Posted By : Dan Wilson     January 28, 2008 8:33 AM

I've interviewed John Wilker, who along with Tom Ortega, founded 360Conferences. John is an interesting guy who came up through the ranks as a ColdFusion programmer and later moved over to also developing Flex applications. Not mentioned in the interview, John has taken a co-host spot alongside Jeffry Houser on the Flex Show podcast. Be sure and tune in regularly.

360|Flex Atlanta is February 25-27, 2008. I went to the first ever 360|Flex conference in San Jose. It was a really Good Conference

Not academic nor dry, 360|Flex is alive, unpretentious and exciting! I learned more in some 1 hour sessions than I did in a week of pouring over Flex documentation. The food was always good. The conference was packed with lots of interesting people. You should get your ticket before they are all gone.

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     January 28, 2008 8:09 AM

To date, in our series on Surfing Stats, we have covered the intent, directory structure, data sets, main application file, ChartToggle component, states, implicit getters/setters, navigational elements and ViewStacks. (download the code using the download link at the bottom of the the Intro to Surfing Stats post). In this series, we'll discuss the 3 display components, TableView, BarChart and PieChart.

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     January 28, 2008 6:13 AM

I've had the pleasure of working for many diverse employers and clients. A number of times I've been on a team working to resolve misbehaving software/servers. Part of the job is digging through logs. Another part is load testing specific workflows looking for knots or bottlenecks in the process. Still another part is analyzing each query for suboptimal performance.

There can be many factors that contribute to performance problems. Mike Brunt, Systems Guru at Alagad, has the skills to quickly analyze an application and tune it for proper efficiency. Mike has been posting on the Alagad blog for some time now. I find his posts to be informative and to show an uncommon depth on complex topics. Mike has an ability to simply explain tough subjects.

After reading his latest post, I was struck by how much I do not know. I understand, at a base level, how the JVM allocates memory and that changing the allocated memory can improve application performance. I don't pretend to have the experience needed to diagnose problems and fix them by providing more appropriate settings.

Organizations that rely on critical web applications should pay attention to server performance. While performance problems can be mitigated, to an extent, by increasing the hardware running the system, adding hardware brings additional expenses in the form of hardware, software licenses, maintenance efforts, increased power consumption and less available room in the server racks.

If you run into server performance issues, keep in mind the professionals in our community that specialize in diagnosing and repairing server performance. There is more to server performance than code and database queries!

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     January 24, 2008 10:25 PM

Last night, Ben Forta came to Cary, North Carolina to showcase the soon to be released Flex 3 and AIR products from Adobe.

Flex Builder 3 is a compelling upgrade for the product. The IDE offering has actually gone down in price even while adding nice new features like Improved Designer/Developer workflow, a memory profiler, advanced components, and support for the AIR platform.

For more complete information on Flex 3 Features see the labs.adobe.com page.

Also soon to be released is the long awaited Abode Integrated Runtime product. AIR, as it is known for short, offers a cross-operating system runtime that allows developers to leverage their existing web development skills (Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript, Ajax) to build and deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) to the desktop.

This means your application can now access the local file system, accept drag and drop assets from the desktop, run outside of the browser and actually run completely offline. The product even contains the SQLite database to help handle offline data.

Many people have not fully grasped one of the most interesting features of AIR. You can write a desktop application using the AIR platform, HTML and Javascript. This will level the playing field by allowing existing web developers and designers to use their current skilling to create functionally relevant desktop applications.

Honors of the night go to the Anthropologie demonstration. The premise of the application is to show how the Anthropologie catalog of apparel can be displayed in an offline mode. The user can search for an article of clothing based on standardized parameters. The user can also drag an image onto the application and use a color dropper to select a color and use that color as search criteria using very intuitive workflow. When Ben actually drug a picture onto the application, selected a color and the search results automatically filtered, the collective breath left the room. See for yourself at this video of the Anthropologie Catalog AIR application.

Are you prepared for the upcoming RIA arms race? It promises to be interesting!

Note: I've been keeping up to date with the blog chatter on the meeting. A local TV station even interviewed Ben Forta! See my article on ria.dzone.com for more content./p>

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     January 22, 2008 8:27 AM

Before the end of 2007, I wanted to move closer towards my goal of being an Adobe Certified Expert and Adobe Community Expert, so I took the ColdFusion 7 Developer Exam. The exam tests expertise and competency of a ColdFusion Developer. Question topics range from Web Development to ColdFusion Product specific knowledge. The exam is 66 questions in multiple choice format.

Examinees who pass are awarded one of two titles dependent on score:

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     January 21, 2008 11:31 AM

Shannon and I watched Beowulf in 3D at the local Raleigh Imax theatre. I henceforth proclaim (Using Beowulf Accent) that all movies shall be in 3D.

I have no idea what Beowulf would look like on a conventional movie theater screen. I can only imagine it to be dull and lifeless compared to the visually stimulating and realistic portrayal watched by us.

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     January 21, 2008 8:33 AM

There exists untold billions of lines of Server Side Java code running in production environments today. Java is a fine language, widely adopted and used by companies both large and small. One of the drawbacks in Java development is that Java is not a rapid development environment. Adding functionality, screens and new applications on top of an existing Java based SOA requires manpower and time.

ColdFusion is built on J2EE underpinnings. The deep Java heritage offers tremendous power and functionality. ColdFusion objects are Java objects. A ColdFusion Array is actually an instance of java.util.Vector thus you can run Vector methods directly on a ColdFusion array. It is just that simple. ColdFusion can easily create or consume SOAP webservices. ColdFusion can knit together disparate subsystems to make a unified SOA. All without fundamentally changing platforms or languages.

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     January 18, 2008 8:26 AM

Today I accidentally deleted a file in Eclipse. I didn't even know I did it until I ran my code. I am not even sure how I deleted it. My best guess is the current focus was on the project explorer and some strange key combo sent the file to the netherworld.

Eclipse, as you probably know, does not use the Windows 'recycling bin'. As luck would have it, the file was long, complex, just freshly debugged and not yet in version control.

I was able to recover the file by using the Restore from Local History option located in the context menu inside the project navigator.

"What?!?! I thought that only worked for files, not directories..." , you might say. I thought the same thing. Thankfully Eclipse is smart enough to know that when humans are behind the keyboard, expect the unexpected.

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     January 17, 2008 6:17 PM

The fine folks at dzone.com have added a ColdFusion tag. Now you can add your coldfusion content to dzone.com and reach millions of developers from around the world.

See ColdFusion on dzone.com

Thanks to dzone.com for adding the tag.

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     January 14, 2008 8:54 AM

To date, in our series on Surfing Stats, we have covered the intent, directory structure, data sets and the main application file. (download the code using the download link at the bottom of the the Intro to Surfing Stats post). Now we examine ChartToggle.mxml.

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