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Simon Horwith
Simon Horwith is the editor-in-chief of ColdFusion Developer's Journal and is the CIO at AboutWeb, LLC, a Washington, DC based company specializing in staff augmentation, consulting, and training. Simon is a Macromedia Certified Master Instructor and is a member of Team Macromedia. He has been using ColdFusion since version 1.5 and specializes in ColdFusion application architecture, including architecting applications that integrate with Java, Flash, Flex, and a myriad of other technologies. In addition to presenting at CFUGs and conferences around the world, he has also been a contributing author of several books and technical papers. You can read his blog at http://simon.coldfusionjournal.com. |
CFDJ Contest - It's All
About Being Practical By Simon Horwith  This month, I am pleased
to announce that Kevin
Kazmierczak is the winner
of the contest to develop
a polling/survey
application. His
submission included a
simple set-up and script
for creating and
populating the database
(a straight-forward read
me file makes
... Jun. 16, 2005 09:15 AM Reads: 15,384 | ColdFusion Is Ten Years
Old By Simon Horwith  I'm writing this
editorial on the exact
day that ColdFusion 1.0
was released back in
1995. Looking back over
the server's evolution,
it's really come a long
way from its start as a
CGI application (anyone
remember DBML?). Though
the server has really
grown subst... Jun. 16, 2005 09:00 AM Reads: 16,653 | "Ladies and gentlemen,
the sky is not falling" By Simon Horwith At the time of this
writing, Adobe has
recently announced its
plan to acquire
Macromedia in an
all-stock trade worth
billions ($3.4 billion
was the estimate at the
time of the
announcement). The
ColdFusion development
community has been abuzz
with speculation ab... May. 18, 2005 12:00 PM Reads: 12,784 | How Healthy Is Your
ColdFusion Server? By Simon Horwith  Before describing this
month's prize and
contest, I would like to
thank everyone for their
submissions to our first
contest (CFDJ vol. 7
issue 3). That contest
objective was to modify
Ray Camden's blog in any
way you choose, and you
had to take advantage of
at lea... May. 18, 2005 12:00 PM Reads: 13,909 | Two of My Favorite
Things: Software
Architecture + ColdFusion By Simon Horwith The topic of focus for
this month's issue is
'architecture.' Software
architecture is the study
and practice of the art
of planning and
developing applications,
and it also happens to be
my favorite topic and
area of expertise. It is
the cornerstone of
everything ... Apr. 13, 2005 12:00 AM Reads: 14,133 | Developer's Challenge #2:
Taking a Poll By Simon Horwith At the time of this
writing, the submission
deadline for last month's
contest ('Developer's
Challenge #1: Create a
Blog, Win ColdFusion MX
7') is still pending, so
the winning entry will be
announced next month. In
the meantime, another
month means another
contest. . . Apr. 13, 2005 12:00 AM Reads: 13,343 | Climbing Mountains -
Challenging Yourself with
Design Patterns By Simon Horwith Novice programmers often
ask for advice about the
best way to learn
ColdFusion. Fortunately
for them, there is a
wealth of curricula, web
sites, knowledge bases,
books, tutorials, and
other materials to help a
budding young developer
blossom into a decent
ColdFusion developer. Apr. 13, 2005 12:00 AM Reads: 11,034 | Create a Blog, Win
ColdFusion MX 7 By Simon Horwith This is the first
instalment of a new
column that is designed
to challenge developers,
show-off their solutions,
and give away some cool
prizes in the process. Mar. 16, 2005 12:00 AM Reads: 12,052 Replies: 1 | It's Here! By Simon Horwith It's finally here!
ColdFusion MX 7 is the
most customer driven
release of ColdFusion to
date - new features for
delivering printable
content in the form of
portable (FlashPaper or
PDF) documents or
reports, an event gateway
that allows the server to
communicate wi... Mar. 15, 2005 12:00 AM Reads: 11,509 | Writing Code...and Your
Opinion By Simon Horwith I want to take this
opportunity to announce a
new service to the
development community -
'blog-n-play.'
Blog-n-play is a Web site
launched by SYS-CON that
allows anyone who'd like,
to create his or her own
blog - and it's free.
Your blog is associated
with one of ... Feb. 11, 2005 12:00 AM Reads: 16,657 Replies: 1 | "It's Here!" -
Editor-in-Chief of
ColdFusion Developer's
Journal Introduces
ColdFusion MX 7 By Simon Horwith ColdFusion Developer's
Journal editor-in-chief
Simon Horwith writes:
'It's finally here!
ColdFusion MX 7 was
released about an hour
prior to this writing.
This release is the most
customer driven release
of ColdFusion to date.' Feb. 7, 2005 12:00 AM Reads: 25,086 Replies: 2 | New Year Brings Change By Simon Horwith For several months I've
been promising there
would be changes in CFDJ
in the New Year. Change
in the form of offering
deep-focused issues.
Change in the form of new
regular and semi-regular
columns. Well, the time
has finally come. This
month we are focusing on
pr... Jan. 18, 2005 12:00 AM Reads: 14,148 | Charting New Territory By Simon Horwith Recently, a client
approached me about
adding a new requirement
to their software - a
hybrid content-management
application written in
ColdFusion, Java, and
Flash. The desired new
requirement was the
ability to create dynamic
Gantt charts on various
pages in the Web
application. Jan. 18, 2005 12:00 AM Reads: 20,920 Replies: 1 | Change Is in the Air By Simon Horwith As I write this, I am
beginning to box up my
belongings and prepare
for another move across
the Atlantic. I've
accepted the position of
CIO at AboutWeb - a staff
augmentation and software
development company based
out of Washington, DC.
I'm moving back into one
of... Dec. 14, 2004 12:00 AM Reads: 13,379 | MAX Impact By Simon Horwith I've just returned to
London from MAX
2004...what a conference!
The announcement of the
availability of Flex 1.5;
cool demos of Blackstone,
Flex, Flash on mobile
devices; and a sneak peek
at what's in Flash 8 were
among the more notable
announcements and content
a... Nov. 24, 2004 12:00 AM Reads: 13,771 Replies: 1 | Talking with the
Blackstone Team By Simon Horwith At MAX I had the pleasure
of sitting around a
private table with
several members of the
Blackstone Development
Team to talk about the
new features, the
development community,
and future ColdFusion
releases after
Blackstone. Nov. 24, 2004 12:00 AM Reads: 17,593 Replies: 2 | Getting Ready for MAX By Simon Horwith It's good to experiment -
this holds true for any
and every endeavor. Last
month I tried something
different with CFDJ;
almost every article in
the issue was about one
topic - security. I've
gotten a lot of feedback
from readers and am happy
to report that it was al... Oct. 20, 2004 12:00 AM Reads: 13,287 | CFC Data Exchange By Simon Horwith Beginning with the
release of ColdFusion MX,
the ColdFusion
Application Server now
runs on top of an
underlying Java engine.
Java, as we all know, is
an object-oriented
language. However, the
question of whether CFML
is an object-oriented
language has been under
... Oct. 20, 2004 12:00 AM Reads: 16,929 | Reaching Deeper By Simon Horwith Now that I've begun
settling in to the role
of editor-in-chief of
CFDJ, I'm beginning to
incorporate some ideas I
have for the magazine.
The first change you'll
note this month is that
Tales from the List is
gone. That's not because
I'm too lazy to both edit
the m... Sep. 15, 2004 12:00 AM Reads: 12,700 | In with the New... By Simon Horwith When Robert Diamond asked
me to take over his
duties as editor-in-chief
of ColdFusion Developer's
Journal, my initial
reaction was shock. Not
so much because he'd
asked me to do the job,
but because his editorial
would not be the first
thing I'd see the next
time ... Aug. 13, 2004 12:00 AM Reads: 12,610 Replies: 2 | Tales from the List By Simon Horwith For whatever reason,
there has been a recent
increase in posts on the
CFDJ List, dealing with
looping in CFML.
Throughout the month CFDJ
members wrote inquiring
about how to loop over
variable scopes and other
structures, lists, Excel
spreadsheet data, XML
data, and more! Aug. 13, 2004 12:00 AM Reads: 10,471 | Tales from the List By Simon Horwith This month, rather than
focusing on a more
advanced or more obscure
task, I'm going to talk
about a task which I
consider more fundamental
- dynamic form variable
names and their retrieval
on the action page. It
seems that not a month
goes by without a post to
the... Jul. 14, 2004 12:00 AM Reads: 11,355 | Fast Track to Flex By Simon Horwith Hopefully by now you've
heard all about Flex, the
most recent addition to
the Macromedia server
product family. Hot on
the tail of its release,
Macromedia Training has
released 'Fast Track to
Flex,' a new course that
introduces developers to
developing rich Internet... Jul. 14, 2004 12:00 AM Reads: 14,306 Replies: 3 | Tales from the List By Simon Horwith This month's Tales from
the List is all about
protecting resources.
Specifically, it is about
protecting image files.
Evik James, a CFDJ-List
regular, asked the List
for advice on how to
protect from
'hot-linking.'
Apparently, one of his
employer's competitors
h... Jun. 22, 2004 12:00 AM Reads: 11,750 Replies: 1 | Introducing... Flex! By Simon Horwith By now you've probably
heard about Flex,
Macromedia's most recent
offering in their line of
server-side products.
What is Flex? How does it
work? Is Flex a
replacement for Flash or
ColdFusion? Is it
something you should be
evaluating as a solution?
What do you nee... Jun. 22, 2004 12:00 AM Reads: 15,650 Replies: 2 | Tales from the List By Simon Horwith No, this month's title is
not an attempt to meet
ColdFusion developers of
the opposite sex - it's
all about building
applications that are
aware of the people using
them. May. 11, 2004 12:00 AM Reads: 9,616 | Tales from the List By Simon Horwith When Macromedia
introduced Query of
Queries functionality to
the CFML language back in
ColdFusion 5, its poor
performance quickly
became common knowledge.
In fact, I personally
feel that Query of
Queries got a bad rap,
and the stigma continues
to this day. Mar. 9, 2004 12:00 AM Reads: 10,778 Replies: 2 | Rapidly Building Web
Services Applications
with ColdFusion and
Studio MX By Simon Horwith The last year has shown
that Web services are not
just another passing fad
and their promise of
platform-independent
distributed applications
has been realized.
Compared to other
application server
platforms, ColdFusion MX
makes creating and
consuming Web services... Feb. 26, 2004 12:00 AM Reads: 12,077 | Tales from the List By Simon Horwith ColdFusion Developer's
Journal has been in print
for quite a long time...
in fact it has now
celebrated its fifth
birthday. I haven't read
every article published
in every issue, but I've
read a lot of them. One
thing I've learned over
the years is that the
more c... Feb. 25, 2004 12:00 AM Reads: 8,353 | Tales from the List By Simon Horwith This month we're talking
about Java, Web services,
and 'things not CF' -
topics that are fast
becoming common subjects
of discussion among
CFers. I'm not going to
focus on just one CFDJ
List thread, but on
several recent threads
and examples that
illustrate the tr... Jan. 13, 2004 12:00 AM Reads: 10,145 | CF Explained By Simon Horwith For those of you who
don't know who I am, let
me begin by explaining
that I am not a designer.
I can't make pages or
pictures pretty - heck, I
haven't even figured out
how to use some of the
features in PC Paint yet.
My expertise is in
software architecture,
progr... Jan. 5, 2004 12:00 AM Reads: 11,103 | Tales from the List By Simon Horwith I am writing this month's
column while sitting next
to my wife Ayesha aboard
Virgin Atlantic Flight 22
from Washington Dulles to
London Heathrow, on my
way home from attending
Macromedia's MAX
conference in Salt Lake
City. In this month's
column I will summarize
m... Dec. 9, 2003 12:00 AM Reads: 8,272 | component.cfc: The Mother
of All Components By Simon Horwith Yes, that's right,
components have mommies
and daddies. Well, not
really, but that
statement isn't too far
from the truth. This
article explains
'component.cfc', a hidden
gem in the ColdFusion
Component architecture
that is part of
ColdFusion MX. Nov. 11, 2003 11:07 AM Reads: 11,957 | Tales from the List By Simon Horwith That's right, there's a
whole lotta shaking going
on - in the IT world,
that is. Macromedia's
Studio MX 2004 suite of
products has now begun
shipping, and the reviews
are in! Nov. 11, 2003 10:44 AM Reads: 9,236 | Tales from the List By Simon Horwith At the beginning of the
third week of August,
Mario Cilotta posted a
thread to the CFDJ List
asking for arguments in
favor of upgrading from
ColdFusion MX to
ColdFusion MX 6.1. There
are several reasons that
I've chosen to focus this
month's article on this
thread. Oct. 15, 2003 04:33 PM Reads: 7,927 | Tales from the List:
Searching for Answers By Simon Horwith Despite what the title of
this month's article
implies, this
installment of Tales From
the List is not about a
CFDJ-List thread
regarding the meaning of
life. It's about
something much more
important: metadata. Sep. 11, 2003 12:00 AM Reads: 10,261 Replies: 1 | Tales from the List By Simon Horwith Because of the time
difference between my new
location in the UK and
the vast majority of the
CFDJ subscribers in the
U.S., one of the first
things I do every morning
is read over all of the
threads that transpired
on the CFDJ List the
night before. Not only
do... Aug. 12, 2003 01:49 PM Reads: 8,485 | Tales from the List By Simon Horwith Those of you who frequent
the CFDJList already know
that in early May of this
year I relocated from
Washington, DC to London,
England to work as a
private consultant. Not
only does this mean that
I can now enjoy a pint of
fantastic ale on a much
more regular basis, ... Jul. 11, 2003 12:00 AM Reads: 9,004 | Tales from the List By Simon Horwith This month we're
returning to our regular
format of showcasing a
thread from the CFDJList
mail-list server. The
thread we will review
reminded me that there
isn't always one right
answer - often there are
many alternatives to one
approach. Each comes with
its own ... Jun. 16, 2003 12:00 AM Reads: 9,332 Replies: 1 | Macromedia's Data File
Access API Architecture
Unleashed By Simon Horwith Like its predecessors,
Macromedia's most recent
installment of the Devnet
Resource Kit (DRK 3) is
stocked with many
excellent utilities for
Flash developers. Unlike
previous releases, DRK 3
aims to make the lives of
ColdFusion developers
easier by including many
a... Jun. 16, 2003 12:00 AM Reads: 12,740 |
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