Every once in a while I get asked, “How does one determine what node of the cluster the currently running code is on?” One of the easier way to find out is to poll the registry.
I opted not to go to my first session, a hands on session, because I have given up on hands on sessions. Nothing else appealed to me so I went back to the hotel, downloaded the Flex Builder Alpha, and built something. So no waste there.
I made it back for Understanding Flex Security with Erick Lee. I’m glad I went to this, finally there’s some instruction which talks about securing both the server and applications. I highly reccomend the materials to anyone who does Flex Development.
Then, I wandered into Architecting Flex Applications by Matt Chotin. If nothing else this finally convinced me that MVC architechture is worth looking at. I’ve seen code examples of it before, but Chotin did a great job of explaining why you would do it. The rest of it was okay.
Break for burgers from In and Out, and to get Janice settled.
I ended the day Next Generation Flex: Data Services with Christophe Coenraets. One of co-workers walked out of this with his mind blown, so I had to go to it. Man, was this cool. They really are looking to make collaborative data processing easy to do. It seems like a lot of what you could do with Flash Remoting, they built into Flex Enterprise Server. Except that it takes two or three lines of code to do it.
All in all this was my best day in terms of content quality.
The day finished with two events for me.
First I went to Sneaks and Peeks. There were a couple of cool things here. A competitor to Google Earth completely driven by vector-based images, by ESRI. That was impressive. Captivate stuff was interesting, though I have little use for it. I left after the CFEclipse and RDS demonstration.
Second, I went to a reception for Government, Education and Non-Profit customers. It was just a cocktail hour. So it was good for networking, but not really useful. But it was fun.
I started the day with a bout of issues. I assume they have to do with my choice of eatery last night. So I missed my first session.
I did make it into ColdFusion Enterprise Integration taught by Sean Corfield, who looks nothing like the picture on his site. This was fantastic, if for no other reason than it validated a lot of what I do with ColdFusion. Namely backend processes, not viewed by users. It gave me a lot of good ideas about what to do to make these processes more robust. If you do this type of work, check out this class either tomorrow, or in the materials.
The keynote was ok, although I had an aisle seat which helped a bunch. The skit thing was a little silly, and didn’t add much to the experience. Both Adobe and Jermey Allaire had incredible presentations that kinda over shadowed Macromedia. I guess this isn’t so bad though, as Allaire’s new product was based on Flex, and Adobe will be the brand soon so no big deal there.
After lunch, I found out that Leveraging Cold Fusion Components in ColdFusion MX 7 was a little to basic for me. So I walked out, and rescheduled to take Creating BLOGs Using Dreamweaver, which I also thought was a little slow. I figured my ego needed deflating so I took the certification exam for ColdFusion MX 7. I passed.
My ego was in full swing when I strode into RIA Design Best Practices: Implementation with Flex. I left after 20 minutes because it was pretty much the RIA Design Best Practices: Theory for Developers I took yeasterday, but with the occasional code example.
There is still more to do tonight, so I’m off.
Last thing I did for Max today was go to the Birds of A fether session for Cold Fusion. Tim Buntel and Damon Cooper did a really good job of dealing with an audience that went a little feral on them. I can’t figure out why. I mean no product is perfect, but people were pretty advisarial with them. Some of the people on the panel got defensive early, but I think that was going to happen. Nothing really that new was divulged, either which disappointed me.
Oh well, as disappointed as I was with it, I don’t think this one was the presenter’s fault.
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.
After a crappy flight I’m out here in Anaheim and looking forward to MAX.
Every once in a while I get fired up that I need backups of my remotely hosted site. At work this isn’t a problem, just copy all the files via a network share. But at numtopia.com I lack that access. (Rightfully – I am not complaning, Dataride.) However, FTP’ing all 700 or so files that comprise the Aarrgghh!! empire gets a little tedious.
This time instead of giving up dejectedly, I decided to use zip.cfc from Webclarity to make my own backup solution. I wrote a cfc (function really) that can take both inclusion and exlusion parameters for files, extensions and directories. In short it allows me to create tailored lightweight backups of my ColdFusion site. Want to find out more. Check it out here:
Once again I am hiring for an open position. Here’s the description I put on Forta.com:
Wharton Computing at the University of Pennsylvania is looking for a full time ColdFusion/ Flex developer in Philadelphia, PA. Duties primarily involve application development, though some server maintenance is involved. Contact: tpryan@wharton.upenn.edu.
Just so you know, knowledge of ColdFusion and Flex are not mandatory for being hired, though they are primarily what you’d be doing. I see three ways that someone could come at this job.
It’s a great place to work, with a distinct workplace culture. So drop me a line if your interested: tpryan@wharton.upenn.edu.
Dan posted yesterday about Google Sitemaps. I wanted to fool around with them, but the kit that automatically creates them uses Python, which I don’t have access to. So I decided to build my own out of CFML. If anyone else could use it, or pieces of it, feel free.
tpryan.blog 