Thursday, August 2, 2007

Continuing ColdFusion 8 Ship Coverage - 2

News Articles

1. Adobe Serves Up ColdFusion 8 - SD Times [Full Text]

2. Adobe Releases ColdFusion 8 – Application Development Trends [Full Text]

Additional Postings:

- ENT News: http://entmag.com/news/article.asp?EditorialsID=8892

- Redmond Developer News: http://reddevnews.com/news/article.aspx?editorialsid=8892

Redmond Magazine: http://redmondmag.com/news/article.asp?EditorialsID=8892

3. Round-Up of Adobe Announcements Last Week - ZDNet Blogs [Full Text]

4. Adobe ColdFusion 8 Released – Techwhack India [Full Text]

5. Adobe Ships ColdFusion 8 for Web Developers – Digital Arts [Full Text]

Additional Posting:

- Reseller News: http://reseller.co.nz/reseller.nsf/news/BFA1B5970A19CEC6CC257328007E667D

6. Adobe Ships ColdFusion 8 – ITBusiness.ca [Full Text]

7. Adobe ColdFusion Links to AIR – PC World (InfoWorld reprint) [Full Text]

8. Adobe ColdFusion Links to AIR – Computerworld (InfoWorld reprint) [Full Text]

9. Adobe ColdFusion Links to AIR – ARNnet (InfoWorld reprint) [Full Text]

10. Adobe Ships ColdFusion 8 – ZDNet Asia (ZDNet UK reprint) [Full Text]

11. Adobe ColdFusion 8 ships in the UK – PC Advisor UK (Macworld UK reprint) [Full Text]

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Full Text of Articles

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1. Adobe Serves Up ColdFusion 8

SD Times

Date: July 30, 2007

Byline: Jeff Feinman

http://www.sdtimes.com/article/LatestNews-20070715-45.html

In the middle of the summertime heat, Adobe Systems is offering a way for developers to cool down with today's announcement of the general availability of Adobe ColdFusion 8, a tool for building dynamic Web sites and Internet applications.

ColdFusion 8 allows developers to integrate ColdFusion applications with other Adobe technologies such as Flex, PDF, Adobe Integrated Runtime and Adobe LiveCycle. The new version supports .NET, Windows Vista and JBoss integration. It also uses AJAX-based components to design and deploy applications.

Adobe officials said that since May, more than 14,000 developers have participated in the ColdFusion 8 public beta.

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2. Adobe Releases ColdFusion 8

Application Development Trends

Date: July 30, 2007

Byline: John K. Waters

http://www.adtmag.com/article.aspx?id=21049

Adobe Systems is set to release a new version of its ColdFusion software development environment today (July 30). ColdFusion 8 provides an expanded set of tools and technologies aimed at developers building dynamic Web sites and rich Internet applications (RIAs).

ColdFusion 8 (code named "Scorpio") is the first release of the 12-year-old solution as an Adobe product, and there's a lot of interest in it among the installed customer base. Adobe acquired the technology when it purchased Macromedia in 2005. The public beta of the product has been available on the Adobe Labs Web site for several months, and the San Jose, Calif.-based company is reporting more than 14,000 downloads since May.

"This release is about Adobe's DNA being injected into a tested and proven way of building Web apps," said Tim Bruntel, senior product marketing manager for ColdFusion. "Traditionally, people relied on ColdFusion to build applications with static HTML front ends. In version 8, we've introduced the idea of a richer user experience of the content created by a ColdFusion application."

ColdFusion combines an application server with a rapid application development environment designed to integrate databases and Web pages. It employs its own scripting language, the ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML), which is similar to JavaServer Pages, C#, and PHP, and uses tag-based syntax like HTML.

This release introduces a slew of new features to the product, but the loudest buzz is being generated by its .NET integration. As a Java-based solution, ColdFusion has long allowed developers to invoke Java objects natively; the new version adds the ability to invoke .NET objects natively.

ColdFusion 8 includes a new Server Monitor feature, which lets developers identify bottlenecks and tune the server for better performance. It supports seamless integration of ColdFusion apps with other Adobe technologies, such as Flex, PDF, Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) and Adobe LiveCycle. Also, this release uses AJAX-based components to allow developers to design and deploy applications by integrating complex environments into intuitive interfaces.

This release also provides expanded support for the leading Java EE application servers, including IBM WebSphere, BEA WebLogic and JBoss.

"ColdFusion is a classic example of a niche tool," observed Gartner analyst Mark Driver. "The existing market is very entrenched, and it plateaued several years ago. But there's a lot of code written in ColdFusion (CFML), and companies don't have a good reason to rewrite it. Plus, many organizations have a lot of ColdFusion skills in-house, and they don't want to retrain their people."

Driver expects the new release to generate a spike in ColdFusion licensing revenue from existing customers, but he doubts that new users will flock to the solution.

"I haven't talked with anyone thinking about trying ColdFusion for the first time in the past three years," he said.

Nevertheless, he feels that ColdFusion will continue to be a solid offering, especially in Java shops that need to write quick and dirty applications.

"ColdFusion is a perfect way to augment the Java skills of a certain class of developers," he said. "It's not necessarily going to be the principle development platform moving forward, but it's a great tool to have in the tool chest."

Looking into the product's future, Driver has a suggestion for Adobe: open source it.

"No one has told me that there are any plans to do it, but I wouldn't be shocked if, in the next year or so, we see Adobe open source a significant portion of ColdFusion," he said. "It worked well with Flash, and I think it would be a good move for the company to get the proprietary stench off the product, to compete more strongly with technologies like PHP and Ruby on Rails. That would be my recommendation to Adobe; it could flush the entrenched leaders out of their comfortable market niches by changing the dynamics of the game."

ColdFusion 8 is available now in two commercial editions. ColdFusion 8 Enterprise Edition is a high-performance solution for delivering multiple Web sites and applications on one or more servers or on existing Java EE application server installations. The other commercial edition is ColdFusion 8 Standard, an easy-to-manage configuration for single applications, aimed at small-to-medium-size businesses. There's also a free Developer Edition, which is a full-featured server for development use only.

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3. Round Up of Adobe Announcements Last Week

ZDNet Blogs

Date: July 31, 2007

Byline: Ryan Stewart

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Stewart/?p=475

Adobe made a bunch of announcements yesterday that I couldn't do justice because I was at OSCON. A lot of them are from Kevin Lynch's keynote speech at the Ajax Experience but we also had a couple of others. Ajaxian had a great writeup of Kevin's keynote that is well worth checking out.

Video in Ajax and the new Ajax Dev Center

Adobe is really embracing Ajax and is doing a lot to help that community. Kevin announced the availability of the Flash Ajax Video Component (FAVideo) which is now on labs and is an open source component that you can drop into an Ajax application to add Flash video. What's great is that the component makes all of the controls and design side available so that you can customize the look and feel of the player using only HTML and JavaScript. Essentially you don't need to know anything about Flash to give your site a branded video experience. We've also created an Ajax Developer center that provides a lot of resources for Ajax developers who want to work with Adobe technologies. I think it's going to be a great bridge between the Flash world and the Ajax world.

Standardization of crossdomain.xml

Also at the Ajax Experience we announced that we're going to try and make our cross-domain policy files a standard. Flash uses these files to check whether or not the player is allowed to access the content on the server. It gives the people hosting data the ability to make certain contents off limit. With the swell of mashups and more and more data being made available, we wanted to step up and provide our solution. More can be found on the cross-domain file here.

The SWF and FLV File Format Specification Available

We also released the spec for version 9 of SWF and FLV last week. People have been wanting this for a while and in the blog post Emmy promised that we're going to try hard to make the next version available much closer to the player release. Hopefully we'll see more external support for creating Flash 9 content now that this has been released.

ColdFusion 8 Released

Today we announced that ColdFusion 8 is available. It's been a lot of fun watching this product evolve this year. I came from a ColdFusion background and I think 8 is a great release. We've put in a lot of support for Ajax in this release and also support for closer integration to Flex. I think it's a big jump in functionality and I hope it's well received by the web developer community.

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4. Adobe ColdFusion 8 Released

Techwhack India

Date: July 31, 2007

Byline: Staff

http://stuff.techwhack.com/archives/2007/07/31/adobe-coldfusion-8/

Software giant Adobe has announced the launch of ColdFusion 8. This is the latest major release of this Internet application development software.

It is available for both Mac and Windows platform. Adobe announced two packages Standard and Enterprise.

These two would sell for $1,299 and $7,499 per two-CPU license, respectively. Adobe also announced a free Developer Edition.

This edition was earlier released by the company as a public beta version in May this year.

Adobe said that the final edition ships with Server Monitor, which helps developers identify bottlenecks in their code and tune the server for better performance.

It also comes with better support for PDF format.

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5. Adobe Ships ColdFusion 8 for Web Developers

Digital Arts Online UK

Date: July 31, 2007

Byline: Staff

http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=8410

Adobe has releasd ColdFusion, a development tool for building dynamic Web sites and Internet applications. The company says that since May 2007, more than 14,000 developers have actively participated in the ColdFusion 8 public beta.

ColdFusion 8 Server Monitor lets developers swiftly identify bottlenecks and tune the server for better performance.

"The server monitoring capabilities in ColdFusion 8 are outstanding, offering granular-level access to identify slow requests and terminate runaway processes," said Nick Walters, programming manager, Lightyear Network Solutions. "We can now receive actual detail as to which requests are taking the longest and which objects within a page are performing poorly. Server monitoring with ColdFusion 8 is leaps ahead of third-party applications on the market."

ColdFusion 8 enables developers to integrate their ColdFusion applications with other Adobe technologies such as Flex, PDF, Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), and Adobe LiveCycle. ColdFusion 8 also uses Ajax-based components, enabling developers to design and deploy engaging applications by integrating complex environments into intuitive interfaces.

ColdFusion 8 offers expanded support such as .NET integration, Windows Vista and JBoss support, and integration with the latest version of enterprise databases, giving organisations enhanced efficiency, interoperability, and scalability.

ColdFusion 8 is available in two editions: ColdFusion 8 Enterprise Edition is a high-performance solution for delivering multiple Web sites and applications on one or more servers, or on existing J2EE application server installations. ColdFusion 8 Standard is an easy-to-manage configuration for single applications that is designed for small to medium-sized businesses.

Enterprise Edition is available for £3,706 plus VAT per 2-CPUs, and Standard Edition is available for £641.95 plus VAT per 2-CPUs. ColdFusion may also be used for development at no cost with the free Developer Edition, a full-featured server for development use only. Special upgrade pricing is available to owners of valid ColdFusion MX 6 and 7 licenses.

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6. Adobe Ships ColdFusion 8

ITBusiness.ca

Date: July 30, 2007

Byline: Staff

http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=44515

Adobe Systems Inc. announced the immediate availability of Adobe ColdFusion 8 software. ColdFusion 8, a tool for building dynamic Web sites and Internet applications integrates with complex enterprise environments.

ColdFusion 8 enables developers to integrate their ColdFusion applications with other Adobe technologies such as Adobe Flex, PDF, Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), and Adobe LiveCycle. ColdFusion 8 also uses Ajax-based components, enabling developers to design and deploy engaging applications by integrating complex environments into intuitive interfaces.

ColdFusion 8 is available in two editions: ColdFusion 8 Enterprise Edition is a solution for delivering multiple Web sites and applications on one or more servers, or on existing J2EE application server installations; ColdFusion 8 Standard is a configuration for single applications that are ideal for small to medium-sized businesses. Enterprise Edition is available for US$7499 per 2-CPUs, and Standard Edition is available for US$1299 per 2-CPUs. ColdFusion may also be used for development at no cost with the free Developer Edition, a full-featured server for development use only. Special upgrade pricing is available to owners of valid ColdFusion MX 6 and 7 licenses. ColdFusion 8 is immediately available for purchase online from the Adobe Store, directly from Adobe, and through Adobe's network of partners and resellers.

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7. Adobe ColdFusion Links to AIR

PC World AU

Date: July 31, 2007

Byline: Paul Krill

http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php/id;1577818540

Adobe is now shipping the ColdFusion 8 application development platform, offering faster performance and basic linkages to Adobe's AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) technology.

ColdFusion is a server technology for building Internet applications. AIR, which is Adobe's planned software for deploying Internet applications on the desktop, can use ColdFusion as a server component. AIR applications can connect to ColdFusion for enterprise data and services, said Tim Buntel, Adobe senior product marketing manager for ColdFusion. AIR had been known as Apollo and is only available in a beta form at this point; general availability is expected later this year.

Although ColdFusion 7.0.2, released last year, could offer basic data exchange with AIR, version 8 improves data synchronization and performance significantly, according Adobe. Future versions of ColdFusion could expand connectivity to AIR, Buntel said. For example, development tools could be built for this purpose.

Also highlighted in version 8 of ColdFusion is multithreaded support within the ColdFusion language. "It allows developers to run individual parts of their application in separate threads in the application server, so the processing of your application can efficiently use the resources of the server," Buntel said.

Another feature is a Server Monitor capability, which is a rich Internet application that gauges metrics like memory usage and page response times.

Adobe received far greater response than expected to the public beta program launched in late-May. Anticipating that 5,000 developers would download the product, Adobe instead had nearly 14,000 downloads, Buntel said.

A beta user cited the product's speed compared to previous versions. "I've seen, depending on what we're doing, at least two times faster [response times] and in many cases [it has been] up to four or five times faster," said Terry Ryan, IT director at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

The school's student portal application is being written entirely in ColdFusion 8, Ryan said. ColdFusion 8's Server Monitor, meanwhile, has saved the school from having to write its own monitoring tools, he said.

ColdFusion competitors most commonly are PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor), ASP.Net, and Ruby on Rails, Buntel said. But these technologies have a more limited reach than ColdFusion, he said.

"Their emphasis is primarily on traditional Web-based applications and being part of Adobe, we're going beyond just HTML," with capabilities for PDF, Flex, and Air as well as connectivity across Java and .Net, Buntel said.

Version 8 enables invoking of .Net objects and generation of PDF documents. Interactive debugging is offered based on the Eclipse IDE.

The enterprise version of ColdFusion 8 costs US$7,499. It enables deployments with a J2EE application server. The standard edition, for smaller installations, costs US$1,299.

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8. Adobe ColdFusion Links to AIR

Computerworld AU

Date: July 31, 2007

Byline: Paul Krill

http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1577818540;fp;2;fpid;1

Adobe is now shipping the ColdFusion 8 application development platform, offering faster performance and basic linkages to Adobe's AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) technology.

ColdFusion is a server technology for building Internet applications. AIR, which is Adobe's planned software for deploying Internet applications on the desktop, can use ColdFusion as a server component. AIR applications can connect to ColdFusion for enterprise data and services, said Tim Buntel, Adobe senior product marketing manager for ColdFusion. AIR had been known as Apollo and is only available in a beta form at this point; general availability is expected later this year.

Although ColdFusion 7.0.2, released last year, could offer basic data exchange with AIR, version 8 improves data synchronization and performance significantly, according Adobe. Future versions of ColdFusion could expand connectivity to AIR, Buntel said. For example, development tools could be built for this purpose.

Also highlighted in version 8 of ColdFusion is multithreaded support within the ColdFusion language. "It allows developers to run individual parts of their application in separate threads in the application server, so the processing of your application can efficiently use the resources of the server," Buntel said.

Another feature is a Server Monitor capability, which is a rich Internet application that gauges metrics like memory usage and page response times.

Adobe received far greater response than expected to the public beta program launched in late-May. Anticipating that 5,000 developers would download the product, Adobe instead had nearly 14,000 downloads, Buntel said.

A beta user cited the product's speed compared to previous versions. "I've seen, depending on what we're doing, at least two times faster [response times] and in many cases [it has been] up to four or five times faster," said Terry Ryan, IT director at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

The school's student portal application is being written entirely in ColdFusion 8, Ryan said. ColdFusion 8's Server Monitor, meanwhile, has saved the school from having to write its own monitoring tools, he said.

ColdFusion competitors most commonly are PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor), ASP.Net, and Ruby on Rails, Buntel said. But these technologies have a more limited reach than ColdFusion, he said.

"Their emphasis is primarily on traditional Web-based applications and being part of Adobe, we're going beyond just HTML," with capabilities for PDF, Flex, and Air as well as connectivity across Java and .Net, Buntel said.

Version 8 enables invoking of .Net objects and generation of PDF documents. Interactive debugging is offered based on the Eclipse IDE.

The enterprise version of ColdFusion 8 costs US$7,499. It enables deployments with a J2EE application server. The standard edition, for smaller installations, costs US$1,299.

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9. Adobe ColdFusion Links to AIR

ARNnet

Date: July 31, 2007

Byline: Paul Krill

http://www.arnnet.com.au/index.php/id;1577818540;fp;4194304;fpid;1

Adobe is now shipping the ColdFusion 8 application development platform, offering faster performance and basic linkages to Adobe's AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) technology.

ColdFusion is a server technology for building Internet applications. AIR, which is Adobe's planned software for deploying Internet applications on the desktop, can use ColdFusion as a server component. AIR applications can connect to ColdFusion for enterprise data and services, said Tim Buntel, Adobe senior product marketing manager for ColdFusion. AIR had been known as Apollo and is only available in a beta form at this point; general availability is expected later this year.

Although ColdFusion 7.0.2, released last year, could offer basic data exchange with AIR, version 8 improves data synchronization and performance significantly, according Adobe. Future versions of ColdFusion could expand connectivity to AIR, Buntel said. For example, development tools could be built for this purpose.

Also highlighted in version 8 of ColdFusion is multithreaded support within the ColdFusion language. "It allows developers to run individual parts of their application in separate threads in the application server, so the processing of your application can efficiently use the resources of the server," Buntel said.

Another feature is a Server Monitor capability, which is a rich Internet application that gauges metrics like memory usage and page response times.

Adobe received far greater response than expected to the public beta program launched in late-May. Anticipating that 5,000 developers would download the product, Adobe instead had nearly 14,000 downloads, Buntel said.

A beta user cited the product's speed compared to previous versions. "I've seen, depending on what we're doing, at least two times faster [response times] and in many cases [it has been] up to four or five times faster," said Terry Ryan, IT director at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

The school's student portal application is being written entirely in ColdFusion 8, Ryan said. ColdFusion 8's Server Monitor, meanwhile, has saved the school from having to write its own monitoring tools, he said.

ColdFusion competitors most commonly are PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor), ASP.Net, and Ruby on Rails, Buntel said. But these technologies have a more limited reach than ColdFusion, he said.

"Their emphasis is primarily on traditional Web-based applications and being part of Adobe, we're going beyond just HTML," with capabilities for PDF, Flex, and Air as well as connectivity across Java and .Net, Buntel said.

Version 8 enables invoking of .Net objects and generation of PDF documents. Interactive debugging is offered based on the Eclipse IDE.

The enterprise version of ColdFusion 8 costs US$7,499. It enables deployments with a J2EE application server. The standard edition, for smaller installations, costs US$1,299.

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10. Adobe Ships ColdFusion 8

ZDNet Asia

Date: July 31, 2007

Byline: Adrian Bridgewater

http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,62029841,00.htm

Adobe has released its ColdFusion 8 development tool for building dynamic Web sites and rich Internet applications.

The new release is designed to increase developer productivity by integrating with complex enterprise environments and identifying bottlenecks to tune the server for better performance. Improved server-monitoring capabilities allow ColdFusion 8 to provide granular reports on which requests are taking the longest and which objects within a page are performing poorly.

Built with the help of over 14,000 public beta program developers, ColdFusion 8 uses Ajax-based components, enabling users to design and deploy engaging applications with more intuitive interfaces. This release offers expanded .Net integration, along with better Windows Vista and JBoss support, to provide enhanced efficiency, interoperability between disparate systems, and scalability.

The new version, which is available in two editions, enables developers to integrate their ColdFusion applications with other Adobe technologies, including Adobe Flex, PDF, Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) and Adobe LiveCycle.

ColdFusion 8 Enterprise Edition is designed for delivering multiple websites and applications on one or more servers, and costs £3,706 (US$7,644) per two CPUs.

ColdFusion 8 Standard Edition is designed for single applications at the small- to medium-sized business level and costs £642 (US$1,324) per two CPUs.

There is also a free, full-featured Developer Edition for development use only.

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11. Adobe ColdFusion 8 ships in the UK

PC Advisor UK

Date: July 31, 2007

Byline: Jonny Evans

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=10248

Adobe has released the latest version of its ColdFusion tool for building dynamic websites and internet applications.

The company says the focus of Coldfusion 8 has been to increase developer productivity and to make the software integrate with complex enterprise environments.

Adobe also confirmed that over 14,000 developers have taken part in the ColdFusion public beta test, which launched in May.

There's a variety of new features, including ColdFusion 8 Server Monitor which lets developers swiftly identify bottlenecks and tune the server for better performance.

"The server monitoring capabilities in ColdFusion 8 are outstanding, offering granular-level access to identify slow requests and terminate runaway processes," said Nick Walters, programming manager, Lightyear Network Solutions.

The software integrates with other Adobe technologies, including Flex, PDF, and more. It uses Ajax-based components, enabling developers to design and deploy engaging applications by integrating complex environments into intuitive interfaces.

While still not available for Mac OS X, ColdFusion 8 offers expanded support for .NET, Windows Vista and JBoss alongside integration with the latest version of enterprise databases.

ColdFusion 8 is available in two editions: ColdFusion 8 Enterprise Edition costs £3,706 per two computers and is a high-performance solution for delivering multiple websites and applications on one or more servers, or on existing J2EE application server installations. ColdFusion 8 Standard costs £641.95 and is for single applications.

ColdFusion may also be used for development at no cost with the free Developer Edition.

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