I used to look at FOSS as a means to get free software: MySQL, Apache, Eclipse etc... FOSS is part of my day to day affairs and I dare say the best thing to ever happen to software and software developers.

But for me, FOSS is the best programming howto guide there is. It is like a living text book that is always getting better. I have learned more from reading other peoples source code than I have from any book, blog post or article. Being an autodidact, reading source code makes much sense than reading the English words used to describe the programming concepts.

Just this week I was asked to R&D a bunch of stuff and I found solutions for all the CF stuff by going to either CFLib.org or RIAForge.org. (Mad props to Ray Camden for making those sites. You saved my ass twice this week dude! Rock On with your bad ass self!)

Those sites are gold mines for CF programming knowledge. I have been turned on to so many new ideas and concepts by the folks that have shared their work that I want to give a shout out and thank you to y'all.

Thank you!!

One of the biggest pains in the arse when dealing with some FOSS apps (LAMP especially) is dependency hell. If the app you need is not part of the package manager you can get into a day(s) long hunt for dependencies.

The same is true for Eclipse (to a lesser degree). Or rather it was.

Someone on CF_talk was having problems with installing CFEclipse on the latest version of Eclipse 3.4 (Ganymede). In the past a few people recommended Pulse (myself included) to deal with Eclipse's dependencies. Pulse is a great app that resolves dependencies (most of the time) when building Eclipse Distros. Pulse is an excellent product but has a bad habit of downloading a gig or more of files (in my case) to its plugin cache (depending on your builds).

Another option, and in my opinion a better option, is yoxos.com's On Demand website. http://yoxos.com/ondemand/

Yoxos.com's On Demand website is an online tool for building custom Eclipse distros/installs. This site is one of the most amazing web based apps I have seen to in my life. The front end is damn near that of a desk top app, and the back end is even more impressive. It allows you to pick and choose from hundreds of plugins and automatically resolves dependencies so you can create custom Eclipse installs that you can save, merge and share.

I started messing around with the various plugins and found some of the most amazing tools like editors for PHP, SQL, CSS, (X)HTML, JavaScript and XML with support for Adobe AIR apps, all the major JS/AJAX libraries with code assist and inline help; wussywig HTML editors, JavaScript debuggers, XML schema editors, JavaScript/CSS/html function/property browsers, Database development tools and editors, snippets etc. etc. Not to mention Eclipse is the defacto standard for Java development and supports most of it's tool kits as well as having plugins for just about every language under the sun.

And keep in mind that a lot of the above editors are not just text editors with color coding and rudimentary code complete but first class, full featured tools/IDE's like the ones that we used to (and still do) pay hundreds of dollars for.

Oh yeah. It is all FREE!!! FOSS, me love you long time!!

CF_jscalendar is a port of jscalendar from dynarch.com for CF 5 and above.

FileUpload.cfc is a very simple File Upload component that uploads a file and sanitizes the file name for Windows servers. It was tested on on CF 7 and above and should work on Railo 2+ and (Open) BlueDragon 6.x and above.

Update: Tuesday, 10/21/08 I added set_SQL_permissions.cfm.

It is just a little throw away script that creates the SQL need to grants SELECT, INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE permissions to tables for MSSQL. Setting permissions using the SQL Server Management Studio, in a word, sucks.

I moved my blog to a new VPS and it is running on Railo 3.0 Community. Hell YEAH!!!

I have a back log of blarg entries to get posted as well. I also posting a bunch of contributions to the community with more to come.

Uploaded so far are

- My CFEclipse Snippets
- Some UDFs
- CFC Generator Lite

CFC Generator Lite is a HTML front end for creating cfc's for an entire database in one shot using Brian Rinaldi's outstanding Illudium PU-36 Code Generator.

In the pipe:

A how-to on getting Railo 3 running in a shared hosting environment with IIS on 2003 server using a hosting Control panel (Plesk 8.3) including gotchas and their work arounds.

A How-to on creating a simple ORM by abstracting your database using Brian Rinaldi's outstanding Illudium PU-36 Code Generator.

I have been working on yet another code generator for ColdFusion for the last six months. I have learned a lot. When I am done.... it will read a databse and using the metadata and it will create a working app using the ENTIRE database. It is like a mini Ruby on Rails.

You point it to the data source and a destination dir, press enter, and you have a working app. You can go from zero to working admin for a 20 table database in about a minute.

It also:

• Generates client side validation based on the data type (string, numeric, float, date, etc.).
• Generates time and date pickers for date/time fields.
• Generates inline wussywig text editors for Text fields
• Automatically generates and populates drop down boxes using foreign keys .
• Has optional secondary validation using key words in the column name (like email, phone, fax, zip, etc.).
• It is almost entirely Object Oriented and uses a very simple MVC methodology.

I am pretty pumped and have been working on this every chance I get. When I get it done, (It really snow balled from what seemed to be a very simple idea), I will be able to crank out a working app, with a couple of clicks, in a matter of minutes.

And yes, I will be releasing it open source.

Are You Frustrated With Firefox?

I have a love hate relationship with FF. The plugins are great. But it is a ram and CPU WHORE.

This is what FF does when I surf on my 2.8 gig P4 laptop. See all those EXTENDED periods where the proccessor is pegged? This is me clicking on links on standard web plain jane web 1.0 html pages.

So this is the crown jewel of open source?

Is it me or is something very, VERY wrong here?

I could be wrong though. I often am.

Yes! Finally there is a mature version of CF supported by a stable company that is FOSS.

I love CF. I dreaded the thought of having to go back to PHP or learning .NET or Java as main programming platform. I like PHP, ASP, .NET and Java well enough. But CF has spoiled me. It just takes so much more code/work to write apps in these languages. Besides, I know CF like the back of my hand. I *think* in CF. I dream in code. I program in my sleep and when I dream it is genearly from a CF stand point.

I have been learning Java due to my FUD with "CF is dead" and the general lack of jobs for CF in my area. I just got started with Java and to bring my chops up to speed, with my CF chops, on any of the above, will not happen with out some serious effort.

BTW, I never had FUD with CF until I started looking for a job outside my geek friend circle last year. But that is another story for another time.

But no more. With Blue Dragon J2EE going open source it means that all the companies and dept's that balked at the $7500 per box cost for Enterprise CF have no (good) reason to do so anymore. The $1500 jump in price for Adobe's Enterprise version really pissed me off seeing that it effectively priced itelf out of the ball park for most (mom and pop or local) ISP's and hosting companies and grass root startups (like my past efforts).

The one thing I have learned while learning Java is how powerful (and easy) CFML is. When I started learning Java (and OO programming in general) my eyes became wide open and realized how little I knew and that I was just scratching the surface to the potential of CF.

A few years back, I had foolishly thought that I had done pretty much most every thing that could be done with CF. And at the time, just around when cf 6 was released I probably was pretty much versed in 80-95% of the language to the point where it was rote.

Imagine how stupid I feel now with a ~year of OO under my belt and still not knowing shite.

So I DL's the J2EE version of BD, read the docs. I deployed it on TomCat and got busy.

First thoughts: TomCat was at 23 megs just sitting there. With BD it hit about 33-35 megs, again, just sitting there. It was at about 45 megs running some simple CFM's, i.e no CFC's. I did beat on it a bit (looping over 10,000 items) but it never went over 45 megs. Adobe CF 8 on tomcat hovered at easily twice that and the stand alone version (on apache) kisses 200 megs (sitting there) not including the ODBC, .NET bridge or search services,

All I have to say is that I am thoroughly impressed with BD. Aside from some minor syntactical difference, and missing some minor functionality from Adobe's offering; I am very, very impressed.

In fact, after reading the docs, the enhancements that BD brought to the plate (for CF 7.x) more than makes up for its compatibility issues.

So hello BDJ2EE. Me love you long time.

Open Source is starting to get on my nerves.

I love open source about 90% of the time. But FF and Eclipse are turning into a bloated sacks of fark that makes MS's worst bloated sack of fark look like notepad.

Let me see.... Right now FF is using 450 megs of ram and Eclipse is @ 358 megs.

A browser using 450 megs of ram? I close out all but one browser window and it is still using 450 megs. Open what? Suck what?

If a site has a flash video (like Youtube), FF pegs the processor of my 3 yr old (1.8 gig P4 - 1.28 gig ram) laptop and grinds it to a farking halt. Unusable.

Flash videos also pegs my 2.8 gig duel processor HP box. Nice.

No wonder I think that OSS zealots are idiots.

"But OSS is FREE!"

So is dirt. Blow me.