Yes, ColdFusion officially turns 13 years old today! I think a quick trip down memory lane is in order. How many of these logos do you remember?

And if you are really in the mood, check out this Allaire homepage circa 1997 (courtesy of the Internet Archive Wayback Machine)! Wow, Fuel Packs available, Forums 2.0 released, HomeSite 2 is a CNET finalist, my 1st book on Amazon's top 10 ... fun stuff! ;-)

Jason Harris knows GIS (and in particular ESRI technologies) and is also a long time ColdFusion user. And he blogs on both topics (including using them together), Flex, and more.

Adobe Developer Connection is running an article by Scott Stroz entitled Easy rich Internet applications with ColdFusion 8. The article, which was originally published by SitePoint, introduces ColdFusion 8 Ajax functionality, and walks through building a sophisticated ColdFusion powered Ajax based Rich Internet Application.

Doug Hughes has written an introductory article entitled Adobe ColdFusion for the Web Developer for HTML Goodies. And he's planning follow up articles, too.

Yesterday I had to (once again) ping Tom Jordahl for help in figuring out exactly what to pass to a particular funky Web Service. And of course, Tom had the answer for me, as he always does. But this time he went a step further and blogged about Using WSDL2Java to figure out CFML arguments to a Web Service.

We're hosting a new series of ColdFusion Webinars in July, 4 sessions in all of 4 different topics. ColdFusion Product Marketing Manager Kristen Schofield has posted details, and you can register online.

David Tucker purchased a copy of ColdFusion for personal use with his own funds. He look at the alternatives, even free/cheap alternatives, and bought ColdFusion. And over on InsideRIA he tells why.

ColdFusion 8 includes LiveCycle Data Services 2.5, and the instructions we've provided on getting CF to use the about-to-be-released LCDS 2.6 leave much to be desired. Joshua Rodgers has written a superb step-by-step post on getting this all working. [Via Ryan Stewart].

Luis Majano has announced that he has partnered with two other companies to offer ColdBox Platform Official Training Seminars - 16+ hours of intensive hands-on training.

CFML has come a long way in over a decade. Over the years the language has evolved, sometimes gradually and thoughtfully, other times less so, but evolved it has. And Allaire/Macromedia/Adobe have, understandably, been the primary stewards of the language, fueling that evolution based on customer feedback, industry trends, as well as our own innovation. We've not always been successful (I have my own long list of CFML inconsistencies, gotchas, and the like, and others do too), but in general we've always tried to do the right thing, an almost impossible task. What is right for language purity is often not right for the masses, and what is right for the top tier of CFers is often not right for beginners, and what is right for our engineering teams sometimes is at odds with what is right in the expectations of our developer base. Still, all in all, I believe we've been phenomenally successful in creating a language that is easily learned and readily usable by beginners, while being powerful and flexible enough to meet the needs of the most technical experts. But times have changed. For starters, as ColdFusion has grown more all encompassing (starting in CFMX), so have the demands on the language - new features need new language elements, and thus language proliferation. In addition, there are other engines that execute CFML code, engines that perhaps do things that ColdFusion does not do or does differently, and vice-versa. And while ever vendor and player in this space should have the luxury to innovate as they see fit, the more they do so, the greater the risk of further fragmentation and inconsistencies within the language. Which is why there has been talk for several years now of transferring stewardship of the language from any single vendor to a committee or consortium. In fact, I remember being asked about just this while on a panel at CFUnited (or CFUN as it was known back then) quite a few years ago. But that never happened, for two reasons. One reason is purely one of economics. Simply put, could the ColdFusion team afford to spend precious engineering time on an effort that would take resources time away from core development, while essentially only helping competitors? And back then the answer was no, not at all. After all, which feature in CF7 or CF8 should we have sacrificed in order to do so? That's not an answer many want to hear, but it's the truth, and it's how I answered that question all those years ago. But there is another answer too, and this is the answer I did not give because, well, frankly it would have opened up a Pandora's box that I just did not want to have to deal with at the time. For different organizations to work together on a project that less directly helps their own interests while at the same time requiring a degree of cooperation that could legitimately further the interests of the others parties, one important ingredient is required. It's called trust, and without it any collaboration between competitors is doomed, despite the best of intentions. And let's be honest, there has been little trust between the various players in this space. No, I am not going to get sucked into gossip or mudslinging or a he-says-she-says, that's beyond irrelevant. The only thing that is relevant is that if we are truly honest with ourselves we'll have no choice but to acknowledge that trust between the various players has been nonexistent. And no trust equals no cooperation, it's that simple. So what's changed? Why is now the right time to truly start cooperating in the bests interests of the language and community that loves it and relies on it, putting those interests above those of individual organizations and products? What's changed is that there are now players who truly do get along (as I noted in a previous post). Not that they did not get along previously, the relationships was always a very professional albeit neutral one. And that's a good thing. It's allowed for trust which has allowed for open communication which has allowed for the types of discussions that have not been possible previously. And so at CFUnited this week we announced the creation of the "CFML Language Advisory Committee", a small group who hopefully will come up with the guidelines and standards and recommendations that will ensure the long term viability and integrity of CFML. The committee is a work in progress, and the details of its objectives and mandate and workings still need to be hammered out. But it's an important first step, and one that all involved are enthusiastically committed to. In the interests of openness, and to ensure that no committee representation drowns out the voice of any other constituents, we were careful to not stack the deck in any way. The initial group of six is made up of two Adobe representatives, a Railo representative, and three community representatives. And yes, there are stakeholders who are conspicuously absent from the initial committee. And as expected, that point was made by one of the first questioners after the announcement who wanted to know how the interests of other players would be represented. I answered the question bluntly and honestly, and tried to be as professional and measured as possible in doing so. And basically what I explained was what I already said above. Right now we've included those who respect the business requirements and necessities of the other players in the space, and those who have demonstrated a clear commitment to the community, looking out for its best interests. Of course, by inference I was saying that others are not meeting those prerequisite requirements, and understandably this has upset some. But as I said before, the trust factor is critical. Here's an example. Yesterday, during the keynote, Adam Lehman demonstrated some of what we are planning around Hibernate based ORM support in ColdFusion "Centaur". And as it so happens, Gert Franz of Railo has already stated that his team is working on Hibernate integration as well. Obviously, we need to work together. There is no requirement that we solve the same problems the same way, nor is there a requirement that the solutions be compatible. At the end of the day product teams should do what they believe is correct and in the best interests of their respective products and businesses. But we do need to work together as much as possible, doing so benefits the community and hopefully both of our eventual feature implementations. And that's just the one public example, there are many others. And that's where the trust comes in. Not inviting some of the stakeholders initially is less about taking stands or punishing indiscretions or playing politics. It's about trust and the reality that where there is a history of distrust the frank and open discussion that this endeavor requires will be utterly impossible. That's not to say that things can't change. They can, and hopefully will. For example, when one of the players in this space spins off a standalone community driven open source initiative, that represents an opportunity to start over, to divorce from prior ill-feelings and built up distrust. Has that opportunity been realized? That's debatable, and many have strong feelings on this one. And who's right and who's wrong is unimportant. What is important is that the fact that this is so hotly debated, the reality is that the trust is still not there. Not yet. So, for now we have a new small and very focused "CFML Language Advisory Committee", one that will hopefully start to contribute in earnest immediately, one that will start to realize benefits for all involved, including the community. And as I explained yesterday, the committee is deliberately and intentionally not stacked or biased in any majority direction, and so the ability to invite and include other stakeholders in the future is a definite possibility. Yesterday's announcement is an important first step, and one that I hope marks the beginning of a new era for CFML and for the community that has supported it for so long.

Charlie Griefer has written an article for Packt Publishing entitled ColdFusion 8-Enhancements You May Have Missed. Lots of nice little goodies in this one.

This morning, during the CFUnited keynote, we announced that ColdFusion would be made freely available for educational use (including students and faculty). The program is modeled on the Adobe Flex Builder 3 Pro for Education program, and will use similar distribution and similar eligibility and verification requirements. This is a really important program for ColdFusion. For starters, there is real interest in teaching ColdFusion, and we definitely need new to be training new developers. But additionally, there is significant interest in teaching RIA development in colleges and universities, and by making both ColdFusion and Flex Builder freely available for educational use, both ColdFusion and Flex benefit. We had hoped to be able to announce the immediate availability of this program, but the process is taking longer than we had hoped, and is not available yet. So, bear with us a bit longer, and watch for an announcement within the next few weeks.

I am in hiding in my hotel room here in Washington, D.C., working on tomorrow's CFUnited opening keynote. If you're attending, don't be late. We have a couple of really important and exciting announcements to make, and some really cool demos too (assuming we can actually get them working by then). And shortly, with any luck, I'll head down to the bar to look for familiar faces.

In recent years the U.K. has become home to an impressive array of ColdFusion related events and conferences, and among the list is CFDevCon 2008 in Brighton, England,on September 25th and 26th. I am not going to be able to attend this one myself, but seeing the agenda and speaker lineup I wish I could. Check out the CFDevCon 2008 website for yourself.

cflib.org has long been one of the premier ColdFusion resources, a vast collection of all sorts of user contributed CFML user defined functions. And Ray Camden has just relaunched cflib.org with a new sleek look, and a great and snappy UI.

Last year we introduced dedicated ColdFusion account managers in the U.S., and they have been so successful that we've been working on doing the same for other regions. And Europe is at the top of that list. In fact, last year, at MAX in Barcelona, we hosted a ColdFusion BOF, and the lack of local ColdFusion presence and understanding (within Adobe Europe) was identified as the single biggest concern for local ColdFusion users. So, after much searching, we have finally brought our first European dedicated ColdFusion representative on board. Please join me in welcoming Claude Englebert to the ColdFusion team. Many of you already know Claude, he's been part of the ColdFusion community for many years, and some of you met him in Edinburgh last week. For any question and concerns ColdFusion related, Claude is your man in EMEA. His e-mail address is cenglebe@adobe.com, and he is blogging at http://www.englebert.be/blog/.

Last week Gert Franz, CEO of Railo, announced that Railo 3.1 will be open sourced, that the new LPGL2 licensed project will be hosted at JBoss.org, and that the JBoss community will be contributing to the enhancement of core functionality. I've known Gert for a long time. We first met in Zurich back in 2001, and out paths have crossed repeatedly over the years. Gert has always been professional, respectful, and forthright, despite the fact that he had created a ColdFusion clone (and thus was a competitor). Gert has repeatedly demonstrated his commitment to the ColdFusion community, and has made a point to never be antagonistic or divisive, and to always be open and honest, despite us being competitors. In fact, before he made the announcement last week, he requested a meeting with the ColdFusion team leaders to give them advanced notice and to chat about positioning and the future. He even asked me to eyeball the joint JBoss Railo press release, just to make sure that it contained nothing objectionable or unnecessarily divisive. I'm not a fool, and I know that Gert's actions are not entirely altruistic - at the end of the day he has a business to run and needs to do what is in his business' best interests. But at the same time, he has gone out of his way to balance those interests with those of the community in general. He has never badmouthed ColdFusion or the community, he has never tried to sell his product by putting down ours, he has never actively tried to drive our developers away from the core platform, and he's always tried to sell his product on its strengths, playing fairly and honestly. And that's not something that I can say about all of the players in this space. Could the JBoss Railo relationship impact ColdFusion sales? Yes, of course it could. So why am I not worried about Railo's new announcement and direction? Why do I think that this is actually a very positive direction? Because unlike some other relationships, this one does indeed have the best interests of the community at heart. Neither Railo nor JBoss see ColdFusion apps as legacy, and they don't see their only business model as in converting ColdFusion developers to Java or to .NET. Rather, they see the value that is CFML and the ColdFusion community, and they want to enhance it and expose it to the wider Java community. Which means that very realistically this relationship could significantly raise ColdFusion and CFML awareness, and could enhance ColdFusion's reputation and visibility, and could even help grow the size of the community and the number of deployments. And at the end of the day, if that were to occur, then the entire community would benefit, including ColdFusion and its customers and users. So Gert, I wish you and your team much luck on this new endeavor. And I am looking forward to working together with you to further the interests of our respective companies, while at the same time ensuring a thriving future for ColdFusion and the ColdFusion community.

Simon Bailey has posted an example of how to communicate with ColdFusion from a PureMVC Flex client, performing a query against a remote CFC.

At Scotch on the Rocks this week, Adam Lehman and I chatted about ColdFusion, Flex, and LiveCycle Data Services (LCDS for short). We spent quite a bit of time on the latter because when I polled the crowd of 150 or so, only 3 raised their hands when asked who'd looked at LCDS. That's a shame, as LCDS is tightly integrated with ColdFusion 8 and can even be seamlessly installed along with ColdFusion 8, and few ColdFusion developers have taken the time to figure out the value that LCDS bring to the table, and especially the value of the Data Management Services. Which is why we spent time on the subject in Edinburgh, and why I focused on it in recent presentations in D.C., Toronto, Atlanta, and more. So I was really pleased to see that Adobe TV posted my Understanding Data Management Services session today, it's not ColdFusion specific, but it does explain the basics.

Steve Drucker has posted a recorded Connect session showing how to create a PDF form (using LiveCycle Designer) containing controls which are powered by a ColdFusion backend.