in an earlier post i had mentioned that i was in the process of starting up an east bay CFUG. it's no secret that bay area traffic sucks hard and for those people living in areas like san ramon (that'd be me), livermore, dublin, etc, the drive into san francisco after putting in a full day at the office isn't a terribly appealing notion. i've thrown out the idea of starting a CFUG in the east bay and it's been met with some pretty positive feedback. sweet.

here's the fun part... finding a location. i remember going through this with the IECFUG. trying to find a location that will accommodate enough people, has internet access and a projector, and doesn't cost an arm and a leg is a challenging endeavor. i've contacted a few schools in the area. either they hold classes at night and don't offer rooms to external groups, or they want $50/hr per meeting or they require the group to have a non-profit tax ID number (which as far as i understand would entail filing paperwork and filing taxes each year... then the hassle of transferring ownership as management changes... hoping to not have to resort to that). the business park that my company is in has a facility, but they charge over $300 (and no tenant discount).

while i continue to scout out a location on my own, i figured i'd put this out there publicly. does anyone in the east bay know of a potential meeting site? would anyone's business be willing to "sponsor" the group by way of allowing a monthly meeting?

any thoughts and/or suggestions are appreciated

coldfusion 8 - enhancements you may have missed

a few weeks back, i was approached by packt publishing and asked if i'd be interested in writing an article for their article network. their original request was about arrays in cf8, but i asked if we could flesh it out a bit and cover some of the other enhancements that cf8 brought to the table. they were very accommodating and gave me quite a bit of leeway.

what's really exciting about this to me is that, i believe this is the first coldfusion-related article on their article network. and they approached me. it wasn't as if i (or anybody else in the community) approached them and convinced them to accept an article on coldfusion. they wanted a coldfusion-related article. hopefully it'll be the first of many, as every little bit of exposure helps dispel the FUD that still pops up today regarding coldfusion.

i'll also point out that packt is planning on releasing a CF 8 book, the coldfusion 8 developer tutorial, written by john farrar. very nice to see a publisher getting behind coldfusion, and i'm thrilled to be contributing even a small part to that.

please feel free to check out the article and let me know what you think. in addition to feedback on the article, i'd love to hear some ideas for other topics that you think might be of interest.

amcom technology is looking for a senior business intelligence engineer.

business intelligence is about getting the right information, to the right people, at the right time.

it provides the ability to connect the dots by taking raw information, analyzing it for patterns, and transforming it into human readable consumption. it enables management to have a constant pulse on the business, as well as being able to monitor changes in customer behavior, market conditions, the regulatory environment, and corporate position vs. competitors. by eliminating guess work the company can execute with a tactile competitive advantage.

amcom technology is currently looking for a sr. business intelligence engineer who can work with our customers to define their business intelligence needs, and then implement those needs.

the position requires someone passionate about growing their skills, and in doing so the opportunity to tailor ones career is ever present. since the B.I. initiative is a relatively new service in our organization it allows anyone coming into this position to help define the vision, and take the B.I platform to as far as their imagination and desire can go.

responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• working with executive management to understand the information they need to drive the business.
• applying analytical skills to spot patterns and trends in raw data stores.
• develop published and interactive drill down dashboards that allow management to slice information into various perspectives.
• employ technologies that transform raw data into data warehouse repositories that facilitate self service reporting, and on-demand analytics.
• create forecasting models.
• managing data dictionaries.
• working with software developers to ensure that data is stored in a manner that facilitates the goals of B.I.
• define the long term B.I vision, and the roadmap to achieve it.
• utilize technologies like crystal reports, business objects, and/or anything that you recommend.
• utilize technologies like adobe flex, excelcius, etc... to build B.I tools.

read more about the position on the amcom technology blog. if you have any questions, feel free to ping me.

so remember a few months back when i was all like, "i'm going OO, and i'm going to document my progress so maybe other folks will learn what i'm learning"? yeah, that didn't go so well. for me, my OO journey has been decidedly hit-and-miss (more miss than hit, unfortunately). i think my attempt to document that journey reflected that.

for me, i think the issue is that i wasn't working in OO day-to-day. i'd learn how to do something, but then i'd get confused as to what the next logical step should be. or, i'd talk to somebody who would suggest that what i had learned wasn't necessarily how they would do it, and i'd step back. what i really needed was a mentor. one person that i had access to during the course of the day, that i could bounce ideas off of. one person that could show me *their* way (regardless of whether or not it was how others did it), and i could journey down that particular road. later on, i'd hope to have enough of a conceptual grasp that i'd be able to say, "wait... what about doing it *this* way?".

i may finally be in that situation. jon messer recently joined us at amcom. jon's somewhat of an OO god, altho he'll try and tell you otherwise (and he'll be terribly embarrassed at reading this ). in the few months that jon's been here, working with him has been a privilege, and one for which i'm very grateful.

now, this is more than just a "neener-neener-neener-i-have-a-mentor-and-you-don't" post. jon's very much into helping others learn, and has started a series of his own blog posts in which he's going to attempt to demystify the concepts of building OO applications. i think this series is largely going to be what i was previously attempting, with the significant difference that jon's already at a point where he can teach what he knows (as opposed to trying to teach what he's learning).

the series comes out of an evaluation that he had done of some of the coldfusion MVC frameworks, and deconstructs the code that he used.

this promises to be an interesting and educational series. i'd highly suggest that if you're still making the transition from procedural to OO, you sit in. feel free to post questions, or just a comment to let him know what you think about his approach.

this is a topic i've been thinking about for a while now. nolan erck just posted something to the south of shasta blog that prompted me to flesh out my thoughts a bit.

what can user groups do to promote regular attendance?

my first user group was the phoenix cfug back in 2002 or thereabouts. it was an awesome group to be a part of. decent attendance on a regular basis, and a real sense of "community". after the meetings, most of the attendees would go out for a drink or three and talk about coldfusion. what they were working on. or what obstacles/issues they were currently dealing with. it was a blast. i always enjoyed stepping out of "my" coldfusion world and hearing about what others were doing.

i left phoenix at the end of 2004, and have had the opportunity to be a part of a few other groups. one thing that i noticed is that after the meeting... people bolted. there was no discussion, no sense of camaraderie... just a few folks showing up, listening to the speaker, then heading home.

i've also noticed over the years that attendance seems to have gradually but steadily declined. i think a lot of this has to do with the fact that the meetings are generally broadcast over connect. i think this is a good thing, as it allows the speakers to reach a larger audience, but it also makes it too convenient for members who are local to head home, kick off their shoes, and watch/listen from home.

because most meetings are also recorded via connect, there's no sense of urgency to even catch the live broadcast. it'll be there whenever you feel like watching.

for me personally, i *like* being at the meetings. i enjoy the interaction and getting to talk to other developers. i'm one of the few that, given the option to telecommute, would rather be in the office. i do much better in that environment. that applies to user groups as well. i can easily watch the broadcast version, but that's a bit... "dry" (no reflection on the presenters). i want to be able to turn to the person next to me and say, "wow... that's pretty cool". i enjoy seeing the room react when a presenter "wow's" them. i enjoy going out for a drink after the meeting and talking about what we just saw. or about what somebody's currently doing at work.

for those folks who don't regularly attend... mind if i ask why not? is it the convenience of the breeze broadcasts or the convenience of being able to catch the recorded preso later on? is that what it's come to? if so, that doesn't bode well for the future of local user groups. are purely online groups like the online coldfusion meetup the way of the future?

i'm all for the online meetup group. not everybody has a local user group that they can attend. it definitely serves a purpse, as does broadcasting local user groups over connect. but in serving their purpose, are they contributing to the demise of face-to-face local user groups?

is it a lost cause or can anything be done to improve the attendance at local meetings? i mean the regular attendance. not the folks that show up once every six months for the software raffle (which is what prompted nolan's post). i'm in the process of trying to get an east bay cfug off the ground, which isn't an easy feat. i'm wondering if it's worth the effort. is the concept of a local user group antiquated?

if you have a user group local to your area, but don't attend regularly... is there anything that the group could do differently that would make it more appealing for you to attend in person?

it's not terribly uncommon to have a page that is expecting a particular variable, but the page may not know if that variable will be in the form scope or URL scope. case in point might be a resultset that does pagination. on the first submit, the variables would likely be in the form scope. as the user pages through the results, it's entirely possible that the variables would be in the URL scope.

the most straightforward way to handle this would be:

1. <cfparam value="myNewVar" default="" />
3. <cfif structKeyExists(URL, 'myVar')>
4. <cfset variables.myNewVar = URL.myVar />
5. </cfif>
6. <cfif structKeyExists(form, 'myVar')>
7. <cfset variables.myNewVar = form.myVar />
8. </cfif>

it checks both scopes for the var, and if it finds the variable in either, it assigns it to a new local variable. it's straightforward, but not particularly "clean".

last night i started documenting my journey of learning flex, focusing on my use of the built-in Object datatype and some issues that i faced in that respect.

there was one other aspect of this that i meant to touch on. to recap, i was passing a single Object to a coldfusion CFC method. in my little coldfusion brain, i thought of this as being not unlike a structure. so, i expected the method to receive a single argument much like a struct with multiple keys.

let's say my actionscript function looked like this:

1. var args:Object = new Object();
2. args.stateCode = "CA";
3. args.zipCode = "94583";
4. args.territory = 3;
5. // call the remote object method
6. ro_Customers.getFilteredCustomers(args);

i created an Object, populated it with 3 variables (keys), and passed it as an argument to the getFilteredCustomers() method in my remote object (CFC). originally, my CFC looked like this:

1. <cffunction name="getFilteredCustomers" returntype="query" access="remote">
2. <cfargument name="filterCriteria" type="struct" required="true" />
3. ...

i assumed that my args Object would be able to be referenced as a structure in the CFC. it's a single variable with key/value pairs just like a struct. but when i tried to reference #arguments.filterCriteria.stateCode# i found that the variable didn't exist.

what actually happens is that the CFC treats each value in the Object as its own argument. think argumentCollection instead of struct.

the correct code for the CFC's arguments is:

1. <cffunction name="getFilteredCustomers" returntype="query" access="remote">
2. <cfargument name="stateCode" type="string" required="false" />
3. <cfargument name="zipCode" type="string" required="false" />
4. <cfargument name="territory" type="number" required="false" />
5. ...

aside from explicitly declaring each value in the Object, i set the 'required' attribute to false because in this case, not all of the values may be present in the Object. a user might choose to search only on stateCode, or only on zipCode, etc.

a couple of weeks ago i started looking at transfer. i found myself wishing that i hadn't missed out on mark mandel's presentation to the inland empire coldfusion user's group that he had given a couple of months ago. heck i would have been thrilled to see any presentation on transfer right then and there.

in an all-too-rare moment of clarity, i remembered that charlie arehart has a compendium of links to recorded breeze/connect presentations, including six on transfer and, as of this writing, 231(!) on various other topics. very nice.

i've been aware that this existed for quite some time, but i guess i took it for granted until i actually found myself needing it. i meant to post something back then, not only to thank charlie but also to mention the UGTV page in case there might be a few folks out there who were unaware.

fast forward to today. somebody on the BACFUG mailing list asked a question about code generation. i pointed out two resources that i thought may be of use (one being peter farrell's rooibos generator, the other being brian rinaldi's illudium p36 code generator).

over the past few months i've been lucky enough to have the opportunity to start playing around with flex at work. overall it's been a pretty good experience. i think flex itself is a very cool technology, and flexbuilder absolutely ROCKS as an IDE. of course, there have been hurdles. some i was able to overcome pretty easily, and some left scars. i figured i'd post some of them here and hopefully save some other flex n00bs the hassle of figuring things out the hard way.

the application that i'm currently working on is fairly straightforward. let's call it a user manager. i present a couple of comboboxes that let the user filter by certain criteria (state, zipcode, etc) and populate a datagrid with the list of users that were returned.

i chose to pass these values in a single object. in coldfusion, this single object would be a structure. flex, or more appropriately, actionscript, has a comparable datatype, simply called Object. an Object would be created as follows:

1. var args:Object = new Object();
2. args.stateCode = "CA";
3. args.zipCode = "94583";
4. args.territory = 3;

fairly straightforward when compared to a coldfusion structure:

1. <cfset args = structNew() />
2. <cfset args.stateCode = "CA" />
3. <cfset args.zipCode = "94583" />
4. <cfset args.territory = 3 />

because the question of inexpensive coldfusion hosting continues to come up frequently on mailing lists and forums, i'm posting an update to an post i made last year about hosting A to Z.

i'm no longer hosting with them, as i've moved to a VPS solution at AHP Hosting, but thought others might find this to be of some value. hosting A to Z has recently announced that they've upgraded from CF 7 to CF 8 (enterprise!). you can find a matrix of their cf plans at http://www.hostingatoz.com/shared_hosting.cfx.

the usual caveats definitely come into play when using shared hosting, but for those who are just looking to get started and aren't ready to spend money for a VPS or dedicated server (or even ready to spend $20 a month on shared hosting), it's definitely worth looking into. the most expensive CF 8 plan is $74.99 a year, and the cheapest is $29.99 (again, that's yearly, not monthly).

feel free to check out the entry under "related blog entries" for my previous post on the subject and a review. to recap, there was some good, and there was some bad... but they definitely fill a need for those who may just be getting started.