Released today: CF2016, or 'ColdFusion (2016 release)'. What's new, and more

Note: This blog post is from 2016. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

And while that Adobe blog post mentions a few of the main new features, as is nearly always the case it leaves out many other new features which may interest folks. It also doesn't point to resources to learn more. I do those things here in this post.

What's in a name?

First, let's talk about the name of the new release, formerly code-named Raijin. Adobe did not follow the convention of the past 20 years, naming it ColdFusion 12, or what we'd all call CF12, but instead they've switched to dated names, as in ColdFusion 2016, or what they formally are naming it, "ColdFusion (2016 release)", or what we'll all likely call it: CF2016. I'm not sure I like this new nomenclature, for a number of reasons, but I suppose time will tell how it goes.

What's new? The main features

Again, the CF team blog post highlights 4 primary new features (with a paragraph on each):

• Security Code Analyzer
• Performance improvements
• PDF improvements
• API Manager

I won't elaborate on what these offer. See the docs and other resources (which I list below) for more info.

I will note a couple of things that may interest some.

First is something that may be a bummer to some: the Security Code Analyzer ONLY runs with the Enterprise edition of CF...not with the free developer edition, though of course yes with the free trial, which is Enterprise for 30 days unless you add a Standard license key. Also, the analyzer only runs in CFBuilder (and that only in CFBuilder 2016, for now--though note that as before, purchasers of CF get free licenses to CFBuilder, one for each CF Standard license and three for each CF Enterprise license. See Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) | Adobe ColdFusion Builder (2016 release), and the section, "Is ColdFusion Builder 2016 included with Adobe ColdFusion 2016?").

What else is new? Some less prominent features

As always is the case, there's more to this new release than what's listed in those main bullet points Just some other things (not the complete list) are:

• new command-line interface (CLI)
• ability to store sessions someplace other than CF's memory (a redis cache)
• still more PDF enhancements (than listed in the Adobe blog post)
• several CFML enhancements (language and tags/functions)
• support for NTLM in cfobject, cfinvoke, cfsharepoint
• the removal of the CF Admin from public access (by default)
• the moving of cfscripts to its own directory, not in CFIDE (cf_scripts, in the CF wwwroot, and pointed to as a virtual directory in IIS, Apache, etc.)
• and more

As for the details, again see the docs (and more, and surely many will be blogging soon especially on the language enhancements, and their opinions on these and other changes).

Where to find out more

Update: First, see an article on the Adobe site, done by CF Product Manager, Rakshith Naresh, called "What's new in ColdFusion (2016 release)". I hadn't seen that article, posted the same day I did this, on the 16th.

So about the docs, folks can learn more about CF 2016 in a few places:

• First especially the What's new page
• And of course the entire doc set is now updated for 2016, though some of it still focuses on CF11 as being "the new release", which is unfortunate. For instance, the under-appreciated manual, Developing Applications manual starts with a "Changes in ColdFusion" section that is only about CF11.

  (Seems even some at Adobe don't fully appreciate that great manual. It's over 1100 pages printed. If you seek a "book about CF", this is it, and has been in each release of CF since 6, though many still only refer to the CFML Reference manual. Each has its place. Even if it's not updated for 2016, everyone should be familiar with the Developing Apps manual.)

  The PDF versions of the CF 2016 manuals can be found at here.

• Note that there are release notes, but they are focused more on known issues rather than new features.
• There is also the "buying guide" resource which offers a table of features compared and contrasted between CF2016 and 11/10/9, offered separately for Standard and Enterprise.
• And each of those points to a page with more details on the CF 2016 features, for Standard and Enterprise

Videos, for those who prefer them to reading

Besides the docs, you can also get an 8-minute video overview available on the Adobe CF team youtube page, and there are several other videos there on the API Manager and one on the Security code analyzer.

Some warts in the CF site's online resources

I mentioned some issues with the docs above. That's not the only place in the online resources that have warts related to CF1 vs CF2016

For instance, after downloading CF, we are taken to a getting started page, whose links still go to CF11 resources, such as the "What is new in ColdFusion?" link which goes to the CF11 version of that page. Also there is nothing on CF 2016 yet at the CF Developer Center page.

Hopefully such links and content references will be changed over time.

More to come, including more hidden gems

And there are still more hidden gems to uncover, and you know I'll be gathering those up to offer in time. (For those not familiar with my work, I have done a "hidden gems" article or presentation on each release of CF back to 3.0.1. Just google: coldfusion hidden gems, to find them, here and elsewhere.)

In the meantime, comments are welcome (but if you have beefs to raise to Adobe, you'd really be better off raising them on the Adobe log post rather than here, so that they see them).

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