I started the day with RIA Design Best Practices: Theory for Developers session. This was really well done. I tend to have a soft sport for theory, but I felt they did a great job with it. The had great illustrations of their principles, and showed you exactly how they were conforming to their principles with each example.
The same could not be said for Securitng ColdFusion MX 7. I left after 50 minutes. At the point at which I left they still hadn’t gotten to any security for Cold Fusion. It was focused on securing the OS and the webserver. I would avoid this class. There used to be a great white paper from Macromedia about securing CF7, but I can’t find it now. I’m sure it address the most common problems with ColdFusion servers, that is that the OS is poorly secured, but I was looking for more than just how to filter packets.
The keynote was good but not really explosive. They did the whole “App of the Future” thing, which was cool, but nonexistant. I was happy that Macromedia acknolwedges their competition, and I hoep their estimation of Redmonds forays into Flash killing are correct. However my view of the keynote might have been negatively influenced by airplane like seating conditions.
Finally there was the monster 3 hour Advanced ColdFusion MX 7 Features Exposed. It was good. Some part were old hat, but they really did a good job of explaining why these features that I never used before were worth using. I found myself saying “I could do that here” or “That could help with that project” which is a very good thing to come out of such a session. If nothing else, their section on combining Flex and CF has rekindled my interest in Flex.
All in all a god day. Looking forward to the Cold Fusion Birds of a Feather presentation tonight.
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