Vince Bonfanti's Weblog - BlueDragon

BlueDragon 7.1 released!

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:10:00 -0400

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

The following new features are available in BlueDragon.NET 7.1:

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

The following new features are available in BlueDragon Server JX 7.1:

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

LICENSING CHANGES 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)

Web Application Server Market Trends and BlueDragon

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:13:00 -0400

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?

The main message is that the dominant trends in the web application server market over the past several years present considerable challenges to ColdFusion/CFML developers, and that BlueDragon is uniquely positioned to help CFML developers respond to those challenges. [More]

BlueDragon 7.1 beta released!

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 10:44:00 -0400

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

BlueDragon 7.1 for the Microsoft .NET Framework 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

BlueDragon 7.1 Server JX 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.

BlueDragon.NET 7.1 at Microsoft TechEd

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:48:00 -0400

New Atlanta is sponsoring and exhibiting at Microsoft's TechEd conference in Orlando next week, where we will showcase the upcoming BlueDragon.NET 7.1 release. As I've discussed in previous blog entries, the key new features of BD.NET 7.1 include:

IIS 7.0 Integrated Pipeline (onRequestStart and onRequestEnd for all content types)
IIS 7.0 Integrated Configuration
IIS 7.0 Integrated Administration

Here's the latest screenshot of BlueDragon.NET 7.1 administration and configuration integrated with the new IIS 7.0 Manager application: In addition to demonstrating BD.NET 7.1 at TechEd, we are also announcing our new ColdFusion-to-.NET and ColdFusion-to-Java migration services. As experts in ColdFusion, ASP.NET, and Java technologies, New Atlanta is uniquely positioned to assist organizations that want to migrate their ColdFusion applications to either the ASP.NET or Java EE web application platforms. Look for additional information on these new services to be posted on our web site before the start of TechEd next week.

Fusion Authority / CFUNITED-Europe interview on BlueDragon open source

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:20:00 -0400

Here's an interview I did with Fusion Authority at CFUNITED-Europe a few days after our announcement of open source BlueDragon. So this is actually the first interview I gave on this subject, even though the DZone.com and CF Weekly podcast interviews were published before it. Also--unlike the other interviews--this one was completely ad-libbed, without prepared questions ahead of time (which shows at the end).

64-bit pricing: BlueDragon 7.0.1 and ColdFusion 8.0.1

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:36:00 -0400

ColdFusion 8.0.1 has been released with support for 64-bit operating systems (among other enhancements and bug fixes); BlueDragon 7.0.1 was released with 64-bit support earlier this year. I noticed that 64-bit support is available only in the CF 8.0.1 Enterprise and Developer editions; CF 8.0.1 Standard is still 32-bit only. See the CF 8.0.1 Release Notes and CF 8.0.1 System Support Matrix. Since BlueDragon Server JX 7.0.1 is available with 64-bit support (BD Server JX is the edition closest to CF8 Standard), this creates quite a wide disparity in pricing for 64-bit Windows and Linux. Support for 64-bit Windows and Linux is available in BD Server JX 7.0.1 for $899/server for any number of CPUs; to get support for 64-bit operating systems in CF 8.0.1 you must buy the Enterprise edition starting at $7499/2-CPU server, more than eight times more expensive than BD JX. (To get support for 64-bit Solaris and Mac OS X with BlueDragon you must buy the BD/J2EE edition starting at $5999/2-CPU server. And, yes, Open BlueDragon will run on all 64-bit operating systems). BD.NET 7.0.1 pricing is closer to CF 8.0.1. To get 64-bit support in BD.NET 7.0.1 you must buy the Enterprise edition starting at $5999/2-CPU server. The BD.NET 7.0.1 Standard edition, which is only available for 32-bit Windows, starts at $1999/2-CPU server.

BlueDragon open source interview on CF Weekly podcast

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 11:46:00 -0400

My CF Weekly podcast interview on open source BlueDragon has been posted. If you haven't already, I'd also recommend listening to the round-table discussion of open source BlueDragon that was posted two weeks ago. Feel free to post any follow-up questions or comments here.

BlueDragon open source interview on DZone.com

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 11:09:00 -0400

DZone.com has just published an interview with me on open source BlueDragon, entitled "Freeing the Dragon an Interview with Vince Bonfanti." The interview goes into more depth regarding our reasons for releasing a free open source edition of BlueDragon and what we hope to accomplish. I think this is one of the key summary statements in the interview (you should read the entire interview to get the full context of this statement):

"Releasing a free open source edition is a direct continuation of the platform innovation, and responsiveness to our customers and the community that have been hallmarks of New Atlanta and the BlueDragon product line. Releasing a free open source BlueDragon edition will put the CFML scripting language on equal footing with existing free alternatives, and give CFML a new avenue to grow and prosper relative to those languages. We also believe that the free open source BlueDragon edition will provide a vehicle for the community to have more direct input into the future evolution of the CFML scripting language than has been provided by commercial vendors in the past."

Let me know if you have any follow-up questions or comments.

BlueDragon open source to be unveiled at cf.Objective() 2008

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:11:00 -0400

We now have a date and location for the public unveiling of the open source BlueDragon project. The organizers of cf.Objective() 2008 have generously allocated a two-hour timeslot for a Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) session on Saturday, May 3 starting at 7:30 pm where I'll publicly demonstrate and release the open source BlueDragon project for the first time. I plan to organize this session into three parts:

For those who aren't interested in the source code, but just want to get up and running as quickly as possible, I'll demonstrate how to download and install the BlueDragon binaries on Tomcat and JBoss. I'll give a quick overview of the J2EE webapp and WAR file structure, and show how to edit the bludragon.xml configuration file to perform common tasks such as adding datasources and mappings, and how to enable/disable debug output.
For those who are interested in the source code, I'll demonstrate how to download and install the BlueDragon open source project into Eclipse, how to configure debugging, and give an overview of the source code so you can find your way around. I'll also show how to create your own CFML tags and functions. Anyone interested in this portion should review Adam Haskell's tutorial on JBoss, Eclipse, and BlueDragon prior to the BOF.
We'll end with a Q&A session that could very easily end up at the bar with me buying the first round.

As is common with BOF sessions, the structure will be informal and fluid to accomodate the needs and desires of the attendees; there won't be any formal handouts, though I may create some brief notes (time permitting). All demonstrations will be done on both Linux and Windows. I'd like to thank all of the cf.Objective() organizers, especially Sean Corfield, for graciously making their venue available and for giving their attendees the opportunity to be the very first to see and touch open source BlueDragon. I've heard cf.Objective() is a great conference and am looking forward to attending for the first time.

BlueDragon open source on CF Weekly podcast

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 09:39:00 -0400

I'm going to be interviewed next week for the ColdFusion Weekly podcast; the topic will be open source BlueDragon. Leave questions for me via voice mail or email (the hosts will decide which questions to ask). Also, there was a great round-table discussion of open source BlueDragon during last week's podcast--it's well worth listening to if you haven't already.

First community contribution to BlueDragon open source

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 08:10:00 -0400

Wow, that didn't take long. We only made the announcement last week, and haven't delivered the source code yet, but we've had our first community contribution to BlueDragon open source! Adam Haskell has written a tutorial for installing and configuring BlueDragon/J2EE and JBoss to run within Eclipse. This is perfect, because the BlueDragon open source code will be delivered as an Eclipse project for development and debugging. In fact, it was on our task list to write exactly such a tutorial to deliver with the source code. Thanks, Adam! UPDATE: as noted in the comments, Gerald Guido has provided instructions for installing BlueDragon on Tomcat. These instructions will be exactly the same for the BD open source edition. Thanks, Gerald!

Open source BlueDragon follow-up

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 11:14:00 -0400

Everyone at New Atlanta is extremely pleased and excited with all of the positive feedback we've received regarding our announcement of the free open source BlueDragon edition. Brian Rinaldi has written a helpful overview and wrap-up of blog entries posted in response to our announcement. There's also a thread on the CF-Talk mailing list that contains some interesting comments. If you haven't already, I'd highly recommend reading the blog posts by Alan Williamson--the creator of the tagServlet engine that is the heart of BlueDragon--and by Sean Corfield. Alan and Sean provide insightful commentary on what this announcement could mean for CFML developers. I'd like to address some of the high-level questions and clear up some misconceptions that resulted from our announcement. We've created a forum on our web site to answer detailed questions; please post any follow-up questions there instead of as comments on this blog entry.

Our goal is to build a user community around the free open source edition of BlueDragon to complement the strong commercial customer base we've built over the past six years. As our commercial customers already do, we'll look to the open source community to provide feedback to help us make BlueDragon a better product; and, to help spread the word both within and outside of the existing CFML community about the benefits of BlueDragon as a web application platform. We hope that some members of the BlueDragon open source community--and some of the people they attract to the BlueDragon open source community--will become paying customers for the commercial editions.
We will continue to actively develop, support, market, and sell the commercial editions of BlueDragon. Release of the free open source BlueDragon edition does not in any way represent a retreat or exit from the ColdFusion-compatible server market. This open source move is not being made from a position of market weakness, but from one of strength. We've developed a large enough customer base and have enough confidence in our ability to retain and attract commercial customers, that we can release the open source edition without fear that it will have a negative impact on commercial BlueDragon sales. We believe we can build the open source community and grow the commercial customer base for BlueDragon side-by-side to the benefit of both. We believe the open source edition will strengthen our position in the ColdFusion-compatible server market and allow us to continue to grow BlueDragon revenue by attracting new users and customers.
New Atlanta's full engineering staff will work on the open source BlueDragon edition. Much as the Fedora project is for RedHat Linux, the open source BlueDragon edition will be our primary vehicle for experimentation and new feature development. When new features reach a sufficient level of maturity they'll be merged into new releases of the commercial editions. It this way the open source edition will lead, not lag, the commercial editions and the open source community will always be at the cutting edge of new feature development. Customers of the commercial BlueDragon editions will be assured that only mature, production-ready software of the highest quality is incorporated into commercial releases.
At least initially, we don't expect a significant amount of software to be contributed to the open source BlueDragon edition by people outside of the New Atlanta engineering staff. For one thing, the BlueDragon software is fairly large and complex, consisting of about 1200 Java classes; it's going to take some time for anyone to come up to speed enough to make significant contributions. For another--as others have noted--it's unclear how many people in the current CFML community have the necessary Java skills to be able to contribute effectively to the code. That's OK, there are other ways to contribute in addition to writing code: testing new releases, filing bug reports, and generally providing feedback to the developers are all extremely valuable ways to contribute. The number of "outside" developers contributing code is not an important criterion for the success of open source BlueDragon. The important criteria for success are: (a) do people find it useful? (b) do people tell their friends about it and help grow the community? (c) does the community contribute by providing feedback to the developers? and, (d) does the community feedback get incorporated into future releases, thus making open source BlueDragon more useful and closing the loop started at (a)?
Of course, we'll be very happy to accept code contributions from outside developers and will set up a mechanism for doing so. Like all open source projects, there will be a review process for determining which contributions actually get incorporated into the code. Initially these decisions will be made by the New Atlanta engineering staff; in the long run we'd like for these decisions to be made by the BlueDragon open source steering committee, who will also decide when an outside developer has earned "committer" status.
It's often said that most people are only interested in the "free" and not the "open" in "free open source." That is, most people only care that they're getting something they don't have to pay for and aren't interested at all in the source code. I happen to believe this is true; I've used (and still use) many open source software products for which I've never cared to look at the source code (Firefox and MySQL, to name two). That's OK; the reason "open" is important is that it guarantees that "free" means "free forever." Unlike free--but not open source--commercial products such as ColdFusion 4.0 Express or the free BlueDragon Server edition, which can be "taken away" at any time by their corporate owners, an open source license can never be rescinded. Releasing under the GPLv2 provides confidence to the user community that the free open source BlueDragon edition and all future enhancements to it will always be both "free" and "open."

Again, thanks for all the positive feedback so far, and please post all follow-up questions on our web site forum and not as comments on this blog.

New Atlanta announces free open source BlueDragon edition

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 06:56:00 -0400

New Atlanta has announced plans to release a free open source edition of BlueDragon; there's a press release and FAQ on our web site. Here's a summary:

The BlueDragon/J2EE edition will be released under the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2). This is the same license used by Sun for the OpenJDK, their open source edition of the Java platform.
The free open source edition of BlueDragon/J2EE will be fully featured, with only minor differences to remove dependencies on commercial libraries. The open source edition of BlueDragon/J2EE will be integrated, packaged, and distributed with other open source software such as Tomcat, JBoss, Apache, MySQL, Java (OpenJDK), and Linux.
We will continue to develop, support, and market a commercial edition of BlueDragon/J2EE under a dual-licensing model such as that used by MySQL. We are reviewing our pricing model for the commercial edition of BlueDragon/J2EE and will announce any changes in the next few weeks.
The BlueDragon.NET and BlueDragon Server JX editions are not being released as open source and will continue to be developed, supported, and marketed as commercial products. We are not planning any changes to the pricing models for these commercial products.
The current free (but not open source) BlueDragon Server edition will be discontinued when the open source BlueDragon/J2EE edition is released.
The first public "code drop" of the free open source BlueDragon/J2EE edition will happen prior to the CFUNITED-08 conference in June 2008.

In order to make the free open source edition of BlueDragon/J2EE a "community" project as much as possible, we're planning to form a steering committee to help guide future development. Let me know if you're interested in participating in this steering committee. Also, we're planning a Birds-of-a-Feature (BOF) session at CFUNITED-08, which may evolve into the first meeting of the steering committee; stay tuned for more info. I'm currently in London for CFUNITED-Europe where I'm speaking on Wednesday morning (about "IIS 7.0 for CFML Developers", not open source BlueDragon/J2EE). My wife and I are doing the tourist thing, and I have some customer meetings scheduled, so I'll be slow to respond to comments here and to email until I'm back in the office on Monday. Look for me at CFUNITED-Europe if you're here.

BlueDragon 7.0.1 released! native x64 on Windows and Linux

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 10:54:00 -0400

New Atlanta is pleased to announce the immediate availability of BlueDragon 7.0.1 for download and purchase. New features in BlueDragon 7.0.1 include:

native x64 support for Windows and Linux
upgrade built-in JVM to JDK 1.6 (Java 6)
additional frameworks support (see below)
bug fixes and performance enhancements

In addition to popular frameworks such as FuseBox, Mach-II, and ColdBox that are supported in earlier BlueDragon releases, the following frameworks have been tested and are supported in BlueDragon 7.0.1:

ModelGlue
ColdSpring
Reactor
Transfer ORM
CFUnit
FarCry

BlueDragon 7.0.1 is the first ColdFusion-compatible CFML server to run natively on x64 on both Windows and Linux, continuing BlueDragon's tradition of technical leadership and innovation in features and platform support for the CFML server market.

IIS 7.0 for CFML Developers

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:47:00 -0400

I've prepared a talk entitled, "IIS 7.0 for CFML Developers" that I'll be presenting at various CF user groups and conferences over the next several months. While I do discuss BlueDragon, this is not a BD-specific presentation, but is intended to be of general interest to all developers who deploy CFML applications on IIS using either ColdFusion or BlueDragon (either the Java/J2EE edtions or BlueDragon.NET). Here's the synopsis:

Internet Information Server (IIS) 7.0 is the newest release of Microsoft’s web server for Windows. Currently shipping with Windows Vista, IIS 7.0 is also part of Windows Server 2008, scheduled for release in February 2008. This talk will present an overview of the major new features of IIS 7.0, including: customizable installation, simplified configuration and administration, security enhancements, integrated request pipeline, extensibility enhancements, and much more. The impact and benefits of the new IIS 7.0 features for developers using Adobe ColdFusion or New Atlanta BlueDragon will be explored.

Here's my current schedule:

Maryland CFUG - November 13, 2007
Capitol Hill User Group - November 15, 2007
Atlanta CFUG - January 2, 2008
CFUNITED Europe - March 12-13 2008

Let me know if you're interested in having me give this presentation to your local CFUG.