplanes are operating physically in the world zone."

It looks like non-US carriers will be the first to deploy this; Lufthansa, Singapore Airlines, Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS), Japan Airlines, All-Nippon Airways, and then China Airlines. I guess I'll have to fly International more now. :-)

Netcraft is running a story on how in March "the number of IP addresses with sites using ASP.NET has overtaken those using JSP and Java Servlets." But look at the graph seen on http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/03/23/aspnet_overtakes_jsp_and_java_servlets.html. It definitely shows ASP.NET on the rise, but it also shows ColdFusion use still climbing, and significantly ahead of both ASP.NET and JSP/Servlets.

Now, just to be clear, this chart shows ASP.NET and not ASP. Had ASP been included it would have been up top. And the fact that ASP.NET has so quickly taken over JSP and Servlets is not really surprising (and is more a testament to how painful and unintuitive JSP and Servlet development is than anything else).

For me, the most important part of the chart is the red ColdFusion line which is still climbing. Considering how often we hear the "ColdFusion is dead" proclamation, this is relevant and exciting. Especially when taken in context. Netcraft only pings public facing sites, the space that has never represented where ColdFusion is most used (by some estimates more than 75% of ColdFusion use is on Intranets etc.). In other words, even where ColdFusion has never really dominated, it continues to remain strong and growing. That's compelling, indeed.

I attended Spring
in Athens, OH, today, driving down from Detroit the night before and back up again right after I wad done (about 300 miles each way). I attended last year's event and was impressed by the quality and professionalism, and this year was just as good (perhaps better, thanks to an incredible new venue which we were the first to use). Over 200 attendees, several Macromedians, and presentations by lots of well known community names (including Phillip Kerman, Joseph Lowery, Nate Weiss, and Matt Liotta).

I gave the opening keynote, and talked about Flash directions, Flex, and the future of ColdFusion (and gave a sneak peek at some Blackstone features, that went over very well indeed). I also presented a lunch-and-learn session on Flex, demonstrating basic Flex development techniques, and discussing the ColdFusion/Flex and Flash/Flex relationships.

This was another great event, and I must acknowledge Dave Hannum and his team for pulling this off for the second year in a row. I'll plan on dropping by again next year.

I spent the day on the show floor at FOSE, the Federal Government tradeshow in D.C. Lots of ColdFusion interest (as well as interest in Contribute, Flash, Breeze, Flex, and more).

For me, the most important part of all the ColdFusion discussions and interaction was the reminder that ColdFusion must remain true to it's origins, simply making developers productive. Most of the ColdFusion interest was from individuals wanting to really simple and basic things, creating dynamic content, implementing basic database integration, providing basic access control, creating dynamic user relevant menus and nav bars, and so on. Ironically, this is all stuff that was doable in ColdFusion 1, and 8 years later ColdFusion is still the easiest and most accessible way to solve these problems, no other product or language comes close to ColdFusion for this demographic and need. And it is a need that has not diminished at all. Often, all that we hear are the needs and demands of the top tier developers, those who needed SUPER and bemoan the behaviors of 'this' within CFCs and want more access to underlying Java. And while we must continue to make these developers productive, giving them the tools they want and need, at the same time we must be cognizant of ColdFusion's core value proposition, it's original mission, a raison d'etre that is as legitimate now as it was almost a decade ago.

After posting my last message I realized something. I am sitting in a restaurant, typing online via a wireless connection, and talking via a Bluetooth headset in my ear ... I feel like I am wearing a big badge with the word GEEK inscribed on it, a badge of honor indeed.

I am in Washington, D.C., in a restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue, and am posting this message via EDGE (AT&T's GPRS data service, see http://www.attwireless.com/speed/). I have a PC Card in my notebook, a little antenna pointing upwards, and am online. I am not getting the expected 100K+ throughput, (I don't know exactly what it is yet, I need to find a good way to measure it) but this feels significantly quicker than GPRS via my cell-phone. Fun stuff (especially with an unlimited data plan).

Mark Maughan is a certified public accountant with the Brown & Maughan firm in Palos Verdes, California. As per a local NBC story (reported at http://www.nbc4.tv/news/2937016/detail.html), Mr. Maughan did a Google search on his own name and found results that he did not like. "Specifically, the search results falsely represent that plaintiffs Maughan and/or Brown & Maughan have been disciplined for gross negligence, for failing to timely submit a client's claim for refund of overpayment of taxes, and for practicing as a CPA without a permit". He is not complaining about the accuracy of any of the links, but that Google "reformats information obtained from accurate sources, resulting in changing of the context in which information is presented", and that PageRank "scans the source, but in doing so, it's not a literal transmission. A literal transmission would be fine." He is proposing class action status.

So, what is next? Someone gave one of my books a bad review on Amazon.com, but he did not read the entire book and so his comments were out of context, should I sue Amazon.com? And a whole bunch of Blog readers display just parts of RSS feeds and that information is therefore reformatted and out of context, so sue the reader creators? And I am sure I saw a "ColdFusion Sucks" thread somewhere, maybe there is a possible lawsuit against the list managers there too?

Does anyone else think it might be time to regulate the Internet? As in require that users be granted a license to get online, with degrees of access based on their competence, intelligence, and agendas? Hummmm.

"Application Design: Dynamically change state and city drop-down boxes with DHTML" by Thomas Ortega explains ColdFusion / JavaScript integration at http://builder.com.com/5100-6371_14-5168421.html.

"Making ColdFusion thread-safe with cflock" by Andrew Grant provides a good introduction to locking at http://builder.com.com/5100-6371_14-5164421.html.

I've just been involved in a long thread with an individual who wanted to better understand the relationship between ColdFusion and Flex. Apparently, this is still a source of much confusion as I was asked similar questions at a user group earlier this week. So, I went back through the entire thread and distilled the relevant portions into the following, I hope this helps.

First of all, Flex is a server product that allows developers to generate Flash client-side SWF files on-the-fly by writing plain text source code files with tags in them. There are, therefore, similarities between ColdFusion and Flex:

* Like ColdFusion, Flex is a Java application deployed on top of J2EE servers. (A .NET version of Flex is planned for some future date).

* Like ColdFusion, applications are created as plain text files, and are placed on a server where there are compiled and processed on demand.

* Like ColdFusion .cfm files, Flex .mxml files are primarily tag based (although the language used is MXML instead of CFML).

As I said, there are similarities, and thus the confusion. But, there is also a major difference between ColdFusion and Flex. ColdFusion is an application development platform, it provides language elements and features for everything from programmatic flow control to database integration to Internet protocol support to UI generation to SOAP and XML processing and a whole lot more too. Flex, on the other hand, does not do any of this. Flex has one primary objective, and is laser focused on achieving it. Flex is all about the presentation layer, it is a presentation server and only concentrates on generating presentation front-ends and user interfaces.

This distinction is important. If you need database access from within a Flex application (and most will) then you will need a back-end to provide that access. If you need to generate e-mail messages you will need a back-end that knows SMTP. And if you need to access Internet protocols, implement business logic processing, handle user authentication and authorization, and more, you will need a back-end to do all that work.

This is not limitation of Flex, this implementation is deliberate and by design. As a Flex developer you are free to use the standard back-ends that work for you, including the back-ends you have already invested in. Flex simply provides you with a whole new way to create front-end applications, leveraging whatever investment you have already made (or will make) in back-end systems and technologies.

How does Flex talk to these back-ends? SOAP, straight HTTP calls, invoking Java objects, there are several options available to you. And what back-ends are supported? Basically, anything that can respond to SOAP calls, HTTP requests, and Java object execution. In other words, just about anything. And that includes ColdFusion. All versions of ColdFusion, any editions on any platform, can be used as back-ends for Flex applications. (Although ColdFusion MX is far better suited to be a Flex back-end than are prior versions, due to the Java underpinnings and the integrated SOAP support).

So, now that the differences between ColdFusion and Flex are clear, as is the understanding that these servers do not overlap and are in fact complimentary, what exactly is the technical relationship between them? There are two answers to this question, and they are quite different:

1) As already stated, Flex can leverage ColdFusion as a back-end, ideally via SOAP calls to ColdFusion Components. Any ColdFusion code exposed as a Web Service can be used by Flex, and very easily too. Flex understands ColdFusion data types, include queries, so, for example, a Flex DataGrid can be populated by a CFC method that returns a query without needing to massage the returned data at all. In this form of integration Flex and ColdFusion need not be installed on the same J2EE server, in fact, they need not even be installed on the same physical box. Flex can talk to any ColdFusion server anywhere (subject to security restrictions and settings). When a user requests a Flex page (a .mxml URL, not a .cfm URL) a Flash application is returned (by Flex, not by ColdFusion) and executes within the Flash player. That application then makes calls to ColdFusion for data and processing (probably using SOAP or Flash Remoting). From ColdFusion's perspective the flow and integration is no different from that of traditional Flash SWFs created using the Flash IDE.

2) It is also possible for ColdFusion pages (.cfm files) to render client-side SWFs dynamically (in much the same way as ColdFusion usually renders client-side HTML). How? Via JSP tags. CFML code can invoke JSP tags (which must first be imported into ColdFusion using the tag), this is a core ColdFusion feature independent of Flex. What makes it relevant to this discussions is that Flex comes with a JSP tag interface, allowing Flex tags to be used from within ColdFusion (and JSP) pages directly. In this form of integration Flex and ColdFusion must be deployed and running on the same server (the same J2EE server instance, that is), and so this does require ColdFusion Enterprise installed on top of a J2EE server (and not the standalone installation configuration). Using this interface users would not request .mxml URLs directly, they would request .cfm files as they usually would. The ColdFusion generated output would contain Flex generated SWF (which in turn could make calls back to ColdFusion if needed).

There are advantages to each integration option, and the decision as to which to use will (and should) likely be driven by application needs more than anything else.

But having said that, both options are viable, and both allow the creation of well designed n-tier applications, with Flex at the presentation tier, and ColdFusion at the business and logic tier.

Google Local, in beta at http://local.google.com/, allows for Google searching relevant to addresses (only US for now).

Googlism at http://www.googlism.com/index.htm is a strange, but fun, Google search tool. Type in your name, a product name, and more, to obtain a quick list of extraced quotes.

I am an AT&T Wireless customer, and have been for several years. Between my various phones, data plans, International callings plans, and more, I pay them thousands of dollars a year. And today I wanted to give them even more money. AT&T is rolling out EDGE over GPRS, it should provide data throughput of up to 200K, considerably faster than what I get using straight GPRS on my cell phone. And of course I need it (ok, want it); card, plan, and all.

But I had a few simple questions: The card requires that I purchase a data plan, but I already have a data plan for my cell phone, so can those be combined? Can I share plans? And can I have a consolidated bill? Simple, huh? Apparently not ...

10:05 am: After browsing information on data plans on the AT&T Wireless web site, I realize that I am going to have to call customer service, and do so. I get through, and am told that due to heavy call volume my wait time could be greater than 10 minutes. I put the call on speaker phone and keep working.

10:17 am: Twelve minutes later I get through to a rep, I explain what I want, she puts me on hold twice. After 5 minutes it becomes clear that she does not even know what a data card is. She offers to put me through to someone who can help, and puts me on hold

10:25 am: After being repeatedly told by a recorded message that I'd be helped shortly, I am hung up on. Great.

10:26 am: Let's try again. I call customer service, and am put back on hold. Only a 5 minute expected hold time, things are looking up.

10:41 am: After a longer-than-5-minutes 5 minutes I go through the whole explanation again, and am once again put on hold.

10:58 am: Still on hold and browsing the AT&T Wireless site. I find a "live customer service" option on the AT&T Web site. I ask for a rep, if the online rep answers first I'll hang up the phone.

10:59 am: Fast response online, I hang up the phone. Big mistake. "Michael" says "hi". I explain to Michael online what I want, after 5 messages and no response I send a "Hello?" message. I get a response telling me what GSM is, and instructing me that as a GSM user I had to call the customer service number. I am guessing that "Michael" was a bot, and the word "GSM" triggered a standard response. I tell him so. He responds with a "Goodbye" and disconnects. Wonderful.

11:05 am: Let’s try the customer service line again. 5 minutes expected hold time.

11:09 am: I explain it all again, and tell the rep about my experiences thus far. She promises to help, and puts me on hold 3 times but keeps coming back to tell me she is there.

11:16 am: She hangs up on me.

11:17 am: She calls me back and apologizes, she hit the wrong button. She tells me "I am going to transfer you to someone in the data department who will be able to help you". I tell her that I don't want to sit on hold anymore, she promises no hold, someone will pick right up, and then puts me on hold.

11:31 am: Fourteen minutes later the call drops. Back to square one.

11:32 am: I call back, and am back on hold.

11:36 am: Call drops again.

11:37 am: Now I am ticked off. I call back again, and just about yell at the poor rep. She promises to help, keeps putting me on hold and coming back to tell me she is still researching it.

11:43 am: She is back, "no, it can't be done, you need a new plan". I ask her if she is sure, that as far as I knew a voice plan could be signed up for with an EDGE card, so if it could be done then it should be doable now. She'll check.

11:46 am: She is back, "yes, it can be done". I'll transfer you to sales. Another transfer? Uh oh!

11:52 am: Sales answers, I explain what I want. "You called sales, let me transfer you". What? I thought I wanted sales. "Sorry sir, I need to transfer you". Back on hold I go.

11:58 am: After 6 minutes on hold, a new prompt: "If the call was transferred in error please press 1, if the customer needs to be transferred please press 2". Huh? I press nothing, and get another obscure prompt: "Press 1 for G2, press 2 for G3, ..." I press 1. Back on hold, average wait time is 10 minutes.

11:59 am: Someone answers, the first person who even knows what an EDGE card is. He tells me that want I want is indeed doable, but not on the phone, nor online, I need to go into a local AT&T store. I ask for a supervisor, none is available. I hang up.

Unbelievable. In my books AT&T Wireless has just set a new record for incompetence and stupidity.

[Updated 03/17/2004 10:58pm]

For any of you who are interested, I have a couple of updates to share:

1) First the good news. I did go to my local AT&T Store this afternoon, and spent some time with a friendly and knowledgeable young lady named Kristen who understood what I wanted, and was able to make it happen. I now have my EDGE card (essentially free, thanks to a rebate), an additional way to get online, and a single bill that is no larger than my previous bill. So, success. Although, I do find it ironic that in order to obtain Internet access technology from a phone company I could not use the Internet or my phone, and had to go visit a store.

2) And now the bad news. Like many vendors, AT&T hosts a support forum on their Web site. I posted a message earlier today in the "Customer Care" forum describing my problems. Within minutes I had eight responses from people with similar stories, one of which contained practical suggestions and another phone number to try. But this evening that entire thread has been removed. So, AT&T's solution is to censor the forum to make the problem go away. Customer care indeed.

I'd known Chuck Boothroyd for several years. He was one of my very first ColdFusion students (back when I was teaching the FastTrack to ColdFusion class). He was a loyal and active member of the CF community. He attended events and conferences, and helped arrange user groups presentations. And he played key role in the vibrant and successful Boeing ColdFusion community. But more than anything else, Chuck was a nice and decent person, one who people liked to be around, one who always had a smile on his face, and one who could be counted on.

Several months ago he suffered a heart attack, and ended up in the ICU. Lots of us stayed in touch with him, and the last we heard he was home and doing much better. But on Saturday he suffered an aneurysm, and mid-surgery his heart shut down.

Chuck was a good man, and one I considered a friend. He will be missed.

I am in LaGuardia airport, delayed because of the snow storm. I can handle that, and the fact that anywhere to buy food is closed. What ticks me off is no high-speed Internet access, and not enough phone lines for dial-up. Another airport that the 21st century passed by?

Several days ago I commented on the spam lawsuits, and noted that the real problem was one of supply and demand, that as long as users responded to spam the deluge would never let up.

There is a story on the front page of today's Wall Street Journal that backs me up. As per the article, Mr. Orlando Soto of New York considers browsing through spam to be a "treasure hunt". He likes to get 150 spam messages a day, and lamented the day on which he only received 17 messages. He reads them, picks the ones he is interested in, and ... and here is the worst part ... he buys stuff from spammers. He has bought a bingo machines, all sorts of vitamins, ribbons, cigarettes, a metal detector, and more. And he is actually thankful for spam.

Thanks to the likes of Mr. Soto, we are doomed.

This is not a new one, but ... Need the definition of a word? Do a quick Google search in the form "define word".

Story in The Globe and Mail today (http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040315.gtonfolio0315/BNStory/Technology/) on a just announced product named Onfolio, a content aggregation application that runs inside of Internet Explorer. And who is Onfolio's founder? None other than J. J. Allaire, creator of ColdFusion. Product details at http://www.onfolio.com/.

You've seen the Oracle ads: faster, cheaper ... and it "never breaks". Oracle servers never break, great. But I just noticed some fine print at the bottom of the ads, and I quote:

"Note: 'Never breaks' inidicates that when a server goes down, your system keeps running."

Well, I am so glad they cleared that up. After all, if I were to get mad at my Oracle server and hurl the box out of the 30th window I might have filed suit if in did indeed break. But now that I know ...