CFDJ interviewed David Mendels, Senior Vice President of Adobe's Enterprise and Developer Solutions Business Unit, and asked some pointed questions about the future of ColdFusion and Adobe's commitment to the product. The bottom line is 'Don't Panic', but for more details read the interview.

I have also noted many people expressing question and concern on various list servers. Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, let me tell you that the future is looking great. Of course, I don't work for Macromedia/Adobe, so why should you believe me? Maybe you shouldn't... but I've gone straight to the horses mouth, so to speak, on this one.

This year it looks certain that a new participation record will be set, more than 16,000 votes have already been recorded, as more than 20,000 SYS-CON Media readers are estimated to cast their votes in this year's Readers' Choice Awards.

Like it or not, .NET is proving a powerful force in the software industry. As a ColdFusion developer, you'll probably need to interact with it at some point in time. One of the promises of .NET is that it can provide this interoperability through Web services.

The proposed acquisition of Macromedia by Adobe is not a done deal. Both companies are under the scrutiny of the SEC, and it must also be approved by stockholders. While Macromedia/Adobe gives this process three to nine months, some industry analysts feel that is being overly optimistic. But assuming that all is goes as planned, Macromedia will cease to exist. Everything will be in the Adobe name and with the Adobe interface.

'We've had a tremendous response,' said ColdFusion product manager Dave Gruber, speaking exclusively to SYS-CON.TV (http://www.sys-con.tv) just 9 days after the release of ColdFusion MX 7. 'I couldn't ask for a better nine days.'

Although some folks were predicting a 'bloodbath,' the App Server Shoot-Out at Web Services Edge 2005 in Boston did not result in any serious injuries. Instead, Anne Thomas Manes, VP and Research Director at Burton Group, brought together representatives from a wide assortment of application server vendors for a lively panel conversation.

This year it looks certain that a new participation record will be set, as more than 4,000 votes have already been recorded in just the first seven days of voting, as more than 50,000 SYS-CON Media readers are estimated to cast their votes in this year's Readers' Choice Awards. Highlights after just one week's voting are as follows.

'The new version of ColdFusion extends the Internet to mobile devices and delivers groundbreaking rich forms support, reporting, and printing solutions,' says Gruber, ColdFusion product manager at Macromedia on his SYS-CON.TV interview today with MX Developer's Journal chief-editor Charles Brown.

ColdFusion MX 7 opens the door to the mobile Internet by providing an easy, cost-effective, and powerful way to securely extend applications to mobile phone users through SMS text messaging. Applications can also be created for access through instant messaging clients. These new deployment options enable companies to solve a broad range of emerging business needs for today's highly mobile workforce by extending the Internet beyond the browser to a wide range of mobile devices.

'I get excited every time we release a new version of ColdFusion,' writes Tim Buntel. 'I usually hit the road and talk about the release to customers at their companies, user group events, and conferences. I start the conversation by saying, 'This is the best ColdFusion ever! Wait till you see what you can do with this!' Well, ColdFusion MX 7 is here and this time, I won?t need to say a word. All you need to do is take a look at this release to see that I am not exaggerating whatsoever.'

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.'

SYS-CON Media, the world's leading i-technology media company, announced that its 2005 Readers' Choice Awards polls opened today, February 1, 2005, and will remain open for six months, until July 31, 2005. More than 50,000 readers are expected to cast their votes to select the best software products and services of the year for Java, Linux, Web Services, XML, Microsoft .NET, ColdFusion and Macromedia MX.

SYS-CON Media (www.sys-con.com), the world's leading i-technology media company, announced today that SYS-CON.TV (www.sys-con.tv), the first streaming live i-technology television is scheduled to debut on February 15, 2005 to coincide with the first day of the upcoming Web Services Edge 2005 East - International Web Services Conference Expo.

Did the geek-fest just finished in Las Vegas, Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2005, herald the return of technology and the beginning of the 'post-PC' world?

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation - whose watchword is 'We believe that the world's toughest problems can be solved - if we work together' - is giving $3M to help those struck by the natural disaster that's wreaked such havoc in South Asia. Amazon.com has helped channel even more, $3.5M - as the wider Internet community joins the fund-raising effort.

SYS-CON Media today announced further details of the upcoming cross-platform technology event, Web Services Edge 2005 East - International Web Services Conference & Expo (www.sys-con.com/edge), to be held in Boston at the Hynes Convention Center, February 15-17, 2005. More than 3,000 i-technology professionals are expected to participate this year including the show expo floor, making it the largest Web Services event of the year. The following is the official announcement of the keynotes, sponsors, conference tracks and sessions, tutorials, and the Web Services case studies to be presented during this year's three-day event.

By now you've probably either heard about or read the analyst report from the Burton Group entitled 'J2EE in Jeopardy.' In summary, the claim is J2EE as a standard is in danger due to several market forces.

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.

The July 2004 (Volume 6, issue 7) edition of CFDJ featured an article I authored entitled 'Harnessing the Power of SQL Server Using Stored Procedures.' In that article I covered the basics of building stored procedures and using them in ColdFusionMX using ColdFusion Components. This article will expand further upon that topic, delving deeper into the advanced capabilities of T-SQL and SQL Server.

The Agile Manifesto is the product of 17 smart, well-meaning developers who met in February 2001 to discuss problems in software development. The list of developers included Kent Beck, Alistair Cockburn, Martin Fowler, Ron Jeffries, Robert 'Uncle Bob' Martin, and Dave Thomas - people who have all made substantial contributions to software development.

One of the best features of ColdFusion is its versatility. Very few other languages or environments offer the cross-platform, open framework for development that the ColdFusion platform provides.

Hoping that it has whetted the appetite of applications developers with Flex, Macromedia announced the availability of Flex Builder. The IDE is being given away to customers who download a trial version of Flex or buy a full version.

Updates to ColdFusion MX 6.1 are now available and Macromedia is urging users to install the upgrader. Anyone expecting only minor bug-fixes from the 6.1 Updater will be pleasantly surprised by this comprehensive offering - much more than was at first speculated.

The ColdFusion product team reveals that 'Blackstone' - the next-generation version of CF - will among other things provide a new, integrated business reporting capability; the ability to print from the browser without chopping off margins or breaking up content; and new, tag-driven forms capability that will enable developers to quickly and easily build and deploy multi-step data-entry forms.

Using JDBC metadata, it is now possible to analyze databases and automate database tasks with ColdFusion MX in ways that were problematic or at best difficult in the past. Although Java can be rather intimidating, you don't need to be a Java expert (or a database expert) to use these tools.

I've been developing ColdFusion applications since the early days of version 1.5. While a lot has changed for the better with the product since then, not a lot has changed - unfortunately - in terms of the lousy quality of the CFML code that I'm often asked to review or fix.

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 need to begin development with Flex?

One of the most enduring of American legends is that of John Henry, the 'steel drivin' man,' who pitted his strength against a machine - and won. Unlike many legends, John Henry was a real person - a former slave who was hired by the C&O Railroad to cut holes in rock into which explosives were placed in order to create tunnels.

A couple of interesting and ingenious CF apps have caught Eric Jones's eye recently. Follow the links and see for yourself.

I'm sure most of you have been in a situation where either your employer or customer doesn't like the way content from a Web browser looks when printed. There are many ways to provide printable content, but one of the most popular formats of printable material is PDF format.

Some of you may be thinking, ColdFusion (CF) and .NET? Why do it? We hear you. It is understandable that CF, running on top of J2EE, adds a layer of complexity when integrating with interfaces written with Microsoft-centric technologies.

This is a very good time to be a Web application developer. Over the years we have moved from complex and proprietary methods of sharing data, to a more standardized and easy-to-implement method of exchanging simple or complex objects over the Web.

Microsoft is going to pay $1.95 billion to get Sun Microsystems, the company with the sharpest spurs, off its back. The pair said this morning that they had settled all their legal differences. Microsoft will pay Sun $700 million to resolve antitrust issues, $900 million to resolve patent issues and a $350 million up-front down payment on a 10-year cross-license that includes Java and .NET. Sun will pay Microsoft when the technology gets into its servers.

Uttering the dreaded 'D' word in front of a room of hard-core ColdFusion developers is a brave act indeed. Hating Dreamweaver and berating its deficiencies has become a popular pastime among ColdFusion purists, so what I'm about to say may get me in all sorts of trouble.

Last month I introduced you to Lucene and then showed you how you can access the Jakarta Lucene APIs using native CFML scripting syntax. This month I'm going to show you how easy it is to create a Java CFX tag that performs the same functions as the two tags I illustrated last month: and .

There was once a time, not that long ago, when I seemed to be spending a significant portion of my life explaining why ColdFusion was indeed worthy of consideration even though other products were free. Then I stopped hearing that objection for the most part, and life was good (well, better).