Charlie Arehart, CTO [email protected] BlueDragon A New Platform for Fusebox 4.

Charlie Arehart, [email protected]

BlueDragonBlueDragon

A New Platform for Fusebox 4A New Platform for Fusebox 4

April 18, 2023 New Atlanta Communications, LLC

About Your Speaker

6 yrs CF, 20 yrs enterprise IT experience Past accomplishments of note

Team Macromedia Member Allaire/Macromedia Certified Instructor Allaire/Macromedia Certified Adv CF Developer (4, 5, MX) Macromedia Customer Advisory Board Member Contributor to Macromedia Devnet Tech editor, ColdFusion Dev Journal magazine

Co-authored recent ColdFusion MX Bible With Hal Helms and Adam Churvis

Frequent writer for CFDJ (3rd most behind Hal and Ben Forta)

Frequent speaker to user groups, conferences worldwide Named CTO of New Atlanta in April 2003 Goal, as always in my contributions:

spread the word about valuable features in tools we can use every day


Any Challenges For You?

Are you an ISV selling your Fusebox app to multiple clients? Problem: perhaps high cost of CF 5/MX compared to your product What if you could serve your CFML app for less than your app’s cost?

Or even on a royalty basis?

Are you a contractor/system integrator building a FB app for a client?

Problem: clients are reluctant to pay for CFMX (“asp/jsp/php are free”) What if you could offer them a way to run the app for free

Are you a hosting provider supporting multiple clients/apps on each CF server?

Problem: clients can conflict with each other (poor coding, varying needs) What if you could make apps independent of each other on the one

server? Each with own admin, settings; segregated from each other’s impact What if the CFML runtime overhead for that was just 2MB per server?

Do any of these apply to you even if not an ISV, SI, or hosting?


How Can It Be?

Am I “peddling crack” (a favorite analogy of Hal’s)?

Is there a black market for CF licenses?

Have I cornered a market on EBay?

Many of you know I’m talking about BlueDragon

The alternative CFML runtime environment from New Atlanta Communications

What is it? Why should you care?

Will get to that, and more benefits


So Why Am I Here?

So why am I here? Besides introducing you to BlueDragon

I know that people don’t like sales pitches But is this really any different from my typical articles or

talks? Sharing something with you that you may not have seen

That you can use in your everyday CFML coding practices

Will show you what BlueDragon is about momentarily

Want to first talk to those already familiar with it


BlueDragon and Fusebox

First, want to say that Fuseboxers are already using BlueDragon

You can run fusebox apps on BlueDragon Indeed, we have a Fortune 50 customer about to release a

FB app We have vendors partnering to deploy commercial FB apps

Second, want to announce something very relevant to FuseBox

Indeed, specific to our support of Fusebox 4 You’re hearing it here first

Not even announced on our discussion list


The Key to Fusebox 4

Question: What’s been BlueDragon’s biggest knock?

Answer: Full compatibility with CF

Lack of CFMX features, like XML, web services, CFCs

What is the key CFMX feature used in Fusebox 4?

Answer: XML tags and functions

And our announcement…


BlueDragon 3.1 to Support XML

Our next release, 3.1, will support XML Due out in October

Will support CFXML, XmlParse, XMLSearch, etc. Let’s see it in action…

3.1 will have still other MX features Note: we already have some now in 3

java integration, j2ee sessions, UrlSessionFormat, forward, and more

See my blog: http://bluedragon.blog-city.com/read/136203.htm Will add more MX features in 3.1 Then the rest in 4 (goal: full MX 6.1 compatibility)

Will include CFCs, including 6.1 enhancements Perhaps some other enhancements, some requested by FB

community


3.1 Preview Available Now

We have released a “preview” of 3.1 Supports many improvements over 3 Has been made available to current customers Adds debugging output, whitespace suppression options,

and more Not yet supporting XML (will come out with beta in

October) But you saw it is working in our internal builds

Also, be aware of our CFDEBUGGER tag Traces lines of code executing CFML tags Let’s see it… Documented in my blog

http://bluedragon.blog-city.com/read/188000.htm


So What Is BlueDragon?

By now should be clear what BlueDragon really is

At simplest: just an alternative way to run your CFML apps Built atop Java server platform, just as is CFMX

Can integrate with Java (CFOBJECT, CFX Java custom tags, JSPs)

Substantially compatible with CF 4, 5 Lacks only a handful of tags and functions (documented at

our site) Many of these, and remaining MX tags, being addressed

Can even do Flash integration Did talk 2 weeks ago at FlashKit conference on the many

ways to integrate Flash with any web app server OpenAMF project even brings remoting to Java servers


Available in Three Editions

Mentioned free edition: BlueDragon Server Really is free, for deployment, not just testing

ALL editions are available free for testing and development Free Server edition is not at all crippled like CF Express 4.5

was See my blog entry for more:

http://bluedragon.blog-city.com/read/124577.htm

Hosting or redistribution require separate OEM license Again, for such partnerships, we will work to grow your business

See August 8 message “Growing a Business with BlueDragon” on our BlueDragon Interest mailing list (archive at “self-help” section of our site)

Next step up: BlueDragon Server JX ($549) Like Server, a standalone server Adds features not in free Server edition

Including CFEXECUTE, CFSCHEDULE, and the few others held back Java CFX’s, JSP/servlets integration, and more

Let’s discuss JSP integration more…


Sidebar: JSP Integration

Any CFML developer may be interested in integration with JSPs and Servlets

BlueDragon Server JX supports this Allows you to run JSP pages alongside your CFML Can share session, application, and request vars between

CFML and JSP/servlets Can transfer control from one to the other, include one

from other

In CFMX 6/6.1, is only possible with Enterprise BlueDragon Server JX offers it at $549

Can also do this, and lots more, in J2EE edition…


BlueDragon/J2EE Edition

Have not yet mentioned perhaps most important edition: BlueDragon/J2EE

Other editions are standalone servers Running atop our ServletExec java server, like MX runs atop Jrun

What if you already have another J2EE server Such as WebLogic, Websphere, Sun One, Jrun, TomCat, JBoss, etc.

May not want to install a CF (or BlueDragon) Server

May not want its other embedded Java server Question: is anyone coding on a J2EE server?

What is the standard means to deploy your code? Answer: a J2EE Web Application (or WAR or EAR

file) Our J2EE Edition IS a Web App

Can add in your CFML code and deploy it on any J2EE server Let’s see it…


Benefits of BlueDragon/J2EE

Can run your CFML wherever a J2EE server is supported

Mac, Linux, Unix, Mainframe, Windows, etc. Also exposes your CFML app to all the features

and benefits of that J2EE server Multiple independent instances on a single server Clustering on multiple servers EJBs, JMS, etc Weblogic: Portals, Page Flows, etc. The aforementioned integration of JSPs, servlets

As mentioned, overhead is just 2MB per web app If being told to move to J2EE, don’t have to get

rid of CFML Can move to J2EE server and run CFML as is Can choose to integrate with or eventually migrate to

JSP/servlets


Finally…

What if you’re a .NET shop? .NET framework is very similar to Java framework and JVM CFMX and BlueDragon run natively atop Java

Question: would it be interesting to run atop .NET?

Leverage .NET framework libraries, components? Native COM integration?

Answer: BlueDragon/.NET coming out soon In Alpha testing


Getting Started

Can download any of our versions www.newatlanta.com/bluedragon/

Can run it alongside CF 4, 5 or MX Doesn’t conflict with them at all, other than sharing web

server Includes its own web server (like CFMX)

Or can integrate with IIS, Apache, Iplanet, NES, and more Bonus: My September 2003 CFDJ article on running CF and MX

alongside each other, with both accessible via a single IIS (accessing same CFML)

Join our free BlueDragon Interest discussion list Email list, staffed by our engineers and customers Friendly, very supportive and responsive: low volume Sign up at web site, in “self help” area

Feel free to email me at [email protected]

Charlie Arehart, CTO [email protected] BlueDragon A New Platform for Fusebox 4.

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Transcript of Charlie Arehart, CTO [email protected] BlueDragon A New Platform for Fusebox 4.