ColdFusion Builder1 Update1 is LIVE.  Please apply the update to your ColdFusion Builder.  In this update, we have fixed a few pressing issues related to usability, performance/memory management and interoperability with source-control plug-ins. 

Note that you need to be an Administrator to install the update.  Once you install the update, restart ColdFusion Builder.  If you have ColdFusion builder installed as a plug-in to eclipse, restart eclipse with ‘eclipse –clean’ command OR just restart twice.

For more details on installing this update and issues fixed, please refer the tech note – http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/846/cpsid_84607.html.

ColdFusion Builder team needs your feedback/rants about ColdFusion Builder 1 and your inputs for short-listing features for the next version of ColdFusion Builder code-named STORM!  Please help us fill this survey -

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ColdFusionStorm

It should take about 20 minutes of your time – this time of yours is valuable for us!

#ColdFusionBuilder product team now on Twitter! Follow @cfbproductteam for the latest and greatest on #ColdFusionBuilder.

The first version of ColdFusion Builder out of the door.  It is now available at the stores.  Apart from all the basic features a IDE should have, it has innovative features like extensions which allow you to extend CFB by writing code in CFML!

This is my FOURTH major release in ColdFusion.  I had released ColdFusion 7, ColdFusion 8 and ColdFusion 9.  Five years ago, when I had just joined the team, Damon Cooper used to say it is difficult to join ColdFusion team and also difficult to get out of it.  Now I know what exactly he was talking about – Great technology and a great team!

Coming back to the point, here are some handy resource pointers:

Try/Buy Links:
Try Adobe ColdFusion Builder
Buy Adobe ColdFusion Builder

Couple of Good Articles/Blogs on ColdFusion Builder:
Introducing Adobe ColdFusion Builder
Things to watch out while Installation CFB

Documentation Links:
ColdFusion Builder release notes
Getting started with various tasks in ColdFusion Builder
Getting started tutorials and videos
Installing ColdFusion Builder documentation
Using ColdFusion Builder documentation

Do provide feedback (bugs/enhancements) here.

Chennai CFUG is having its October month meeting on 22nd.  Rakshith will take a connect session on ColdFusion 9 and AIR Integration.  More details on Chennai CFUG site at Adobe Groups.

Task:
Example to demonstrate Auto-generation of tables, Naming strategy and automatically populating data in ColdFusion-ORM

Previous Related Posts:
Getting Started with ORM
ColdFusion-ORM: Using CRUD Functions
ColdFusion-ORM: Define One-to-Many and Many-to-one relationships
ColdFusion-ORM: Collections
ColdFusion-ORM: Define Computed Properties

Stuff that you would learn:
- To auto-generate tables in ORM
- To fill data into the auto-generated tables
- To use the DDL-only attributes
- To define custom Naming Strategy

Steps to Run the example:
-  Create a datasource by name ‘test_datasource’ pointing to a empty database. Note that the example will take care of creating the tables and populating data into it.
-  Create a directory say "orm_autogen" under webroot.
-  Create the following files – Application.cfc, Art.cfc, Artists.cfc, mysqlscript.sql, lcasestrategy.cfc and index.cfm.
-  Run the URL “http://<ip>:<port>/orm_autogen/index.cfm”

Application.cfc

<cfcomponent>
    <cfset this.name = "ORM_Autogen">
    <cfset this.ormenabled = "true">
    <!---
    * 'test_datasource' is a datasource which should be created
    * as a pre-requisite for this example. Artists table contains
    --->
    <cfset this.datasource = "test_datasource">

    <!---
    * To auto-generate tables, dbcreate should be specified.
    * dbcreate is 'none' by default.
    * It can be 'dropcreate' or 'update'.
    * Setting it to 'update' creates the table if it does not
    * exist or update the table if it exists.
    * Setting it to 'dropcreate' drops the table if it
    * exists and then creates it.
    --->
    <cfset this.ormsettings.dbcreate = "dropcreate">

    <!---
    * Path to the SQL script file that should be executed after
    * ORM is initialized.
    * Note that this applies only if dbcreate is set to dropcreate.
    * This must be the absolute file path or the path relative
    * to the application.
    * The SQL script file lets you populate the tables before
    * the application is accessed.
    --->
    <cfset this.ormsettings.sqlscript="mysqlscript.sql">

    <!---
    * (Logical column name is the name of the property OR the value
    * of the column attribute if specified)
    * By default, when auto-generating the tables, the logical column
    * name is used as the column name.
    * If you want to change it, you should use the namingstrategy setting.

    * By default, namingstrategy="default". 

    * namingstrategy="smart": This strategy changes the logical table or
    * column name to uppercase. Also, if the logical table or column name
    * is in camel case, this strategy breaks the camelcased name and separates
    * the broken words using '_'.
    * For eg: firstName -> FIRST_NAME, dateOfBirth -> DATE_OF_BIRTH.

    * If you want to use a custom strategy, then, you should create a CFC,
    * implement the cfide.orm.INamingStrategy interface and specify the CFC
    * name for this setting.  In this example, I have demonstrated the
    * custom strategy.
    --->
    <cfset this.ormsettings.namingstrategy="lcasestrategy">
</cfcomponent>

Art.cfc

<cfcomponent persistent="true" table="Art">
      <cfproperty name="artId" generator="identity" fieldtype="id">
    <!---
    * Note that the attributes 'ormtype' and 'length' are used
    * only when the tables are auto-generated.  There are other
    * similar attributes like dbdefault, index, notnull, precision,
    * scale, sqltype, unique and uniquekey.
    --->
      <cfproperty name="artName" ormtype="string" length="50">
      <cfproperty name="price" ormtype="double">
      <cfproperty name="largeImage" ormtype="string" length="30">
      <cfproperty name="mediaId" ormtype="integer" length="10">
      <cfproperty name="isSold" ormtype="boolean" dbdefault=1>
      <cfproperty name="artist" fkcolumn="artistid" fieldtype="many-to-one" cfc="Artists">
</cfcomponent>

Artists.cfc

<cfcomponent persistent="true" table="Artists">
      <cfproperty name="artistId" fieldtype="id" ormtype="integer" length=10>
      <cfproperty name="firstName" ormtype="string" length="20" notnull="true">
      <cfproperty name="lastName" ormtype="string" length="20" notnull="true">
      <cfproperty name="address"  ormtype="string" length="50">
      <cfproperty name="city" ormtype="string" length="20">
      <cfproperty name="state" ormtype="string" length="2">
      <cfproperty name="postalCode" ormtype="string" length="10">
      <cfproperty name="email" ormtype="string" length="50" unique="true">
      <cfproperty name="phone" ormtype="string" length="20">
      <cfproperty name="fax" ormtype="string" length="12">
      <cfproperty name="thePassword" ormtype="string" length="20">
</cfcomponent>

lcasestrategy.cfc

<cfcomponent implements="cfide.orm.INamingStrategy">
    <!---
    * ColdFusion calls this method for each table name to generate
    * the new table name. The logical table name is the input.
    --->
    <cffunction name="getTableName" returntype="String" access="public">
        <cfargument name="tableName" type="String"> 

        <cfreturn lCase(tableName)> 

    </cffunction>

    <!---
    * ColdFusion calls this method for each column name to generated the
    * new column name. The logical column name is the input.
    --->
    <cffunction name="getColumnName" returntype="String" access="public">
        <cfargument name="columnName" type="String">

        <cfreturn lCase(columnName)> 

    </cffunction>
</cfcomponent>

mySQLScript.sql

--This SQl script will be automatically executed after the tables are auto-generated.
--Note that each SQL should be separated by a ';'.
insert into Artists(artistid, firstname, lastname, address, city, state, postalcode, email, phone, fax, thepassword)
values(1, 'Aiden', 'Donolan', '352 Corporate Ave.', 'Denver', 'CO', '80206-4526', 'aiden.donolan@donolan.com', '555-751-8464', '555-751-8463', 'peapod');
insert into Artists(artistid, firstname, lastname, address, city, state, postalcode, email, phone, fax, thepassword)
values(2, 'Austin', 'Weber', '25463 Main Street, Suite C', 'Berkeley', 'CA', '94707-4513', 'austin@life.com', '555-513-4318', '510-513-4888', 'nopolyes');
insert into Art(artname, price, largeimage, mediaid, issold, artistid)
values('Michael', 13900, 'aiden02.jpg', 1, 0, 1);
insert into Art(artname, price, largeimage, mediaid, issold, artistid)
values('Space', 9800, 'elecia01.jpg', 2, 1, 2);

index.cfm

<!---
* This example demonstrates Auto-generation of tables.
* This example will teach you
* - how to auto-generate tables in ORM
* - to fill data into the auto-generated tables
* - DDL-only attributes
* - how to use custom Naming Strategy

* 'test_datasource' is a datasource which should be created
* as a pre-requisite for this example. Artists table contains
* a list of artists records.  Art table contains a list of art
* records.  Artists table has a one-to-many relationship with
* Art table. These table would be created used in this example.
--->

<!---Load the artists and dump it--->
<cfdump var="#EntityLoad("Artists")#">

ColdFusion 9 shipped today and is available for purchase in the Adobe stores! This is my third big release in ColdFusion after ColdFusion 7 and ColdFusion 8 apart from the dot releases. It feels very satisfying to see the product released having worked for 2 complete years on this! I am sure customers would love ColdFusion 9 which would be a testimony to the efforts of the ColdFusion team. Apart from having the cool new features like Office File Interop, ORM, etc, ColdFusion 9 has made tremendous performance improvements in various areas (The performance brief will be coming up soon on the ColdFusion page). It is nice to see how easy it is to use the new features and how nicely each of them are jelled into the product.

The agenda for the Adobe Dev Summit Bangalore is now live – Find it here. It is a one-day summit which includes a key-note by Ben Forta and Serge Jespers.  There are two ColdFusion sessions in the Summit – "ColdFusion as a Enterprise Hub" by Vamseekrishna Manneboina and "What’s new in ColdFusion 9" by me and Bhakti. There are a number of Flex sessions and one on "Flash on mobile devices". This is a nice opportunity to get introduced/in-sights to the Adobe platform technologies and also meet the team that developed these products!

Meet you all there!

I am excited to say that I will be speaking on ColdFusion 9: Advanced ORM at CFUnited – on August 13th at 3:15PM.  Terry Ryan will cover the basics of ORM in an other session just before mine.  I am planning to cover the following as part of the talk:

• Relationship – one-to-many, many-to-one, one-to-one and many-to-many
• Event Handling
• Lazy Loading
• Caching
• Transactions
• ORM Session Management
• HBM files
• Development time support – ormreload(), logSQL, savemapping, etc
• Generating DDL

If you want me to cover any other topics, do comment about it(Note that the above list is tentative.  ORM is a vast subject and I need to consider the time factor as well.)  This is my second session in CFUnited.  Last year I had talked about Taking advantage of 64-bit support in ColdFusion.

Details about the other sessions from Adobe speakers is here.  Meet you all at CFUnited!

Adobe Dev Summit, 2009 has been announced. The summit is on 4th August, 2009 at Lalit Ashok, Bangalore. You can sign up for a Gold pass, which is absolutely free. You can also sign up for a Platinum pass and get Flex Builder 3 Professional license for free.

What’s in it for you?

• See the new, improved and rocking LiveCycle Data Services 3 in action! If you are a Java developer, you wouldn’t want to miss this one!
• If you are a PHP/Java developer, get on the RIA expressway using the new Data Centric Development features on Adobe Flash Builder 4
• If you’re into enterprise-wide RIA development, things have just got hot! Check out the brand new version of ColdFusion with the sparkling new developer IDE – ColdFusion Builder.
• User Interfaces are a thing of the past now. Build User Experiences of tomorrow with Adobe Flash Catalyst. Quicker than ever!
• Sign up for a Platinum Pass and get the award winning Adobe Flex Builder 3 Professional license worth USD 699 FREE!

Please find more details and register here http://www.endtoend.in/ete2009/adobe/devsummit/mailer.html.