From Mindrally: “Forklift will change development with ColdFusion MX. Forklift will help bridge the gap for CFMX developers who have not been introduced to Object Oriented Development and the advantages that is brings to application development. It will also help those who are accustomed to using Object Oriented methodologies leverage ColdFusion Component’s to implement advanced application architectures. Forklift is a foundation for implementing business requirements without spending a lot of time laying the ground work for data access.” Details are at http://mindrally.com.
A Forklift for ColdFusion Development
4 responses to “A Forklift for ColdFusion Development”
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would be nice if the demo worked…
I’ve seen a lot of debates lately about whether or not it’s good to store persistance mechanisms in CFC’s through inheritance. This is exactly how Farcry CMS does it, and I wouldn’t be suprised if this product took some cues from Daemon’s approach (or vice versa, from the documentation they seem exactly the same). I think the approach is more suited to a content mgmt./publishing arena than your typical CF application… typically the developer needs a direct hand in database access. I myself have grown fond of the separate data access object approach, and have heard that the inherited methods slow cfc instantiation significantly. -
Apologies please.
All is working now. -
FourQ COAPI, which uses a CFC inheritence model and extended component metadata has been in the public domain since the CFMX beta. FarCry CMS which is built on this model has been commercially avaiable since the release of CFMX and as open source from April 2003: http://farcry.daemon.com.au/
In FarCry, content or data is treated as a "content object". There is no need for developers to understand the underlying storage model. The data abstraction layer delivers the content to the application. Although you do accaisionally want to break out to a more direct database table model, it’s surprising how often its completely unnecessary. -
Whether you are starting fresh or extending a development effort, Forklift can provide a solid foundation for creating or improving web sites, web applications and/or Rich Internet Applications (RIA). The Forklift Persistence Platform implements Rapid Application Development techniques by abstracting the Application Data Layer which allows developers to focus on modeling and designing their applications. ColdFusion Components (CFC’s) are generated using the Forklift Application Management Tool and allow for easy implementation of other CFC, Business logic or Structured Query Language (SQL) programming. Forklift’s easy to use Application Programming Interface (API) provides easy to use methods such as create(), delete(), update(), and get() for managing CFC data and do not require knowledge of SQL programming. While Forklift implements Data Management or Object Persistence for ColdFusion Components, it does not prevent the use or reuse of current SQL queries or CFC/customtag embedded business logic.
The methodology presented here covers quite a few areas in architecture, design and development processes and is based on different techniques proven over many years of successful development. It is not necessary to follow this methodology in Forklift development, but it is vital to use some type of methodology. Without a plan outlining the requirements for a project, success is unlikely. Creating a plan often seems a daunting, difficult process but, you if you have a proven methodology to follow things will fall into place.
http://mindrally.com
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