jeffcoughlin.com

CF Dev Week 2012 Videos

Last week Adobe ran the ColdFusion Developer Week 2012. I was honored to be asked to give my presentation on Scheduling Services in ColdFusion 10 (which I had made some slight improvements from my previous talk on it at cf.objective() based on audience feedback).

You can now see the video as well as all the videos from last week on their website at http://www.adobe.com/go/cfdevweek.

Update: You can download the sample files from GitHub: https://github.com/jeffcoughlin/preso_cf10scheduler

For my own convenience, I have made a copy of the recording and cleaned up the audio a little and posted it on Vimeo. Enjoy :) https://vimeo.com/43959682.

Preso: Scheduling Services in ColdFusion 10 from Jeff Coughlin on Vimeo.


cfObjective 2012 Presentation: Scheduling Services in ColdFusion 10

About a week ago I gave my presentation at cf.Objective() 2012 on the scheduling services in ColdFusion 10 (details). As promised here are my presentation slides and code samples.

https://github.com/jeffcoughlin/preso_cf10scheduler

A special thanks to Guust Nieuwenhuis for giving me a couple tips to consolidate some ideas into simpler demos (he had done a similar presentation and deserves credit for some concepts used here) and also Sean Coyne for some jQuery assistance when I thought I'd run into a brick wall :).

Thank you to all who attended my session on Saturday morning (especially after two days of intense sessions).

I'll be giving this presentation again next Friday at the Adobe ColdFusion Developer Week 2012 (http://adobe.ly/cfdevweek2012). This is a remote session that you can watch for free and ask questions. If interested, please signup on that page (I believe registration is required).


Running ColdFusion Solr on a 64-bit JVM

One of my clients had the need for a lot of search collections and even more data to put in them (especially with massive archives of PDF files, xls, word docs, etc) for a very large intranet. So I tried to plan ahead by installing Solr on a separate server (Windows 2008 R2 64-bit with a decent chunk of RAM). You can find the separate installer on Adobe's website. For our initial tests it worked out great, but when we starting throwing more data at it, it quickly ran out of memory.

The first thing I did before I even created the first collection was to increase the memory for the JVM (to do this, edit the solr.lax file and change the default setting of -Xmx256m to your preferred max memory setting. I also prefer to set the min setting as well to the same value (see below)). What I quickly found was the the default version of the Solr install comes with a 32-bit version of Jetty. The 32-bit JVM maxes out at 1.5GB of RAM use. So even though we had enough RAM to use and were running on a 64-bit OS, the JVM wasn't being allowed to use the extra memory.

The solution ended up being very simple (even for a non-java person like myself). I downloaded a 64-bit JVM (in my case I just downloaded Sun's 64-bit JDK to test. I suggest the JRE though) and installed it on the box. I edited the solr.lax file and commented out the single line where Jetty calls javaw.exe (for Windows its that file, for other OS's it will be sloght different with a different path format) and instead pointed it to the new 64-bit JVM's javaw.exe file.

I then set the min and max memory settings to 3GB (-Xms3072m -Xmx3072m) and started Solr up. No more out of memory errors (no more java heap errors).

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I didn't figure it out all on my own though. Several people helped me come to the final result that I'd like to thank (in order of me bugging them): Mark Mandel, Matt Woodward, and Sean Coyne


New CF8 Exam Buster Released

Centrasoft recently released their new version of the CF8 Exam Buster to help those interested in studying for the Adobe ColdFusion 8 Certification.

Personally I no desire to take the exam (see my previous post from a couple years ago or Ray Camden's recent comments on the test), but Brian (Centrasoft) always does such an excellent job with his CF Exam Buster that I'd like to compare his product with that of the actual exam (Maybe Adobe should hire him in the future to write their CF exams :) ). So I've got myself a copy of the CF8 Exam Buster and as soon as I have a chance, I'm going to run through it.

Below is a copy of the press release Brian has posted. If you're looking to study for the CF8 exam, definitely consider his product (note: only runs on Windows. I installed it in VMWare Win2k3-64 and it runs great).

CF8 Exam Buster from CentraSoft (http://centrasoft.com)

CF8 Exam Buster is the ultimate testing tool specifically designed to help ColdFusion developers earn their Adobe ColdFusion 8 Certification through the Adobe Certified Professional Program.

CF8 Exam Buster has 384 questions designed to help you prepare for all aspects of the actual ColdFusion 8 certification exam. CF8 Exam Buster allows you to take six different tests, 11 topic tests for your weak areas, and the ability to create random tests.

All 384 questions have explanations and reference URLs to further aid your studies and build your ColdFusion knowledge.

During your test you can save your test in progress, submit comments, bookmark questions, pause your test, and much more. You can control the look and feel of the CF8 Exam Buster application, by setting the fonts, colors, and appearance of many controls, to create a studying environment with which you are comfortable. After your test is scored, you will be shown a comprehensive breakdown of your test results.

There is a DEMO version on the Centrasoft website (http://www.centrasoft.com), which allows you to check out all the features of the program, plus one whole test.

Read what people are saying about the Exam Buster product on our testimonials page (some early CF8 comments are already on there): http://centrasoft.com/cfbtestimonials.cfm

Check out CF8 Exam Buster today! Thanks, Brian Simmons bsimmons@centrasoft.com The ultimate Adobe ColdFusion 8 Certification testing tool: Check out CF8 Exam Buster at: http://centrasoft.com

ColdFusion, and Adobe are registered trademarks of Adobe Corporation. Adobe Corporation in no way endorses or is affiliated with Centrasoft Corporation.


Adobe Connect Plugin for OS X Leopard Fix

If you were like me and upgraded to Mac OS X 10.5 when it was released and used Adobe Acrobat Connect (either Pro or basic version) to give presentations then you were likely not too happy with the random crashes while screen sharing.

I had called Adobe tech support multiple times and was told that they were working on it. Finally in May tech support told me they had a fix for it. Essentially you just need to manually remove the old plugin and it will automatically be upgraded to the new version the next time you attempt to connect to Connect (read the article for full details). This worries me a little... Should I randomly delete these going forward in order to check for a new plugin version?

From that point on it has worked great for me. Unfortunately I had essentially paid for 6 months of an annually-priced product that wouldn't work. I recently renewed my annual license and was told I would not be refunded for the 6 months of the non-usable product. But at least I'm good going forward. I suppose I only have myself to blame. I should probably wait at least a half-year before upgrading to any new OS... what can I say? It's the geek in me :).


Adobe Announces Open Screen Project

Adobe announced today the Open Screen Project.

The Open Screen Project is dedicated to driving consistent rich Internet experiences across televisions, personal computers, mobile devices, and consumer electronics. ...

Specifically, this work will include:

  • Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
  • Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
  • Publishing the Adobe Flash® Cast™ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
  • Removing licensing fees - making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free

They have a decent list of technology leaders. I hope to see more companies added to the list soon (like Apple).

You can find more about the project on their Open Screen Project and also a decent writeup at techcrunch.





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