Opensource CFML Engines and what it means to the Community

I have kept rather on the fence for awhile on this subject for a number of reasons, one of those was I was interested to see how others would begin writing about the impact it might have on the CFML community as a whole.

The one thing that we can not argue is that the future of CFML is NOT going to die, provided that the language heads in the direction that Adobe should have been taking it 10 years ago.

Blue Dragon open source almost 12 months later

Well it is 12 months now since New Atlanta announced that they were open sourcing their J2EE version of BlueDragon, since then a lot of discussions on the future of their product and CFML in a whole had sparked some heated discussions since the announcement.

It was a very brave move for New Atlanta to decide to make that decision, and most people that I have spoken to over the last 12 months were under the impression that it was for selfish reasons. Since then it has been more than for selfish reasons.

CFML and open source

Well one of the things that I was hoping for, could become a very big reality now. At the time I write this, it is not 100% confirmed. but it appears that railo is now going open source.

New Atalanta takes the wrong view of my concern

Let me first say this to New Atlanta, the move to open source a product is an extreme move. And in this case it is one that I find more than going to be beneficial to the rest of the Coldfusion community, for reasons that I don't need to discuss here.

Initial impression of openBD source code

Well I am not going to sugar coat this, in any way shape or form.

After having a good play with the openBD code now, have made some very nice tags that I would like to release.

But I am worried, this is a product that has been around for a number of years. But it is so not polished it is not funny. This is not to have a dig at New Atlanta, but to question some of the decisions made in openBD (previously BDJ2EE).

queryGetRow() updated

I ended up having to add some form of checking after all:-(

new function I would like to see in openBD / Coldfusion

One of the things that I like about openBD, is that if the tag or function is not there. I just write it, and be done with it.

However unlike openBD, I can't do this for Coldfusion though. Except go through the process of asking for it, and cross my fingers.

openbd caveats

I have been beginning to use this more and more, and one of the things I have to say is that most things I have thrown at it openBD has been up to the challenge.

openBD and share applications

This blog is more for my benefit than others.

There seems to be a problem with using openBD at the moment, when wanting to use the same code base with more than one cfml site.

debugging openBD

One of the things that as a developer, I have to say that I love my debugging. And the easier it is the better I like it, and eclipse has got to have one of the best IDE's that allows this to happen easy and efficently.

So how can this be applied to openBD?

setting up OpenBD on Eclipse

If you are like myself and I doubt there are many that are also doing Java development as well as Coldfusion, I ran into a gotcha with setting up OpenBD under Eclipse.

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