New Atlanta is pleased to announce the immediate availability of BlueDragon 7.1 for download and purchase. For details of new features in BlueDragon 7.1, see the What's New in BlueDragon 7.1 document.

BlueDragon 7.1 is a free upgrade for customers with BlueDragon 7.0 or 7.0.1 licenses; your existing 7.0 or 7.0.1 license key will work with BlueDragon 7.1 and you do not need a new license key.

The installers for BlueDragon Server JX 7.1 and BlueDragon.NET 7.1 can be used to upgrade existing 7.0 and 7.0.1 installations. See the appropriate installation guide for further details.

The following summarizes new features and licensing changes in BlueDragon 7.1.

NEW FEATURES

The following new features are included in all BlueDragon 7.1 editions (Java and .NET):

• ColdFusion 8 (CF8) compatibility enhancements
• CFTHREAD compatibility
• onMissingMethod event handler for CFCs
• CFQUERY added result variables to specify the ID of an inserted row
• MonthAsString() function added the "locale" parameter
• added "component" as a supported value for the CFARGUMENT TYPE and CFFUNCTION RETURNTYPE attributes
• CFIMAGE added the ability to crop, rotate, add border, adjust brightness and constrast, and apply gray scale filter
• added the "Generate UUID as CFTOKEN value" configuration option
• support for IIS 7.5 on Windows 7
• support for IIS 7.5 on Window Server 2008 R2
• performance enhancements
• bug fixes

• IIS 7.0 integrated request pipeline
• IIS 7.0 integrated configuration and administration
• Added the ability to create CFCs within ASP.NET pages without inheriting from the NewAtlanta.BlueDragon.CfmPage class
• Added the NewAtlanta.BlueDragon.CfmUserControl class
• Added support for ASP.NET connection strings
• Added support for the Oracle Data Provider for .NET (ODP.NET)
• Added support for the IBM DB2 provider for .NET

• Upgraded embedded servlet engine to ServletExec 6.0
• IIS 7.0 managed .NET module replaces native C/C++ web server adapter
• Added the CFCProxy class for invoking CFCs from Java/JSP

The following licensing changes are being made with the release of BlueDragon 7.1:

• BlueDragon.NET Standard edition is now supported on both x86 (32-bit) and x64 (64-bit) servers
• BlueDragon Server JX now comes in Standard and Enterprise editions
• BlueDragon .NET Standard edition and BlueDragon Server JX Standard edition are licensed for either a single physical server or a single Virtual Machine (VM) instance
• BlueDragon Server JX Enterprise edition is licensed per physical server for unlimited Virtual Machine (VM) instances
• BlueDragon .NET Enterprise edition and BlueDragon for Java EE Servers continue to be licensed on a per-CPU basis for unlimited Virtual Machine (VM) instances
• BlueDragon .NET Enterprise edition and BlueDragon for Java EE Servers are no longer licensed for 1-CPU servers (you must puchase a minimum 2-CPU license)
• Support for BlueDragon Server JX on Mac OS X has been discontinued (BlueDragon for Java EE Servers continues to be supported on Mac OS X)

Imagine an "infinite computer" with the following characteristics:

• unlimited processing capacity, memory, and bandwidth to be able to handle any traffic load
• unlimited database storage capacity
• 100% reliability -- it never fails

• you'd never have to purchase, maintain, or upgrade any hardware ever again
• you'd never have to purchase, patch, or upgrade any operating system or database software ever again
• you'd never have to worry about capacity planning and scalability, about having enough servers to handle peak traffic loads (servers that sit idle at other times, wasting your money)
• you'd never have to worry about clustering and fail-over protection
• you'd never have to worry about backups or recovery of your server or database

Such a computer actually exists--today, right now--it's called Google App Engine.

Google App Engine (GAE) is the most exciting new web application server technology since the Java Servlet API was introduced in 1997. To emphasize the significance of that statement, consider that New Atlanta has been built around the Java Servlet API, which has been the core technology of our company's products for the past twelve years.

Other cloud computing offerings, such as Amazon EC2, implement only an intermediate level of virtualization. With Amazon EC2 you're still worried about "machines", only now they're virtual machines instead of physical machines. You want scalability? figure out how many virtual machines you need. You want reliability? configure a virtual machine cluster, and make sure they're in different physical data centers (Amazon calls them Availability Zones). And don't forget to apply the latest patches to your operating system and database software--and plan for upgrades when the next versions are released.

Yes, there are benefits to Amazon EC2 and other virtual machine (VM)-based offerings over existing physical environments. Also, because they are conceptually similar to the current physical model, and because they allow you to run existing software unmodified (assuming your software vendors have figured out appropriate licensing models), they make possible an easy migration to a cloud computing environment. However, I can't help but view VM-based solutions as being merely transitional steps on the way to GAE-like models--including Microsoft's Windows Azure--where the proper unit of virtualization is your web application.

Now, imagine that you could deploy ColdFusion (CFML) applications on top of the Google App Engine "infinite computer"...

As a privately held company, New Atlanta does not regularly discuss sales figures in public. However, in spite of these overall tough economic times, we have some good news to share. New Atlanta sales for the first quarter, January through March 2009 (Q1'09), achieved strong year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter growth. Specifically:

• sales for Q1'09 were 35% higher than the same quarter last year (Q1'08)
• sales for Q1'09 were 70% higher than the immediately preceding quarter, October through December 2008 (Q4'08)
• Q1'09 was New Atlanta's strongest sales quarter since the beginning of the global economic recession in Q4'07
• sales growth was primarily driven by BlueDragon, both .NET and Java editions, but we also achieved sales growth across nearly all product lines

We're hopeful that these results for the first quarter represent the beginning of a trend that will continue throughout 2009 and beyond. We're grateful to our customers who continue to demonstrate their confidence in our company and products, and we look forward to serving you for many years into the future. Thank you.

After drafting the following blog entry, I realized it was quite lengthy and could benefit from an introductory paragraph. In summary, this blog entry is intended to answer the following questions that are regularly posed to us by BlueDragon customers and prospects:

• Why should we migrate to BlueDragon.NET?
• Why did New Atlanta create the Open BlueDragon project?
• What is the future of BlueDragon and New Atlanta?

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I have a trip to the UK planned for the week of March 9-13, 2009 to visit BlueDragon customers and prospects. My schedule currently includes dates in Dublin, Gloucester, and London, and is filling quickly. Drop me a note if you're interested in having me stop by your office to discuss how you can use BlueDragon.NET to:

• migrate existing ColdFusion applications to ASP.NET without rewriting code
• improve the performance and reliability of your ColdFusion applications
• integrate ColdFusion (CFML) and ASP.NET technologies

The first public beta of BlueDragon 7.1 has been released! Enhancements in BlueDragon 7.1 are listed below; details can be found in the What's New in BlueDragon 7.1 document.

All BlueDragon 7.1 Editions

The following enhancments are available in all BlueDragon editions:

• CFIMAGE: added the ability to crop, rotate, add border, adjust brightness and contrast, and apply gray scale filter
• ColdFusion 8 (CF8) compatible enhancements
  • CFTHREAD compatibility
  • onMissingMethod event handler for CFCs
  • CFQUERY added result variables to specify the ID of an inserted row
  • MonthAsString() function added the "locale" parameter
• Added the "Generate UUID as CFTOKEN value" configuration option
• performance enhancements
• bug fixes

The following enhancements are available in BlueDragon.NET:

• IIS 7.0 integrated request pipeline
• IIS 7.0 integrated configuration
• IIS 7.0 integrated administration
• Added the ability to create CFCs from ASP.NET pages without inheriting from the NewAtlanta.BlueDragon.CfmPage class
• Added the NewAtlanta.BlueDragon.CfmUserControl class
• Added support for ASP.NET connection strings

The following enhancements are available in BlueDragon Server JX:

• Upgraded embedded servlet engine to ServletExec 6.0
• IIS 7.0 .NET module replaces C/C++ web server adapter
• Added the CFCProxy class for invoking CFCs from Java/JSP

I'll follow-up with separate blog entries on each of these enhancements. Download the BlueDragon 7.1 beta and let us know what you think.

The final release of BlueDragon 7.1 is planned for April 2009.

New Atlanta will be exhibiting at the DevConnections Spring 2009 event in Orlando, FL from March 22 through 25. Stop by our booth to learn how you can use BlueDragon.NET to:

• migrate existing ColdFusion applications to ASP.NET without rewriting any code
• improve the performance and reliability of your ColdFusion applications
• integrate ColdFusion (CFML) and ASP.NET technologies

We'll see you in Orlando!

We were recently asked by a customer whether BlueDragon.NET could support memcached, a "high-performance, distributed memory object caching system, generic in nature, but intended for use in speeding up dynamic web applications by alleviating database load." Though BlueDragon.NET already supports query caching, our customer's goal is to implement a cache that can be shared across multiple servers in a cluster and that can store data types other than just query results.

In response to their request we created the Memcached client CFC for BlueDragon.NET, which is based on the .NET memcached client library.

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This the third in a series of blog entries that compare BlueDragon.NET with the ColdFusion 8 (CF8) .NET Integration feature. In the first, I discussed the architectural differences between the two products; in the second, I showed how these architectural differences translate into an enormous performance advantage for BlueDragon.NET. In this blog entry, I'd like to show the advantages of BlueDragon.NET regarding .NET compatibility.

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Michael Sprague has written a very nice set of CFML custom tags that use the jQuery JavaScript libraries to implement alternatives to the CFGRID, CFWINDOW, and CFTOOLTIP tags introduced in ColdFusion 8 (CF8). In Michael's words:

"This (CFjqAjax) is a library of custom tags that replicate the CFGRID, CFWINDOW, and CFTOOLTIP tags from ColdFusion 8. The CF8 tags work, but I find YUI and Ext much harder to work with than jQuery, and the file size of the JavaScript libraries that CF8 includes is excessive. So, I created CFjqAjax."

My first thought on reading this was, "I wonder if CFjqAjax will run on BlueDragon.NET?"

Click here for the answer

No changes were required to any of Michael's code to run on BlueDragon.NET (the data displayed in the CF_WINDOW example is different than the demo on Michael's web site, but is displaying correctly based on the contents of the downloaded package).

Nice work, Michael!