Note: This blog post is from 2010. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

A little background on the question

While his entry expands on the oft-shared Adobe graphic comparing features among it and the existing CFML editors, there are some more features that may not have been t important enough to be listed on that graphic, but are sometimes a source of concern/contention for some as they consider CFB. Here are a few of them.

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Note: This blog post is from 2010. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

It's a first cut. While there are couple of concerns that will come to mind for some readers, and I try to address those at the end, it does work for me and has helped improve my server's stability and reliability, and it's been used by many others.

Update in 2020: I have changed the 503 status code below to 429, as that has become the norm for such throttles. I had acknowledged it as an option originally. I just want to change it now, in case someone just grabs the code and doesn't read it all or the comments. Speaking of comments, do see the discussion below with thoughts from others, especially from James Moberg who created his own variant addressing some concerns, as offered on github, and the conversation that followed about that, including yet another later variant.

Update in 2021: Rather than use my code, perhaps you would rather have this throttling done by your web server or another proxy. It is now a feature offered in IIS, Apache, and others. I discuss those in a new section below.

Background: do you need to care about throttling? Perhaps more than you realize

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Note: This blog post is from 2010. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

It also gives me a chance to offer some props for the site of the company behind the tools, SolarWinds, which again many may find valuable in educating not only about the tools but the topics that the tools help with.

The free SAN and VM monitoring tools

• SolarWinds Free SAN Monitor - keep a close eye on the performance & capacity of your storage arrays and become a storage superhero!
  Note also:
  • Intro video
  • Or step up to their commercial Storage Profiler - Multi-Vendor Storage Performance Monitoring
• VM Monitor - continuously monitor a VMware® ESX Server and its virtual machines with at-a-glance virtualization health statistic
  Note also:
  • Intro video
• WMI Monitor - monitor your Windows® apps and servers in real time, using built-in, community-sourced, and customizable application templates!
  Note also:
  • Intro video

I haven't yet used them myself, so this isn't so much a recommendation of the tools but rather a recommendation that you consider them if you are interested in what they have to offer.

The company offers still more free tools, as well commercial ones of course.

A company that gets how to educate you about their products

You may have noticed above that I offered as well links to videos about each product. SolarWinds has really done a great job offering educational resources, especially videos, and organizing them into categories such as tech talks, webcasts, and more.

Indeed, if you may be new to network management (which can be a broad and/or deep subject, appealing variously to generalist IT geeks and hard-core network admins), they offer lots of compelling introductory resources, including their geek guides and even certification training . Of course they also have a helpful blog and twitter feed.

Just as I previously praised the Mura folks as a "company who got it right" in terms of setting up a compelling, informative web site for IT folks, I really have to say the same for the SolarWinds folks. Congrats, and thanks.

Note: This blog post is from 2010. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

I'm giving a CFUnited keynote (no joke!)

First up, while it won't be that unusual that I'm presenting at this year's CFUnited (I've presented at ever event since it's founding), what is unusual is that I've been asked to give the second (Thursday) keynote!

What an honor, and of course a challenge, as Joe Reinhart set a high bar last year! :-)

While the organizers and I have discussed the topic, they've not yet announced it (though they have announced me as one of the keynote speakers, in addition to Adam Lehman and Terry Ryan from Adobe.)

I was awaiting their announcing the topic before I'd post this, but since I also want to announce the other "unusual" speaking engagement, I figured I'd go ahead and share this now and will post an update on the keynote topic later.

BR Conference 2010, in Rio

The second "unusual" speaking engagement for me is that I've been invited (along with Ben Forta, Ray Camden, Adam Lehman, Terry Ryan, and others) to come down to speak in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the BR Conference 2010, a CF and RIA conference being held Aug 19-21.

I've never been to Rio before (let alone Brazil), and I've long looked forward to visiting anywhere in South America, so this is a real thrill. Of course, being in the southern hemisphere, August will be the "deep into winter" with temps down to the 60's/70's Farenheit. :-) Better bring a jacket! Fortunately, it is in fact the driest month of the year, on average.

I'm of course delighted to have that chance, and as they're planning to cover travel costs for speakers I'm all the more honored and grateful, being selected out of so many fine available speakers in the CF community.

Maybe it didn't hurt that I have contributed to at least one book that's translated into Portuguese. It *was* about using CF to build mobile web apps, after all, albeit 10 years ago! I'm just kidding that there's any connection, of course. :-) The organizer, Francisco Paulino (aka, Tofinha) said he drove his decisions based on popularity of speakers down there.

Fortunately, they will have translators at the event for attendees to understand us yankee presenters.

So that now leaves me only Asia, Africa, and Antartica as continents that I will not yet have visited. If only we could get some CF conferences going in those places! :-)

Note: This blog post is from 2010. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

Several Performance Advantages, and Failover As Well

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