Note: This blog post is from 2009. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily.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.

Besides a fresher appearance there's improved organization and navigation. There are high-level views of the products (available on the front page, with tabs along the bottom for each product) and more detailed pages on each (FR and FD), with product tours, benefits, faqs, and much more. This breakdown of high-level and detail views applies as well to discussions of the Air Enterprise Dashboard and their Services (consulting, training, etc.)

Through the updated web site you can also learn about many other resources available, including articles, videos, and blogs by them and others; product docs, screenshots, FAQs and more; info on customers and free/paid support; community tool contributions, and lots more.

The folks behind FusionReactor/FusionDebug are really great. They're very open to communications and always welcome (and act effectively on) feedback. I've been a long-time fan, so much that I work with them directly on doing training and consulting based on their products (while remaining an independent consultant.) It's their very openness and willingness to listen to feedback that brought me to working with them more and more closely over the years. I'm glad to help others take notice of the company and their great products.

Note: This blog post is from 2009. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily.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.

I think this is why it's been so confusing to resolve. Instead, I've seen all kinds of guesses as to the root cause. The challenge is that if you don't have a Standard license, you can't see how things work in Standard. Fortunately, I have one and just ran a test and can confirm this.

How I've demonstrated the problem

I started out on Enterprise (same on Developer), and in the CF Admin chose to create a new datasource, choosing "Apache Derby Embedded" in the "select a valid driver type", and it took me to a page asking just for the "Database folder" where the Derby DB would live, and it offered the optional "create database" checkbox. That and a description field were it. This is indeed what one SHOULD see for a Derby Embedded DSN.

But when I switched my CF license (clicking the blue "i" icon at the top right for the System Information page) to use a Standard license key, and repeated the steps above, I was taken instead to the "other" driver page, where one is prompted to enter a JDBC URL, driver class and name, and many other things that would clearly confuse someone trying to use Derby. What a shame.

Does NOT affect those adding a Derby Client DSN

I'll add that this does NOT happen when choosing the "Apache Derby Client" driver option, even in Standard, which is odd. (And again, it doesn't affect those using Enterprise or Developer edition, even if they're using the Server/Standalone mode that's closest in implementation to Standard.)

What's this Derby thing anyway?

If you're not familiar with the difference between Derby Embedded and Client, or indeed don't know much about Derby at all (the Apache database embedded in CF 8) and may wonder why one may bother to try to use it, you can check out various Derby resources I have offered on my site, including most recently a talk I gave at Max 2008, the recording of which is available here.

Bug report filed

This problem of redirecting to the wrong page seems, then, to be clearly just a bug in CF 8 Standard. I've just filed a bug report on the CF wish form, which I discuss more here for those not familiar with it. Let's hope that perhaps this is addressed in the Centaur release.

Note: This blog post is from 2009. 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.

I actually did 2 Max talks (in addition to my Unconference talks), and I mentioned the other in a previous entry.

I'll note as well that I list this and all presentations I do, with links to PDFs or recordings, at the presentations section of my site.

Finding other CF Videos at tv.adobe.com

Finally, note that you can find other CF videos by selecting the "all product" category and choosing CF. Of course, you can also use the search field as well to find specific speakers or topics.

Note: This blog post is from 2009. 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.

But until now, I just listed them all together, without any subcategory. Today I took a shot to categorize them and saw 3 categories:

• CFML Application Frameworks/Methodologies
• CFML Injection Frameworks/Methodologies
• CFML ORM Frameworks/Methodologies

How did I do? Are these good categories? Most of them fit in the first category (about 25) are in the first category. I didn't want to break them down into which were MVC, etc. Should I bother?

Two are in the injection frameworks category (ColdSpring and Lightwire). How's that for a category name? And there are four in the ORM category.

Are things in the right place? Any needed additions/subtractions? As with all the categories in the CF411 list, I welcome suggestions, corrections, etc.

And if you didn't know there were 30-some CF frameworks, check out the list:

CFML Frameworks/Methodologies

One last request: before you comment, please check the other comments and see if I may have already changed/corrected something.

Note: This blog post is from 2009. 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.

I actually did 2 Max talks (in addition to my Unconference talks), and I've mentioned the link to the other in another entry (so as to title and categorize it separately).

I'll note as well that I list this and all presentations I do, with links to PDFs or recordings, at the presentations section of my site.

Different links for Max videos have been shared

Indeed, FWIW, I'll clarify that on that presentations page I previously listed a link to a recording of the talk which was available only to registered Max attendees. Unlike the first link offered above, at tv.adobe.com and open for all to view, this other link was at groups.adobe.com, specifically the Adobe Groups Max NA site, which required a login and you could only join if you were a registered Max attendee.

Sorry if that last part's confusing. It's just a result of Adobe trying different ways to make the content available, which was happening at the same time that the Adobe layoffs were happening.

Let's just thank them for providing the videos at all, and especially for all the free ones at tv.adobe.com.

Finding other CF Videos at tv.adobe.com

Finally, note that you can find other CF videos by selecting the "all product" category and choosing CF. Of course, you can also use the search field as well to find specific speakers or topics.

Note: This blog post is from 2009. 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.

Well, sadly, his wife Dale has been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, something he's made public on his blog. In addition to his sharing his experience there, she's has been journaling her experience and emotions on their blog. I'm sure many are finding comfort in their incredible strength and fortitude in the face of such a trying experience.

Still, the costs for treatment will be monumental, and so a group of CF community members have gotten together to create a site, www.helpsupportjoeanddale.com offering a way for those interested to offer donations to help offset those costs. So far the collections have been going really well, and all the money goes to them directly.

You can even watch a short video at the bottom of the page where Joe and Dale express their appreciation for this outpouring of support. All this was a surprise for them, and it's been a touching testament to the greatness of this community. I wanted to wait a couple of weeks to put the news out there again for those who may have missed it the first time.

Note: This blog post is from 2009. 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.

When I noticed I was getting no more comments, I knew something was up, and it turns out both were caused by the same thing. The issue was that a couple of weeks ago I switched my site to a new server (more on that later), and in the midst of the move I made a slight configuration mistake.

The bummer is that no one ever wrote met to tell me that their comments weren't taking. I offer my email address in a pod on the right of all pages. :-( Oh well. Problem solved now.

Note: This blog post is from 2009. 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.

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Note: This blog post is from 2009. 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.

Well now you can, if you have FusionReactor, by way of a simple 2-step process to configure CF to do this. You can learn more about it in this article Capturing ColdFusion's Debug Output in FusionReactor by Darren Pywell, CTO of Intergral (makers of FusionReactor).

In it, he explains what this is all about (a combination of using FR's API and the "markers" feature of the FR Request Detail page, in conjunction with CF's built-in feature to let you add and use new debugging templates). More important, he gives you all you need to know to set things up, from the simple snippet of code needed (downloadable) to a walkthrough of the simple steps needed to configure CF to hand the debugging output to FR. You can be up and running with this new capability in a matter of minutes (skip to the bottom for the "fast track" steps he offers, for proof.) Check it out.

But what about the performance impact?

And yes, he addresses briefly the performance and memory implications of using such a feature in production. You should certainly take care to ensure that doing this isn't causing any harm, especially if doing this in production. That said, I see lots of shops that leave debugging turned on and use the IP address limiting feature in the CF Admin, which many will argue is equally detrimental. I think a point to make is that the negative impact may be more "theoretical" to some than to others.

The bottom line, as he recommends, is that you should test such things before rolling them into production. Sadly, many shops can't or don't bother with testing (which is very unfortunate).

If you can't test the impact, measure it...with FusionReactor

At least then you should try to have some measure you can watch to see if processing is being in any way harmed, whether it's tracking fewer requests being processed per day, requests taking longer to run each time on average, more CPU being used by CF per day, and so on.

The very good news is that those who have FusionReactor can use FR's own tremendous logging to help report this kind of information. I talk about how to report against that using a tool like Microsoft's free Log Parser, in this page on the google group for FusionReactor.

I'll do a future blog entry on the tremendous logging that's possible. It far exceeds anything provided by any other tool, including the CF8 Server Monitor (which does no logging at all), and it does it with very low overhead.

So if you're using FusionReactor, check out the debug tool. It's very easy to enable and disable (via the CF admin, once you've added the new debugging template). It's also a useful demonstration of the FRAPI.

And if you don't have FusionReactor, check that out, too. I use it or help people use it every day to solve CF problems. It's much more than "just a monitor". For more info, see the site's many resources (brief feature highlights, docs, online help, a live demo, mailing list, and more). See also some of the other entries I've done here on FusionReactor.

Note: This blog post is from 2009. 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.

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