I have to start this entry with a confession. I don't use Application.cfc, except on one web site (and I'm not convinced that I should have used it there). In theory, I like it. So far, however, it hasn't been worth the trouble.
This got me thinking, exactly what trouble do I think it is to use Application.cfc, anyway?
This week saw lower blogging volume due to Christmas and other holidays, but still had a good selection of blog entries.
Happy holidays! Another great week of blog entries as the holidays draw near. Hanukkah started yesterday and goes through next Monday, Christmas is this Thursday, and Al-Hijira is next Monday. Happy holidays to all!
I was curious yesterday about which databases were supported by which ColdFusion Data Access Layers (DALs). I went to check on that and before I knew it, I had compiled quite a few comparisons on each.
Perhaps I should back up at this point and explain what I mean by a DAL. I DAL is any application that manages access to data (usually a database). These are often referred to as an ORM. An ORM, however, is one type of DAL (one that maps objects to a database). An ORM is a DAL, but a DAL need not be an ORM.
As part of a larger project, I need the ability to add a new web site. Part of this process required that I create a web site entry in IIS. This ended up requiring a bit of research, so I thought I would post my results.
The process mostly uses VBScript from Microsoft. I had to find scripts from two or three places on their site and combine them to get the whole thing to work as I wanted.
The big challenge was to make sure that the web site was created, started, and publicly accessible.
This week saw a great selection of blog entries (even more difficult to choose among than usual) including topics such as CFHTTP, PCI (essential in ecommerce), and free hosting.
I recently got a "Server is currently unavailable or down for maintenance" every time that I tried to pull up a web page on my local computer. It took me a while to figure out what had happened.
As it turned out, I had installed Railo on my computer and then deleted it (deciding to run the express version instead). Apparently, I must have missed an uninstaller or something.
This week held a mix of exciting news (Open BD 1.0) and sad news (Adobe layoffs hit ColdFusion product manager, Jason Delmore). Also an odd CF behavior, the CFUnited survey, and free subversion repositories.
I have tried to ensure that each version of DataMgr is completely backward compatible with every previous version of DataMgr. With version 2.2, however, I did introduce a small compatibility issue that may require a change in code.
The 2.2 code will work on previous versions, but code written for previous versions may need a small adjustment for new versions.
The reason for this is that while relation fields can call other relation fields, sometimes the combination doesn't make sense. For example, it does make sense to have a "label" relation that gets the value of a "sum" relation for another table. It doesn't make sense, however, to do a sum on a "concat" field (or any normal field that isn't numeric). It also isn't possible for any relation field to get the value from a "list" relation.
Coming just 6 weeks after the previous beta, DataMgr 2.2 Beta 3 is ready and I expect it is pretty close to the final release.
