Digital Ninja

I'm sure this is information you can get just about anywhere, but the assumption that everyone knows about it is silly.

I loaded up a file in CFEclipse just now and I got the little red "X" on the left margin of my cfstoredproc tag. For some reason I don't have the ColdFusion 8.0.1 dictionary loaded on this machine. I could have gone searching for it and all that, which might well have been just as easy, but instead I felt compelled to manually edit the dictionary file. If for nothing else, it was a good exercise.

Just so you all know, the dictionary files are here:
C:\Program Files\eclipse\plugins\org.cfeclipse.cfml_1.3.2.200901041029\dictionary

Now, of course, the exact path might change based on your preferences and version of CFEclipse. In this directory there is an XML file for each dictionary, and all are loaded up when CEclipse starts. I recently downloaded the XML dictionary for ColdExt (that'll be another blog post before long, I hope!) and dropped it in here.

So, to complete my thoughts for this post, I went into the cf8.xml file and copied the cachedwithin and cachedafter parameters from the cfquery tag to the cfstoredproc tag. After a restart of CFEclipse, WHALA! No more little red "X". Now you know, and that's half the battle!

It's the dawn of a brand new day. Here in Atlanta with peers and colleagues to finally get my chance to expand my sphere of knowledge on some things I've been lacking on. I would say a small portion of the content is not immediately relatable to my world, another portion could eagerly be applied to enhance my world, and then another segment is pretty much comprised of some things I've identified as "the road to travel" - and what's funny is that some recent talks about upcoming projects may have had that road arrive even sooner than expected.

What's truly cherishing about this for me - and you'd know this if you follow this blog at all - is that I'm going to have a rare chance to be a small fish in a big pond of ColdFusion experts. I expect to be coming up with questions that delve into deeper aspects of these raging curiosities I have. I must fill the empty spaces which I haven't been able to satiate via "expensive mentor-less epiphanies". This is going to be awesome.

And of course, the best part, and that I don't expect to be waving my wacky gospel and tamborine when I return to the "ranch". This stuff will be evident and appreciated by more than one peer, I'm sure. More to come.

I wrestle with this almost daily. I work in a place where we have years of legacy applications just lingering about, in need of service. These gnarled old dwellers of the servers don't know how to play nicely with each other, and they weren't made to talk to some API somewhere. They simply "are" and that's how they need to be repaired.

Or...

We can remake them in the image of ThePerfectApp(tm) born from an ultimate UML diagram and a sacred requirements document! It will be stronger, and faster than its predacessor and will last several years in its powerful domain of extensibility! (cue scary lightning sounds)

Or yet again...

We find a balance and be realistic about our resources and our needs and seek a balance where the old and the new can co-exist in harmony.ﾠ Yeah, I'm not so sure of that - or at least how to achieve it. All I see in this solution is a wild inconsistency across the enterprise that is sure to confuse developers for years to come. Can't we just "pause" life and go fix everything for about, say, twelve months or so?

Just wrangled a new (well, used but new to me) MacBook for office use and I wasted no time getting a development installation of ColdFusion on it so I can work with examples and code when I go to CFUnited Express in Atlanta in a handful of days. I had no idea what I was doing because not only am I a fairly weak Apache administrator, but I'm also a Mac noob. Here's what I did.

Quick Note: Any manual file creation/modification steps may need a "sudo" command for root level permissions. For example, to edit a configuration file with vi (or pico, ya cowards) you would type: sudo vi httpd.conf

ﾠ

1. Make a dummy httpd.conf file in /etc/httpd/ if it's not there (more on this later)
2. Install ColdFusion 8.0.1 using the following configuration values:
   1. Choose third party web server connector for Apache
   2. Point it to /etc/httpd for configuration and /usr/sbin for the application/server directory
   3. The document root (to install CFIDE into) should beﾠ/Library/WebServer/Documents
3. Open the Leopard Sharing preferences to turn off then turn on again the Web Sharing service

Today I, and three other of my co-workers, registered for CFUnited Express Atlanta! I'm pretty excited about going, since it's the only conference I can afford to hit this year. I guess any conference money is a good thing. (insert obligatory "woe is me, the economy" remark)

My focus will be just as much on vying for face time with the presenters and geniuses at the conference as it will be the presentations themselves.ﾠ So much to learn, so little time.