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In surprising news to use, our file download provider OhLoh pulled support for hosted downloads in the past couple of days.  They recently migrated to a new data center but neglected to tell us that after the switch the download service would be dropped.  So in the aftermath we are switching to SourceForge as our provider to host our downloads.  All of our links on our website have been restored however if you find an out dated link be sure to let us know

Converting one company to CFML using an OSS CFML engine (via Dan's Drivelings)

There have been some lively discussions on Twitter today centered around the adoption of open source CFML engines in various types of businesses. I can’t speak to any kind of trends anywhere, but I wanted to share my experience with a project I was involved in last year that used Railo as the CMFL engine.

My brother, Andrew, is the head of the IT department for a firm that sells books and other supplies to school libraries all over the country. When he took over the position, he inherited a web site built on Java using the Struts framework. The original site had been in place for quite some time and the ownership decided it was time to refresh the site. The main issue (besides the outdated design) with the site was that it was so difficult to update. I’m not a Java developer by any stretch of the imagination, but from what I understand, even the simplest update required the site to be recompiled. The actual implementation of the site was fairly brittle as well, so new features were generally not even considered for fear of breaking something that was currently working.

Andrew had previously done some ColdFusion work with me on some of my other projects. He approached his management about contracting with me to help them replace their java web site with one built on CFML. During the initial requirements gathering and planning phases, the decision was made to use Railo as the CFML engine for the site. This was shortly after Railo went open source which appealed to them as they have several systems within the company that are open source. Cost was not a major concern (Railo being free vs the cost of a standard license of Adobe ColdFusion) but it was a consideration as this project did have a fixed budget. When we started the project, Adobe ColdFusion MX7 was the most current release. In several categories at the time, Railo’s performance was quite a bit better than Adobe ColdFusion’s. This has obviously changed in the interim, but that’s the way it was then. Anyway, all those factors and probably a few more I wasn’t privy to led to the decision to use Railo as the CFML engine for the site.

Our experience developing with Railo was very positive. We built the site using Mach-II, Transfer, ColdSpring using a PostgreSQL database backend. We had one little issue with Mach-II when we plugged in the Mach-II Dashboard module into our main config. Peter Farrell and I traced it down and found that it was due to a difference in how Railo parsed XML vs how Adobe ColdFusion did. I worked with the folks at Railo and they got the problem sorted out in one of the next releases.

The site went live the first of August, 2009. Between January 1 and August 1 of 2010, the site experienced a 562% increase in revenue generated when compared to the same time period of 2009 (the YTD time frame leading up to the new site going live). They’ve also seen a dramatic increase in the amount of traffic to the site since the new version went live (although I don’t have exact percentages at my fingertips to share). Just as importantly, in the months sice the new site went live, they have been able to add dozens of new features to the site–both publicly-available features as well as features for administrators and sales people that just would have been too difficult to try to weave into the previous java struts based application.

Finally, while this “success story” has Railo as one of its key components, the bigger issue in my mind is the fact that a formerly java-centric shop has converted to using CFML successfully to run their business and provide a better experience for their customers and employees.

Disclaimer: I’m not on either side of the Railo/OpenBD/Adobe CF argument. I’ve not had a client since that project that’s given me the option to use Railo so all of my work since then has been in Adobe CF but I certainly wouldn’t dismiss Railo straight away if there were an option to use it on a future project. The intent behind this blog post is simply to provide one real-world example of Railo being an entry point into CFML development, not to take either side of the Twitter discussions that have been going on today.

via tntechnohermit.com

Sounds like an open source success story from all levels. We're glad that Mach-II helped in ways it can. Way to go Dan!

Help us! Submit Topics on Mach-II for cf.Objective() 2011

Conference season is approaching and Team Mach-II needs your help if you want to see Mach-II presented at cf.Objective() 2011.  This year cf.Objective() is asking for input from the community on what you all would like to see at the next event.  So get engaged and submit or vote on a Mach-II topic now.

There is only one Mach-II topic (as of time this blog post), but feel free to add more.  It doesn't have to be directly on using Mach-II.  Maybe you have an application you built and want to show off the architecture in which Mach-II is part of your stack.

Engage - cf.Objective() 2011

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When you are done, feel free to list your topic suggestion here. The cf.Objective() version of Engage does not show the submitter or votes.  We'd like to know.  Take the time to vote or sumit a topic now before it's too late!