Note: This blog post is from 2007. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily.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.

If you've noticed, I've recently started doing a spate of entries on CFEclipse.

Some of you know me as one of the old-line "dinosaurs" who have been long-time fans of CF Studio and its "son" HomeSite+. I've been using them for 10 years, and have in fact continued to be an ardent supporter of helping folks move from CF Studio to HomeSite+ the past few years.

I've also used Dreamweaver on occasion, because it offers some useful features that HS+ does not have (especially for web service and CFC exploring, to name just a couple).

Welcome to the revolution

But there's so much goodness in CFE and Eclipse in general (including most of the things in the other common CFML editors) that I think it's time we old-line folks faced the music and "got with the program".

Of course, no one will force you, and I do understand the challenges you may face (or the concerns you may have). I just want to do what I can to help, including sharing here over time various discoveries and tips (and traps) as I make the transition. But we're not alone--and I'm clearly not being any sort of a pioneer. Plenty have already made the journey.

Indeed, that's one of the main reasons I created the recent list of bloggers who have already written (and most who continue to write) about CFEclipse. I want to help folks learn from those who've travelled the road before us, as well as to hear both the arguments for and against it.

But I don't like CFEclipse because of "x"

There are certainly many who are still holding out, arguing for why they don't care for it. In fact, to address that, Brian Kotek just last week did an entry on "CFEclipse: Pros, Cons, and Misconceptions".

Join me on the journey

I've had to use Eclipse and CFEclipse for the past few months as I have been working with FusionDebug and the new CF8 debugger, both interactive step debuggers for CFML, and both based on Eclipse.

I've only learned the bare minimum I needed about Eclipse (and those I didn't *need* CFEclipse to work with the debuggers, I did install it). I still edited my code in HS+ and just used Eclipse/CFeclipse to do debugging, and I have reminded people of that whenever I showed off or wrote about the debuggers. There are plenty of people still preferring either HS+ or DW (or some other editor).

But Adobe is clearly behind Eclipse as a platform for code editing (witness FlexBuilder, and the new Eclipse-based debugger in CF8). They're not turning their back on DW, but clearly CF developers are getting more and more built-into Eclipse, both from them and from others.

And many in the CFML community are clearly behind CFE. I think we'll only see things get better and better, and I plan to do my part to help folks like us make the transition. So while I won't claim to be a pioneer, I do offer my services as a guide. Care to join me?

Note: This blog post is from 2007. 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.

Here are 29 more bloggers who have written about CFEclipse. These folks (no slouches, several having 14 or more entries) simply have not yet (at the time of this writing) chosen to provide a CFEclipse-specific tag or category. I hope they may reconsider, to make it easier for folks to keep an eye on their valuable CFE contributions.

In my last entry, I offered part 1 of a 2-part entry on CFEclipse bloggers (bloggers who have written about CFEclipse). In that list, I showed only those (45) bloggers who have dedicated a specific category or tag to CFEclipse (or Eclipse, if an otherwise CF-oriented blog).

Again, the list is sorted in approximately descending order by number of entries I found they had done on CFEclipse (as of today). And as I said before, while many of the entries are just news (like announcing a new release, etc.), some are useful tips from a wide range of developers (and the typical arguments for and against CFE).

How did I find the bloggers and their CFE content?

To find these entries, and those in part 1, I did a google search on CFEclipse and browsed through the first few hundred entries to find any bloggers who had done something on CFE. If they had at least one meaningful entry, I added them to the list (and put them in the list in part 1 if they offered a CFE category).

I then also ran the 2 lists by Mark Drew to ask him if he thought I'd forgotten anyone. Fortunately, I had not.

How I got a URL for you to find their content, easily

Just as the bloggers in part 1 offered CFE-specific categories (and therefore a single URL to find their CFE content), I wanted to provide a way for you here also to just click a link and go right to these folks' CFE-specific content. How did I do that?

Most blogs offer a search box, so I tried searching there, and if that resulted in a URL holding the search criteria, I offer it here in the list of URLS below. (In the case of BlogCFC, though it doesn't show the search criteria in the URL by default, you can add it in by hand as &search=cfeclipse, which I've done below.)

Otherwise, for other blogs where I could get no URL to use for searching, I resorted to using Google's nifty "site search" feature to search their blog for any CFEclipse references (and I further added some criteria to find only their blog entries, not RSS feeds, etc, to keep things even with the list in part 1). The only negative with this is that it could find entries where there are simply COMMENTs that mention CFEclipse. That's no good, so I have only shown the number that correlates to the number found by their site search tool. (BTW, note that some of the blogs themselves use google site searching as their means to do search.)

On some sites where there was no search result URL I could offer, I could also find no CFE blog entries with such a Google site search (though the search feature on their site did indeed find some CFE entries). In that case, you'll simply have to search the site yourself to find these entries.

Conversely, some other sites showed far fewer results in their own site search than I found using Google's site search. So I show the Google Search link even if their own site search URL would have found their CFE content.

Finally, since the Google and even some site searches take you to a page where it's not easy to discern the URL for the blogger's site, I am offering their blog URL and then the link to do the search:

The list of CFE bloggers (who have no CFE category/tag)

• (17) Brandon Harper's CFE search
• (15) Mark Drew's Original Blog :-) CFE search
• (14) Kai König's CFE search
• (14) Adam Howitt's CFE search
• (12)Jake Munson's CFE search
• (11) Robert Blackburn's CFE search
• (10) Mark Breneman's CFE search
• (10) Jim Priest's CFE search
• (10) Terrence Ryan's CFE search
• (9) Sammy Larbi's CFE search
• (8) Mark Mandel's CFE search
• (8) Kola Oyedeji's CFE search
• (7) Nick Tong's CFE search
• (7) Dave Shuck's CFE search
• (6) David Harris's CFE search
• (5) Jeff Houser's CFE search
• (5) Ryan Guille's CFE search
• (5) Michael Sharman's CFE search
• (4) Zero One's CFE search
• (4) David Fekke's CFE search
• (3) Brian Love's CFE search
• (3) Rick Osborne's CFE search
• (3)Jim Collins's CFE search
• (3)Patrick McElhaney's CFE search
• (2) Ben Nadel's CFE search
• (2) Theo Rushin's CFE search
• (2) Doug Hughes's CFE search
• (1) Ryan Stille's CFE search
• (1)Scott Pinkston's CFE search

As I said, I'd love to see those bloggers (especially with a lot or substantial CFE content) offer a CFEclipse-specific category or tag. If you want to press those folks to do so, that could be helpful to us all.

Finally, again, I realize that these are not complete lists. I did quite a bit of work to gather them up, but I'm sure I could have left out some great contributors. Please do add any you'd like as comments here.

Hope the above is helpful to all interested in CFE.

Update: On first posting this, I found out that my use of Google to search sites was finding entries where people had merely commented on CFEclipse in a person's blog, among some other issues. That's no good.

Better, though, I learned that for those sites using BlogCFC, I could indeed force it to use search criteria in the URL, so I've revised the list and the rankings since first publication earlier today.

Note: This blog post is from 2007. 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.

If you had to guess how many people have blogged about CFEclipse, what would you guess? During my process of evaluating the current state of CFE resources (see my other recent entries in the CFEclipse category), I started to take note of those blogs that have CFE categories/tags.

I've found more than 70 of them and I want to point them out for you (those that had at least one useful entry). More than just list them, I also have provided an OPML file and even a CFE-specific aggregator for those who don't use one on their own.

Now, I've decided to split this entry into 2 parts. First, I list below those 51 who offer a specific CFEclipse category or tag (as well as offer the info to help you with aggregating them together).

In part 2, I'll list those who do not (at the time of this writing) offer a CFE-specific category or tag. Their content is indeed still valuable, just a little harder to stay on top of (and I'd love to see them added to this list if they would add a CFE category and assign it to all their past entries).

About the listing

The list is sorted in approximately descending order by number of entries (as of today). Note that it's possible a blogger may have a great tip but failed to mark under a CFEclipse category. They may also have listed CFE tips under an eclipse category, but I didn't think to consider that until later in my research, so while I have a couple of those below, I haven't gone back to consider that for those I did not list here.

While many of the entries are just news (like announcing a new release, etc.), some are useful tips from a wide range of developers. There are also the expected arguments for and against CFE (though those against tend to be older entries).

As I said before, this is all part of some work I'm doing to help developers get the most out of CFE, which I'll announce in the future. In the meantime, please enjoy the entries found here.

The list of CFEclipse category feeds

• (180) Mark Drew, of course(RSS for category)
• (63) Sean Corfield (RSS for category)
• (53) Andy Jarret (RSS for category)
• (32) Rob Rohan (RSS for category
• (32) Nathan Strutz (No RSS for category)
• (25) Spike Milligan (archived courtesy the web.archive.org) (No RSS for category)
• (24) Ryan Stewart (no RSS for category)
• (23) Simeon Bateman (RSS for category)
• (20) Ray Camden (RSS for category)
• (12) Matt Woodward (RSS from category)
• (11) Brian Rinaldi (RSS for category)
• (11) Ben Forta (RSS for category)
• (8) Rob Brooks-Bilson (RSS for category)
• (8) Luis Majano (RSS for category)
• (7) Pete Freitag (No RSS for category)
• (7) Dan Vega (no RSS for category)
• (6) Brian Kotek (RSS for category)
• (6) Charlie Arehart (RSS from category)
• (6) Aaron West (RSS for category)
• (6) Adam Crump (RSS for category)
• (5) Dan Lancelot (RSS for category)
• (5) Tom Chiverton (RSS for category
• (5) Trond Ulseth (RSS for category)
• (5) Andy Allan (RSS for category)
• (5) Steve "Cutter" Blades (RSS for category)
• (4) Russell Brown (RSS for category)
• (4) Scott Stroz (RSS for category)
• (4) Rob Gonda (RSS for category)
• (4) Phil Duba (RSS for category)
• (4) Mike Rankin (No RSS for category)
• (4) Kevin Roche (RSS for category)
• (4) Jared Rypka-Hauer (RSS for category)
• (3) Todd Sharp (RSS for category)
• (3) Michael Traher (RSS for category)
• (3) Andy Powell (RSS for category)
• (3) Russ Johnson (RSS for category)
• (3) Tony Petruzzi (No RSS for category)
• (3) Jeff Fleitz (RSS for category)
• (3) Teratech (RSS for category)
• (3) Jeff Coughlin (RSS from category)
• (2) Mike Kelp (RSS for category)
• (2) Joe Danziger (RSS for category)
• (2) Peter Bell (RSS for category)
• (2) Sam Farmer (RSS for category)
• (1) Rey Bango (RSS for category)
• (1) Dean Harmon (RSS for category)
• (1) Aaron Lynch (RSS for category)
• (1) Mike Nimer (RSS for category)
• (1) Kevin McCabe (RSS for category)
• (1) Gareth Edwards (No RSS for category)
• (1) John Ramon (No RSS for category)

I did quite a bit of work to gather them up, but I'm sure I could have left out some great contributors. Please do add any you'd like as comments here. Again, in part 2, I list those bloggers with CFE content but no CFE-specific tag or category.

Are you or a favorite not on the list?

Again, if you expect to be on this list and are not (or think someone should be), first let me ask you: does the blog have a CFEclipse-specific category (or an Eclipse category, on a blog devoted otherwise substantially to CF)? If so, I'm happy to add it. Just drop me a comment below.

And yes, I do hope that Mark will add this info to his wiki, but I have started the process by placing it here because I wanted to start the ranking by number of entries, something that won't be possible to reasonably keep updated in the wiki (but it's the sort of info not expected to be kept updated in a blog entry).

Tracking new entries: an aggregator and an OPML file

While you can just go browsing the bloggers, I've also done a few things to make it even easier for you to keep up on new entries from all these bloggers at once, whether you use aggregators or not.

First, I provide the URL for each blogger's RSS feed for their CFE category, if they have one, so you can add any of interest to any feed aggregator you have.

Further, I've provided here an OPML file listing all the RSS URLs (again, just for the CFE-specific categories). You can use that to import all the URLs into a favorite aggregator.

If you don't have an aggregator, here is a web-based aggregator of just these CFE-based feeds:

Browse and Search CFE entries

Finally, if your aggregator doesn't accept an OPML file, you can use the RSS feed from the aggregator I created:

RSS feed of new CFE entries

Hope the above is helpful to all interested in CFE. Look for part 2 (bloggers with CFE entries but no CFE category/tag) in a moment.

Note: This blog post is from 2007. 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 don't generally chronicle all my travels, but I thought I'd throw out there that I'll be in the UK (suburban London) next week. I'll be teaching a couple of on-site classes on FusionDebug and FusionReactor for some Intergral clients, as well as doing a day of consulting (CF troubleshooting) with one of them.

Sadly, it's really an in and out visit, so not much time for sight-seeing or even socializing. (Well, not too sad, as it means I spending as little time as needed away from my lovely wife of seven years, and love of my life, Kim.)

Just wanted to explain the visit, in case any of my friends in London might hear I am (or was) there and wonder why I couldn't make any social calls. I won't even have a car.

"Beware the troubles"

I'm sure some will wonder if now's a good time to be going over there (regarding the recent terrorist threats). Hey, at least I'm just visiting (and in the suburbs). My heart goes out to those who have to live with that threat daily.

Mark Drew mentioned to me at CFUnited that his office was very near that first failed bomb. Yikes.

I remember that fear living in DC after 9/11. It's a very uneasy tension, balancing "getting on with life" with a very real daily threat. Fortunately, these things do pass (as the real "troubles" did in the UK a generation ago).

Let's just all continue to pray that things settle down over there, for their sake. As for me, my faith is in God's Providence and Will, as He directs my steps.

Note: This blog post is from 2007. 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've found yet a few more CFEclipse resources (adding to those I've talked about) that may interest some. Rather than just add them as comments to that entry, I figured I'd create a new entry.

CFEclipse Wiki

First and foremost, I wonder if you, like me, may miss the many valuable resources in the CFEclipse wiki, based at the cfeclipse.org site. The thing is, it's not mentioned very prominently there, even on the support page (something I've just pinged Mark about, so perhaps that will change by the time you read this). It's only mentioned on the support page within the paragraph describing trac (which is primarily for project mgt and bug tracking).

On the wiki, you'll find several articles on installation, plugins, configuration (including shortcuts), features, troubleshooting, and more.

Old Spikefu CFEclipse Resources

On a related subject, you may come across links to a reference at www.spike.org.uk/cfeclipse/space/, setup by Spike Milligan, formerly of the CFE team, whose SpikeFu site had quite a few CFE resources. Requests for these now fail, but for any who like to see such historical info, I've found it archived at the great web.archive.org site at http://web.archive.org/web/20060621220649/www.spike.org.uk/cfeclipse/space/.

Similarly, you can find the archive of Spike's blog with many historical references to the evolution of CFEclipse.

Ryan Stewart's Getting Started Guide

In early 2006, Ryan Stewart put together a guide to "Getting Started With CFEclipse", available in both HTML and PDF.

Prismix CFEclipse Seminar Notes

Finally, I came across this page of notes that I'd not seen before. I don't think there's anything there that's not elsewhere, but just in case, here it is:

http://www.prismix.com/blog/resources/SeminarNotesCFEclipse/index.htm

Note: This blog post is from 2007. 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.

Late last year I did an entry on Resources for Getting Started with CFEclipse. Since then I've learned of a few more:

• CFE User's mailing list
• Mark Drew's CFE TV (live video demos)
• "Making the switch to CFEclipse" CFDJ article by Jeff Houser
• Adobe Devnet article on CFE
• House of Fusion Eclipse mailing list
• there are many CFE articles on Community MX (the first few are on FusionDebug, also built atop eclipse)
• Mark's own CFEclipse resources page

I found these while putting together yet another resource on CFE, which I'll be blogging about very soon. Yep, with all my work using FusionDebug and the new CF8 debugger, I've gotten more and more comfortable using CFE.I want to help others who have taken a long time to make the move. :-)

Note: This blog post is from 2007. 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.

You may have heard of the new Multiserver deployment option that was introduced in CFMX 6.1, also known as "multiple instances". It can bring tremendous performance and reliability improvements, allowing you to segregate apps on a single server either by function, or reliability, and so on. It can also help you manage memory more effectively.

Since many people may only be considering the feature now (either only now moving to 6.1 or 7, or 8), I want to share some resources if you're new to it. (The question came up on a list, and I offered the info there, so thought I'd pass it along here.)

First, there are a couple of articles from that time 6.1 frame:

"Introducing Multiple Server Instances in ColdFusion MX 6.1", by Tim Buntel

"Using Multiple Instances with ColdFusion MX Enterprise 6.1" video (sadly, seems no longer available)

Now, CF7 did introduce the new Instance Manager within the Admin, and that (and instances in general) is covered in the CF manual:

Configuring and Administering ColdFusion MX (Chapter 7, "Using Multiple Server Instances")

Finally, there is also a new Adobe article as of CF7:

Multiple Server Instances using ColdFusion MX 7 Enterprise Edition

(Update: There's also now a CF8 version of that: Multiple server instances using Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 Enterprise Edition. The technical content seems identical, but it appears to have had considerable editorial updating.)

There are certainly other articles folks have done in the CFDJ or at CommunityMX.com, but these should get you started.

Even though it's old news to some, it does seem that like many things, use of instances is something that may have been missed by folks. I've been contemplating a new user group presentation on the topic. Nothing new for CF8, but it seems people are considering things now that they may have ignored when 6, 6.1, or 7 came out (which is why I did my daylong class at CFUnited on what was new in 6 and 7 that folks may have missed).

One last point, if those don't make it: if you're running on Windows, don't try to create an instance with a JVM heap greater than about 1.3 GB. Though Windows should allow 2GB per app, this is just a number many found that beyond which CF won't start. Hope that all helps.

Note: This blog post is from 2007. 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.

Are you aware of all the changes that have been made in the CF Admin as of CF8? You may have seen mentions of little changes in CF8 (indeed, I've done a full hour user group talk on hidden gems), and while I mention some changes in the CF8 Admin (as I or others have noticed them), I've not seen any definitive list (from Adobe or the community) of all the changes (small and large) that might have occurred in the CF Admin interface. I figured I'd take up that challenge.

I've gone through and compared the CF Admin between 7.02 admin 8, and found changes that reflect:

• new major features you've probably heard about (whether to enable "per app settings"; limits on the number of cfthread threads; options to enable/control the new interactive step debugger; support of the new Server monitor; support of per-user access to the Admin and RDS)
• new minor features you may have missed (options to "disable CFC type check" and "disable access to internal CF java components"; options to limit the number of simultaneous requests from Flash Remoting and web services clients and CFC methods called from a URL; options to set request queue timeouts and set jrun request limits; new options to control mail server authentication; new db drivers; new option to log activity on enterprise databases; new option to perform a validation query when a connection from the pool is first used/reused; new ajax debugger window; ability to pause a scheduled task; 3 new flex-based gateways; minor additions in CAR file creation)
• realignment of related settings (request tuning settings)
• renaming of various pages and settings

Here are all the changes I could find, discussed per page:

A. Server Settings Section

Settings Page

• "Maximum number of simultaneous requests", "Maximum number of report threads", moved to new Request Tuning Page
• "Maximum size of post data" moved to bottom of this same page
• New "Enable Per App Settings", "Disable CFC Type Check", "Disable access to internal ColdFusion Java components", and "Watch configuration files for changes" (latter for WebSphere ND)

New Request Tuning Page

• (Enterprise only) Besides holding the "Maximum number of simultaneous requests" setting (renamed here in CF8 as "Template" requests) moved from the old Settings page, this page now permits setting limits on number of simultaneous requests from flash remoting and web service clients, as well as CFC function requests (not calls to CFC methods from CFML but those made via a URL, such as from a browser or Ajax client, etc, when not using ?wsdl)
• Besides holding the "Maximum number of simultaneous report threads" setting (renamed here in CF8 to add "simultaneous") moved from the old Settings page, this page also permits setting limits on number of simultaneous CFTHREAD threads
• (Enterprise only) Page adds 2 new "Queue Timeout" settings
• (Enterprise only) Page adds 2 new "JRun Master Request" limits

Mail Page

• New Username and password fields to hold SMTP server authentication info (previously, had to know how to add it to the mail server name using username@password:servername in the mail server field). Use of password field offers protection of password from someone watching over your shoulder.
• New "Connection Timeout" and "Enable SSL Socket connections to mail server" and "Enable TLS connection to mail server" options, each permitting greater security and control over authentication to SMTP servers (particularly Google mail servers)

B. Data & Services Section

Data Sources Page

• New driver types: "Apache Derby Client", "Apache Derby Embedded", to support the newly available Apache Derby database, and "MySQL 4/5" (in addition to existing MySQL 3) and "PostgreSQL"
• In "Advanced Settings", new "Log Activity" option (to log database activity to DB) for Enterprise drivers (SQL Server, Oracle, Informix, Sybase, and DB2).
• In "Advanced Settings", new "Validation Query" option (called when a connection from the pool is reused), available for use with all driver types

Verity K2 Server Page

In "Advanced Settings", new option to enter K2 Admin Username and Password.

C. Debugging & Logging Section

Debugging Output Page

• Page name changed from just "Debugging Settings" (due to addition of new "Debugger Settings" page listed below).
• New "Enable AJAX Debug Log Window" option, which allows display of the AJAX debug log window when the cfdebug flag is passed in the URL (also relies on IP address settings to control who sees this)
• "Enable Debugging" option renamed to "Enable Request Debugging Output"

New Debugger Settings Page

Enable, configure, and control interactive step debugger in Eclipse.

Scheduled Tasks Page

New option to pause a given scheduled task (new button in list of buttons to left of each scheduled task)

Systems Probes Page

Field for "Notifications Sent From" renamed to simply "E-mail".

Code Analyzer Page

Changed to list CF8 tags and functions in "Advanced Options" page.

D. New Server Monitoring Section

(Enterprise only) Offers links to the new Server Monitor and Multiserver Monitor.

E. Event Gateways Section (used to be Enterprise-only)

Gateway Types Page

New Flex-based gateways: "DataManagement", "DataServicesMessaging", "FMS"

F. Security Section

Administrator Page (renamed from "CF Admin Password" page)

(Enterprise ony) Offers new interface to use either a single Admin password (as before), or separate username/password (per authorized admin user, as enabled in new "User Manager" page listed below), or no password required at all

RDS Page (renamed from "RDS Password" page)

(Enterprise only) Offers new interface to use either a single RDS password (as before), or separate username/password (per authorized RDS user, as enabled in new "User Manager" page listed below), or no password required at all

Security Sandbox/Resource Security Page

"CF Tags" and "CF Functions" tabs for adding/editing a sandbox have been changed to list CF8 tags and functions.

New User Manager Page

(Enterprise only) Enables adding users who should be given access to either RDS, CF Admin, or Admin API functionality.

G. (Enterprise only) Packaging & Deployment Section

ColdFusion Archives Page

When adding/editing an archive, the popup window that is shown offers several sections, and the following changes have been observed:

• Server Settings: "Locking" section has been removed, while "Watcher Settings", "Server Monitor Settings", and "System Probes" have been added
• New "Web Services" settings page, with provided "pre-restore" and "post-restore" lists

(Enterprise only) J2EE Archives Page

When adding/editing an archive, there is a new "Previous Serial Number (if upgrade)" option.

Where to learn more

To find out more about these changes, see the online help available in the CF Admin, available on each admin page.

Or see the ColdFusion documentation manual, "Administering and Configuring ColdFusion 8", available at CF docs page.

I realize that some reading this will be moving from CF 6, 6.1, 7, or 7.01. I'm afraid I can't detail here all the changes between those releases. I have, however, got a day-long class I offered at CFUnited on "New in CFMX 6/7: What you may have missed", where I do outline changes in each of those releases (and intervening updaters). If you're interested in taking that class, drop me a note or leave a comment here. I am thinking of offering it as an online class (and plan to do the same regarding all changes in CF8--outside of the Admin). Hope all this helps others.

Note: This blog post is from 2007. 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.

If you never paid much attention to the hubbub about SMS gateways when they came out in CF7, you may have missed that there is an available SMS Test Server and even a client (phone) simulator for working with this feature, both built into CF7 (and 8). You can learn more about these at the URLs below.

But I want to pass on a tip about something that tripped me up when I first tried to "play with" the new phone simulator. I would launch the SMSClient.bat file (in the cfusionmx7/bin directory), and a DOS window would open (and stay open) but I'd never see the simulator.

I finally figured it out: you need to have started the SMS Test Server (done in the "Event Gateways">"Settings" page in the CF Admin).

I also just noticed that there are also a couple of log files created in the same directory as the bat file, which probably would have clued me in. (Even though I've now stopped the test server, I can't get the client to recreate the problem--it now always shows up. I'm sure a restart would solve it and the log may then have told me what to do, but I missed the log before, so I still think this info worth passing along.)

To learn more about the SMS client and server simulators in CF7 (and 8), see:

Kevin Schmidt's Dev Center article

The CF docs

Note: This blog post is from 2007. 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.

OK, I'm playing a little trick here, and it's the first time I've ever felt the need to do it in 5 years of blogging (or 10, depending on how you count it). Anyway, I don't have any new content here.

It's just that I just noticed that the traffic for my 2nd blog entry on server monitoring was much lower than the first, yet it was posted about the time--and is just as important, if not more so for most people, than the first. So I've used a different title here to try to catch your attention. Looks like it worked! :-)

Please do go read the other, if you have still not. And let me know what you think, if you did. I'd also like folks to confirm what I'm seeing, as it seems almost too good to be true.

What's in a title? Everything, it seems

I can't help but fear that the title I used, "CF 8 Hidden Gem: Using the Server Monitor even without "starting" any collection...yes, TANSTAAFL", just confused people. "What's he mean by a collection?" And "TANSTAAFL"?

Actually, I wanted to say "Using the Server Monitor even without 'starting monitoring'", but obviously that would have been confusing, too. Indeed, I allude to this in the entry, about how the feature called "start monitoring" can lead people to think that the monitor doesn't do anything until you at least enable that. Not true, and that was the point of the entry! There's some amazing stuff "with zero overhead".

(Perhaps I also lost people with my play on the acronym, TANSTAAFL ("there ain't no such thing as a free lunch"), where I was referring to how there IS a "free lunch" here. Serves me right for being tricky. Again, I was scrambling to come up with a title because of the "start monitoring" challenge.)

Don't miss the features--truly hidden gems!

Anyway, the point is that if you're interested in the new CF 8 Server Monitor, whether for production user or not, you really ought to check out what I pointed out. I do think you'll be amazed.

Drop your comments on it over there, please. Not here. Don't want to create any further confusion! In fact, I'll disable comments on this one (another first).