Thoughts, ideas, tips, musings, and pontifications (not necessarily in that order) by Ben Forta ...
NOTE: This is my personal blog, and the opinions and statements voiced here are my own.
ColdFusion 8 Shipping!
Along with this great release from Adobe, Adobe's Ben Forta has came out with a great series of posts regarding resources associated to this big step in Adobe's Server Framework Technology.
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Some of the Stardard features reference this footnote: Enterprise feature that runs through the Enterprise Feature Router (EFR). These features will run in the Standard Edition. However, all features running through the EFR will be limited to one shared simultaneous request.
Yeah I downloaded the PDF comparing the features an the only note is that CFTHREAD is limited to 2 additional spawned threads. How are the other features "limited" in standard.
Not sure what this means but under the editions comparison matrix (http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/editions/...) is appears that "Administrator and RDS user and role management" is not included in the standard edition. When they said Administrator, they didn't mean the CF Admin right?
I just placed my order for it, downloaded it, but can't get the serial number. I got an Email from adobe saying it would be available online after the download. But online, it says to call customer service. I sat on hold for 40 minutes with customer service, who told me that I need to wait 3 days for it.
Just warning everyone else out there. Don't assume you can use it today. Btw, this is NOT the way Macromedia or Allaire behaved. I think Adobe is built for more of a consumer-based clientel, and has not yet realized they are dealing with server software now.
If anyone else has a trick for getting it sooner, please post it here!
@David As for limiting to one shared simultaneous request... that simply means you can use these Enterprise-level features but only one at a time. If you have two requests trying to use one of these Enterprise features, the second one will queue and wait for the first to complete. You still get access to use all of these great new features. :)
@Ken I'm not sure what the issue is with getting your serial number online but we will look into it asap. Either way you can install ColdFusion with the 30-day trial option and enter the serial number in the admin when it arrives. There's no reason you can't have your shiny new CF8 installed today. :)
Jason- So does that mean all share the same thread... (ie pdf and event gateways share one thread) or does that mean each feature only waits for similar request types? (pdf tasks wait for other pdf tasks only)
Yes all the features marked as using the EFR share the same thread, although event gateways are not the best example... because of their multi-threaded nature... If you want to use CFPDF and CFEXCHANGE features at the same time, one will have to wait for the other to complete. If you are going to be using the set of features going therough the EFR extensively, you really should buy the Enterprise Edition. We allow these to be used in Standard because we wanted to give everyone the ability to use these features! Hopefully you will see the effort we put into these features and the value that they bring as compelling reasons to upgrade should you need to use these features extensively in your application. :)
Jason, can you tell me if you've done any load testing on those features being used on a standard environment? It would be interesting to know just where the limits are.
You will be particularly interested in page 6... but I highly suggest reading the entire document (except the appendix... that's not that interesing.) :)
The team did phenomenal work on performance in 8 and the performance brief has the entire scoop. :)
Hi, Is standart edition limited to one website? On product comparsion page, it says: "Standart edition:Used for delivering a single website or application on a single server"
There are no limits to the number of sites you can run with Standard... that statement is just there as a guide for use. Enterprise has features that specifically aid in managing multiple sites on one server (Multi-instance management, server monitoring, multi-server monitoring, etc...). You can feel free to put as many sites as you want on Standard, but consider Enterprise if you need to worry about those sites causing issues with one another. :)
I checked the online store and noticed that it is no longer possible to buy from Turkey. Too bad, list of european countries are limited to EU members only. I think this happened after Adobe merger.
I too am excited about the release of CF 8. I have an intranet application going live Aug 1 but sadly I was forced by policy to not rely on CF8 since it was beta and we strung along as long as possible but a couple of weeks ago the boss had us order new licenses for CF7MX 1 enterprise and 1 standard. Does anyone know of a grace period for recent purchases. I work at an academic institution and I believe we didn't have an option for a subscription when purchasing via academic pricing.
Now that I'm installing, it is asking me to install the LiveCycle Data Services ES. I checked the live docs and they say nothing about this, only to "follow the instructions." So I agreed to install it, but then it says it's only a 120-day trial, but after the trial, it becomes a non-expiring commercial use version. Should this be installed or not? What would not installing it cause to fail in CF8?
If I have these questions, others must, too. Thanks! Ken.
Contact customer service... we love our customers and I'm certain they can and will help you.
@Ken
We have built in the integration to LiveCycle Data Services... as you say, you will get a 120-day trial of Data Services (which is an awesome application for syncing data in real-time across multiple clients... using Flex or AJAX using the Flex-AJAX bridge...). When the 120-days is up... your Data Services license will revert to the Express Edition, this license is valid for one application on one CP, if you want to keep using DS on more than that, then you need to buy a license that meets your needs.
Now for the really good news here... installing Data Services also lays down all of the Flex SDK, web-tier compiler, etc. So, if you want to work with Flex... even if you're not interested in the synchronization Data Services offers... you still get all the Flex-y goodness laid down inside the ColdFusion webapp for you! :)
Not installing this will just mean that if you want to use the Flex SDK, web-tier compiler, or LiveCycle DataServices later, you will have to install and configure it yourself later. Really, there's no harm either way... if you install it but don't want to use DS... you may want to go into the admin and turn a couple of switches off... but its not a bad idea to install it either way.
It's a shame that the US prices and UK prices are so vastly different: Upgrade from MX6/7 std to 8 Enterprise: US price: $6,850.00 (£3370.71) UK price: £4875.08 ($9,908.19)
That's a $3000 dollar difference!!! Does it really cost that much to ship a license key to the UK!!
Pricing is definately a problem here... I agree CF offers lots of "out of the box" possibilities, but guys, do realise that you're still competing with free products like ASP and PHP... the Enterprise version is WAY too expensive...
PS the printed documentation set is not available yet...?
I'm not so worried about the price (US price that is) but I think it is a little unfair to charge an extra $3000+ dollars to UK customers. If I buy from the US then I save $3000! I could fly over to the US and pickup a copy and it would still be way cheaper than buying from the UK. I know that the GBP is strong against the USD at the moment but this still doesn't explain the huge difference in price.
@ Dave While you can look at things like VAT rates, and including U.S. sales tax rates, the ultimate problem is the exchange rate. Adobe is not counting on the 2-for-1 rate for the Pound continuing. If you take a more traditional exchange rate of 65p to the dollar - granted, it's been a while since that happened, but it's just GOT to return there in the near future, for pure economic reasons - then the prices actually match up pretty well.
It sucks, but Adobe has to set the price now for the next few years and would be foolish NOT to take into account the exchange rate.
Very exciting release! We built our Financial Institution App fresh and completely with CF7 (utilizing many Flash Forms and grids). So, we are excited to see how well some of the new CF8 features fit our upcoming enhancements. And, the speed enhancements will be welcomed…
We have a copy of CF8 Standard coming for review and testing, and it should be to us in a week or two. If we install the ColdFusion8 30-day trial option download, and then just enter the Serial Number when it arrives - will we be using exactly the same CF8 that we would have installed from the disks?
Ben, this is the release that Adobe desperately needed rehaul the way CF is priced and packaged.
1.The dichotomy between enterprise and standard is ridiculous and it creates a divide within the CF development world. There should be a single product, with features that can either be enabled, or disabled. Period.
2. The price model is based on a mentality that's about 8-10 years old. The fact is, developers build stuff first, then push the need for the technology with some sort of justification (like "Look what I made"). The developer edition is no good unless you can put it in production for free as well. I can't believe Adobe is still pushing this very broken price model.
Adobe has to understand, that while the cost of CF is not the inhibit commercial businesses from purchasing it, it does in fact prevent developers from bothering. Adobe's leaving a lot of money on the table here, and in 2007, I thought there were enough obvious examples of this for them to finally get it.
3. With Flex and new PDF technologies, CF is poised incredibly well to leverage the huge well of developers out there, with free server products (not just developer), while sustaining (and expanding) their fee based business. The commercial tie in opportunities with these products are amazing. CF is the perfect lead in product to the entire Adobe technology suite.
Maybe I'm not getting it, but this was an opportunity to truly cross CF over to the vast developer world not using that's not touching CF, and the vast commercial opportunities seemingly right on Adobe's doorstep.
I'm afraid the pricing is something that Ben cannot change. This has been the number one question (or remark, as you wish) during all Ben's presentations I've been to in Brussels, and he always said that he would forward the remark to the Adobe staf... Seems they didn't listen...
Nice job Adobe development team! I’m up and running with the CF8 Enterprise server its very fast on Windows Vista and Windows 2003 Server. I love the new CFFTP option for doing SFTP, thank you, thank you! The only item you’re missing now is a simple tag you can pass a query to and have it create a flat file with a delimiter of choice and with a simple option to also export to Excel… hint, hint. Well worth the money!
As someone who used the trial version (and loved the server manager!) then installed my licence key for the regular version and lost the server manager I was very dissapointed that I lost this awesome tool.
I see CF 8 shiped with JRE 1.6.0_01 and I had quite a lot of problems with JRE error "EXCEPTION_FLT_STACK_CHECK, Problematic frame" and this seems to be common with this JRE version. To save others the headache when I downloaded and installed JRE 1.6.0_02 (JRE 6 update 2) it by default installs to C:/Program Files/Java/jre1.6.0_02.
Under this it creates a folder "bin/client/jvm.dll" file. I edited the C:\ColdFusion8\runtime\bin\jvm.config for java home to: java.home=C:/Program Files/Java/jre1.6.0_02
And then CF 8 refused to start. After a bit of head scratching I realised CF 8 looks for a folder called "server/jvm.dll" so I simply copied the "client" folder to a new folder called "server" and hey presto - it worked.
I hope this helps others not have the same problem I did trying to work out why it wouldn't work and why they may be having problems with CF randomly crashing and re-starting under CF 8.
http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/pdfs/cf8_...
Some of the Stardard features reference this footnote:
Enterprise feature that runs through the Enterprise Feature Router (EFR). These features will run in the Standard Edition. However, all features running through the EFR will be limited to one shared simultaneous request.
Not sure exaclty what this means.
Thanks,
Dave
Not sure what this means but under the editions comparison matrix (http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/editions/...) is appears that "Administrator and RDS user and role management" is not included in the standard edition. When they said Administrator, they didn't mean the CF Admin right?
--- Ben
I just placed my order for it, downloaded it, but can't get the serial number. I got an Email from adobe saying it would be available online after the download. But online, it says to call customer service. I sat on hold for 40 minutes with customer service, who told me that I need to wait 3 days for it.
Just warning everyone else out there. Don't assume you can use it today. Btw, this is NOT the way Macromedia or Allaire behaved. I think Adobe is built for more of a consumer-based clientel, and has not yet realized they are dealing with server software now.
If anyone else has a trick for getting it sooner, please post it here!
Can't wait to bring it live!
Ken.
As for limiting to one shared simultaneous request... that simply means you can use these Enterprise-level features but only one at a time. If you have two requests trying to use one of these Enterprise features, the second one will queue and wait for the first to complete. You still get access to use all of these great new features. :)
@Ken
I'm not sure what the issue is with getting your serial number online but we will look into it asap. Either way you can install ColdFusion with the 30-day trial option and enter the serial number in the admin when it arrives. There's no reason you can't have your shiny new CF8 installed today. :)
Cheers,
Jason
---------------------------------------------
Senior Product Manager, ColdFusion
So does that mean all share the same thread... (ie pdf and event gateways share one thread) or does that mean each feature only waits for similar request types? (pdf tasks wait for other pdf tasks only)
Yes all the features marked as using the EFR share the same thread, although event gateways are not the best example... because of their multi-threaded nature... If you want to use CFPDF and CFEXCHANGE features at the same time, one will have to wait for the other to complete. If you are going to be using the set of features going therough the EFR extensively, you really should buy the Enterprise Edition. We allow these to be used in Standard because we wanted to give everyone the ability to use these features! Hopefully you will see the effort we put into these features and the value that they bring as compelling reasons to upgrade should you need to use these features extensively in your application. :)
Cheers!
Jason
---------------------------------------------
Senior Product Manager, ColdFusion
Cheers,
David
Sure... all of our load testing results for CF8 are available in the ColdFusion 8 Performance Brief. Available on our Datasheets and Whitepapers page at http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/whitepape....
You will be particularly interested in page 6... but I highly suggest reading the entire document (except the appendix... that's not that interesing.) :)
The team did phenomenal work on performance in 8 and the performance brief has the entire scoop. :)
Cheers again!
Jason
---------------------------------------------
Senior Product Manager, ColdFusion
Is standart edition limited to one website? On product comparsion page, it says: "Standart edition:Used for delivering a single website or application on a single server"
--- Ben
Cheers,
Jason
---------------------------------------------
Senior Product Manager, ColdFusion
Now that I'm installing, it is asking me to install the LiveCycle Data Services ES. I checked the live docs and they say nothing about this, only to "follow the instructions." So I agreed to install it, but then it says it's only a 120-day trial, but after the trial, it becomes a non-expiring commercial use version. Should this be installed or not? What would not installing it cause to fail in CF8?
If I have these questions, others must, too. Thanks!
Ken.
Contact customer service... we love our customers and I'm certain they can and will help you.
@Ken
We have built in the integration to LiveCycle Data Services... as you say, you will get a 120-day trial of Data Services (which is an awesome application for syncing data in real-time across multiple clients... using Flex or AJAX using the Flex-AJAX bridge...). When the 120-days is up... your Data Services license will revert to the Express Edition, this license is valid for one application on one CP, if you want to keep using DS on more than that, then you need to buy a license that meets your needs.
Now for the really good news here... installing Data Services also lays down all of the Flex SDK, web-tier compiler, etc. So, if you want to work with Flex... even if you're not interested in the synchronization Data Services offers... you still get all the Flex-y goodness laid down inside the ColdFusion webapp for you! :)
Not installing this will just mean that if you want to use the Flex SDK, web-tier compiler, or LiveCycle DataServices later, you will have to install and configure it yourself later. Really, there's no harm either way... if you install it but don't want to use DS... you may want to go into the admin and turn a couple of switches off... but its not a bad idea to install it either way.
Hope that helps!
Jason
Upgrade from MX6/7 std to 8 Enterprise:
US price: $6,850.00 (£3370.71)
UK price: £4875.08 ($9,908.19)
That's a $3000 dollar difference!!! Does it really cost that much to ship a license key to the UK!!
PS the printed documentation set is not available yet...?
While you can look at things like VAT rates, and including U.S. sales tax rates, the ultimate problem is the exchange rate. Adobe is not counting on the 2-for-1 rate for the Pound continuing. If you take a more traditional exchange rate of 65p to the dollar - granted, it's been a while since that happened, but it's just GOT to return there in the near future, for pure economic reasons - then the prices actually match up pretty well.
It sucks, but Adobe has to set the price now for the next few years and would be foolish NOT to take into account the exchange rate.
Cheers,
Davo
We have a copy of CF8 Standard coming for review and testing, and it should be to us in a week or two. If we install the ColdFusion8 30-day trial option download, and then just enter the Serial Number when it arrives - will we be using exactly the same CF8 that we would have installed from the disks?
1.The dichotomy between enterprise and standard is ridiculous and it creates a divide within the CF development world. There should be a single product, with features that can either be enabled, or disabled. Period.
2. The price model is based on a mentality that's about 8-10 years old. The fact is, developers build stuff first, then push the need for the technology with some sort of justification (like "Look what I made"). The developer edition is no good unless you can put it in production for free as well. I can't believe Adobe is still pushing this very broken price model.
Adobe has to understand, that while the cost of CF is not the inhibit commercial businesses from purchasing it, it does in fact prevent developers from bothering. Adobe's leaving a lot of money on the table here, and in 2007, I thought there were enough obvious examples of this for them to finally get it.
3. With Flex and new PDF technologies, CF is poised incredibly well to leverage the huge well of developers out there, with free server products (not just developer), while sustaining (and expanding) their fee based business. The commercial tie in opportunities with these products are amazing. CF is the perfect lead in product to the entire Adobe technology suite.
Maybe I'm not getting it, but this was an opportunity to truly cross CF over to the vast developer world not using that's not touching CF, and the vast commercial opportunities seemingly right on Adobe's doorstep.
Under this it creates a folder "bin/client/jvm.dll" file. I edited the C:\ColdFusion8\runtime\bin\jvm.config for java home to:
java.home=C:/Program Files/Java/jre1.6.0_02
And then CF 8 refused to start. After a bit of head scratching I realised CF 8 looks for a folder called "server/jvm.dll" so I simply copied the "client" folder to a new folder called "server" and hey presto - it worked.
I hope this helps others not have the same problem I did trying to work out why it wouldn't work and why they may be having problems with CF randomly crashing and re-starting under CF 8.