Ben Forta

Before I go any further, just a note, don’t let the word “Enterprise” scare you. Now, read on …
We love ColdFusion because it is quick and easy and more productive than any other option out there. But quick and easy and productive can be a bit of a double-edged sword. Don’t get me wrong, you can build worldclass powerful scalable highly secure applications in ColdFusion, and many developers do exactly that. But, quick and easy and productive can also encourage grow-as-you-go thinking, and there are tens of thousands of apps that were tossed together as proof-of-concept apps or “let’s just get this thing up and we’ll revisit it later” apps, and well, they tend to get deployed and take on a life of their own, and they never get revisited until something goes terribly wrong.
The reality is that as ColdFusion apps grow in complexity, so does the need for clean structure and framework best-practices and well thought-out architecture. And as important as is quick and easy and productive, so is ColdFusion’s ability to support enterprise class thinking when needed and when appropriate. Best of both worlds, have your cake and eat it too, … you get the idea.
But where to start? What is Service-Oriented Architecture, and what is its relevance to ColdFusion? Is MVC a help or a hindrance? Where does refactoring come into the equation? Can ColdFusion’s Java underpinnings be taken advantage of? What can ORM options like Hibernate and Transfer do to help? So many questions, and so few answers presented clearly and methodically and coherently. Until, now.
Joe Rinehart has been using ColdFusion since 1999, is the brains behind the Model-Glue framework (for both ColdFusion and Flex), and has earned a reputation as a top-notch developer and presenter. And this year he presents a session entitled Developing Enterprise ColdFusion Applications at MAX U.S. in San Francisco. In 60 minutes or so, Joe systematically and methodically walks through the problems, the options, and the solutions, making it all make sense for all.
Joe’s session runs just once, on Wednesday, November 19th from 5:00pm until 6:00pm. If you are brand new to ColdFusion, then this is probably not the right session for you, yet. But, having just finished working through Joe’s presentation content, I can state quite definitively that for the rest of us, this one is highly recommended.