As you ALL know, this was the last CFUnited ever, and as an attendee, I am certain that this fact was actually a positive influence on how the conference played out. The camaraderie that is always an integral part of this event was magnified by the ever-present fact that we just don’t know when we may be able to assemble ourselves in these numbers again. I know for myself (and I do believe that I am representative of most of my CF brethren), I felt it to be even more important this year to seek out and get to know new faces, and to push myself outside of my hermit-like inclinations and spend good quality social face time.  During said face time, we all engaged in the discussions of the subjects that this conference’s demise has brought to the forefronts of our minds. Why was it ending? What did it mean for our community? What would be the ramifications? Was it a sign of anything to come? as confident as we are about the future of the language we embrace and earn our livings with, the demise of the grandest exclusively CF event to grace our professional landscape in the past six years has definitely been a cause of at least minimal concern to many. But, through the process of the fellowship, the sessions, the after parties, and the after parties’ after parties, I gained an absolute reassurance that what we have witnessed is nothing more than the results of an economy that’s been on a downward trend for the past three years and is in no way a prognostication of the future of ColdFusion. In fact, what it DOES mean is that now that one of the larger trees in the forest has sadly fallen, the vacancy it leaves us with is the opportunity and catalyst to allow for the currently smaller, more focused, and/or regional conferences to flourish and fill this niche in our professional ecosystem. I firmly believe this, and have found nothing but reassurance for this belief in the past three days of being immersed among my peers and mentors.

ON THE NEGATIVE (BUT POSITIVE) SIDE...

Having highlighted how excellent the conference was, I feel the need to share a less positive opinion based on my observations this year as an attendee. This particular CFUnited seemed to greatly lack in its administration as compared to those in the past that i have attended. The staff seemed more interested in doing their own thing as opposed to being focused on the details relevant to a conference, such as session start/stop times, ensuring sound levels, recording speakers, ensuring that the doors were closed once a speaker began, giving the speaker cues as to when his or her time was nearly up, and just maintaining a positive, prominent presence throughout the event. Fortunately, and I give HUGE kudos to these individuals, there were those individuals who were in attendance that took great responsibility upon themselves to fill in these gaps. They ensured that the registration desks were properly manned and that the attendees were given the proper attention at registration, they went the extra mile and turned what would probably have been blas’e social events into OUTSTANDING social events, they invested their own time to make certain that the fellowship, the tradition, and the kindred nature that we all share as a CF community was recognized and honored. I would give specific shout outs to those who I am aware were instrumental in making this conference as memorable and awesome as it was, but truth be told, everybody in attendance had some hand in that. Together, we made this CFUnited what it should be, and we can be proud of that fact. On the other hand, the actual organizers of the event...honestly, they couldn’t have seemed more disinterested to me. Oh, and the fact that I was solicited via email to help "save" CFUnited by BUYING THE RIGHTS TO IT??? Man, that's like telling your kid you love him and then putting a price tag on his forehead. That's just wrong in my book. Like I said, just my observation and opinions here.

 LOSING MY VIRGINITIES

This conference also happened to be one that resulted in a few major changes for me. Besides the hardly containable inspiration that the sessions were regarding things like alternatives to RDBMS, iPhone development, the exploration of HTML5, and a new found interest in the CF on Wheels and FW/1 frameworks, I also found myself doing things that I was certain I never would do. I, a profoundly staunch PC, discovered that I am now “i-curious”. I want a mac. It stuns me and frankly, freaks me out, every time i hear myself say such a thing, but it’s true: i want a mac. Any of my friends who know me very well are probably picking their jaws up off of the floor at reading that, as I have never even come CLOSE to waivering in my unrelenting despisings (and uninhibited vocalization OF those despisings!) of all things mac. Heck, when they first saw me palming an iPhone they nearly fainted. But after seeing the presentation on iphone development with the Coldbox framework as the backend data services, something just gave up inside of my head and I, for the first time in my life, understood what it felt like to desire a mac. I know, this almost sounds like I’m coming out of the closet, and in many ways it certainly does feel that way to me, too! A strange feeling, like I’m giving in to the thing I shunned for so long...I’m being dramatic, huh?

Oh, the second thing I did that I said I would purposefully NEVER do: I had my picture taken with Ben Nadel. Again, as any of my friends who know me well will attest to, I am in general an “anti-herd” guy; if everybody’s doing it, then to me that’s a sure sign that they’re doing something i do NOT want to do. And, since everybody seemed to be giddy at the idea of having their picture with Ben up on his site, I naturally vowed internally never to do so. But then, I actually got a chance to meet Ben and talk with him a little bit. Gosh darn it, he’s just too nice! :) So, I conceded and participated in a three way with him and Ryan Jeffords. Three way photo opp, that is. :)

WHAT NOW?

So NOW then... let’s all set our sights on the next conference or conferences we’re going to attend, shall we? Our time honored tradition of supporting our community by communally sharing what we all learn individually must continue, and it will do so in the form of ALL of us making it a point to contribute and participate in whatever ways we can. BLOG, y’all. BLOG the things you learn that have made your development life easier. TWEET. Share the tiny 140 character moments of your days that reveal your knowledge, wit, charm, losses, gains, wisdom, and personality to the rest of us. SPEAK. Overcome your erroneous belief that you have nothing of value to offer your peers and mentors and volunteer to speak at your local user group, the online cfmeetup group, other user groups in other cities, and conferences. When you get the word that such and such conference is having a call for speakers, you should be prepared to submit yourself and two or three topics that you have already presented on via the user groups. I know it can be difficult to overcome shyness and such, but believe me, all of us have something of value to offer. Heck, even the very fact that someone who never spoke publicly before is making that effort is in itSELF an inspiration to others, regardless of the topic or how smooth the preso goes!

Oh, let me leave you all with this awesome resource that Charlie Arehart maintains for the sake of his community: http://www.carehart.org/cf411/  There, you can find out about all the latest conferences and other resources whereby a CF developer can get “plugged in” to his or her community and begin partaking and sharing.

CONCLUSION

This conference has left me with a LOT of new friends, personalities and faces to connect with twitter icons, a boat load of technical inspiration, and the loss of at least two virginities. CFUnited 2010 rocked, y’all! If you missed it, you really did miss a lot.

I look forward to crossing paths with you in the future! In the meantime, if you're not already, let's be virtual buddies, eh? My twitter name is dougboude

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you needed to implement some new feature using one scripting language within a template that is written in a different scripting language, or possibly no scripting language at all (pure HTML)?  Of course, you could just turn the pure HTML template into a CFML template, and at times that is indeed the best route to go, as long as breaking every link pointing back to this page is acceptable. If the target template is written in another scripting language, however, transforming it into a CFML template would probably not be a viable option. Ah, but there is at least one way to still be able to integrate your Coldfusion functionality into any template (HTML OR those written in other scripting languages): Leveraging the power of Ajax.

Typically the first route our minds go when asked to integrate two discrete templates is to look for a way to "include" one within the other. HTML does provide a type of inclusion ability (called 'Server Side Includes' (SSI)), but this approach is typically used to include other HTML documents and would be challenging to make work with a Coldfusion template. Other scripting languages have the ability to include other templates written in the same language, but getting them to play nicely including Coldfusion would also prove challenging. You could also go the route of using an IFRAME within your template, but this approach also presents limitations and hurdles that you may not wish to deal with. The simple solution, and the simplest approach to making it work, again, is Ajax.

The Scenario

In this scenario, the target template is a static HTML site and the code you want to integrate is written in Coldfusion. Our goal is to dynamically display the contents of an upcoming events database table in our Events section of the company's HTML home page. Here's how I approached it:

1. Create a target within the static HTML page where you want the event data to appear. In my case, I created this bit of HTML:

2. Create a CFM template to act as your data provider. Mine is called eventAjax.cfm, and contains several different methods since it is used by other applications as well;

3. "Wire up" your HTML page with your favorite Javascript library. Mine (currently) is Prototype, so my code snippets will reflect Prototype's syntax, but you should be able to easily relate it to your favorite flavor

That's it!  Now, some details...

The Data Provider

Some may feel the need to write full blown web services to provide data to the consumer/caller, but personally I feel that most times this is major overkill when a RESTful approach works beautifully. Here is what my eventAjax.cfm looks like, showing only a couple of possible methods:

Reading through this code, it is pretty self-explanatory. Basically, when the ajax call is made, only values explicitly output using CFOUTPUT tags will be returned to the caller. My "getEventLinks" method is returning a pre-formed block of html that my client side javascript will simply dump into its target div.

Wiring up the HTML

Wiring up our HTML page consists of doing only two things:

1. include your javascript library;
2. create a function to be executed after the html has fully loaded;

My step 1 line looks like this:

Step 2 is inline script written at the bottom of the template, just within the <body> tag. I don't believe it HAS to reside within the <body> tag, but that's where i chose to put it. It looks like this:

That's it! Now, everytime the page is loaded, Prototype will execute an ajax call to the template specified and will stuff the results into the targeted div 'eventTarg'. If no qualifying events are found, we'll simply get the phrase "no events currently scheduled".

Here is a screenshot of the html page loaded, using Firebug to see the ajax call that was made and the value returned:

If you're doing any sort of Ajax development, then you undoubtedly already are quite familiar with the different ways you can use an Ajax call. For instance, you can have the call return a fragment of fully formed html (such as a table populated with data). For a more advanced user, you may have your Ajax calls returning raw data in the form of JSON or XML and parse it on the client side. In either case, though, your single Ajax call is returning a single value. But what if you want several different discrete pieces of "stuff" returned in a single call? You could get creative, and do something such as this in your backend code:

The above would work perfectly fine. It would, however, require that you be willing to write some serious Javascript to access the individual pieces of data, and compels you to have to visualize how the data sets are structured and nested as a whole.

Again, nothing wrong with doing something like the above. But, when I find myself wanting to return more than one value with a single Ajax call, more often than not I will approach it by leveraging response headers.

Response headers are like the saddle bags on a Harley. If your Ajax response is the Harley, then the burley tatted dude (or dudette) riding it is your primary response value. This Harley, however, comes equipped with a pre-defined set of saddle bags that contain what I'm calling "peripheral" information, or metadata about the response, AND (this is most critical), the ability for you to add your own custom saddle bags before the response comes riding home to its caller!

I have never had a need to even look at or care about those pre-canned response headers. They contain name value pairs such as "Transfer-encoding:chunked", "content-type:text-html", "Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:43:35 GMT", and a couple of others. But, in order to satisfy needs such as I described above in the code sample, I DO add my own response headers and stuff them with values my Javascript needs.

Doing this in Coldfusion is very simple and easy (as are most tasks). Re-doing the example above, then, I'm going to choose one of the values to be my burley tatted rider (typically the value consuming the most bytes), and designate the rest to response headers, like so:

So now my Harley has several new, custom saddle bags attached, each containing the value I set in the "value" attribute of the cfheader tag, and my main rider, or the actual response value is my ReturnData (the blob of html).

Let's look at the Javascript needed to utilize this response. In this example we are going to use the Prototype library to create a new Ajax Updater. Updaters simplify the task of making an Ajax call and stuffing the response value directly into a target element. So let's say we have a div with an ID 'dataDiv' that will hold a table of data. The Ajax updater line will look like this:

Now, the line above deals exclusively with the response value and ignores anything to do with the response headers. In order to access those headers, we have to tell our Updater to pass its response (Harley, rider, saddlebags, and all) to a function that we designate. This is called "using a callback function", and our line of code will now look like this:

The Updater will update its target div with the response value, then hand the Harley off to the processSaddlebags function, which will look something like this:

It should be noted at this point that a most MAHVELOUS way for you to get a clearer picture of what is happening when your code makes Ajax calls is to use the Firefox browser with the Firebug plugin. By doing this simple thing, Firebug will provide you with all the details of every Ajax call you make. Here's a screenshot of a sample Ajax call and the kinds of info you get back (notice the custom header 'total' that I added, and the fact that I'm outputting that value in the html as the "Total Records" value):

response headers

response value

Now, all that having been said, there are size limitations to the usage of response headers that you should keep in mind. I could not find a specific reference that talked about the size limit of response headers, but I did do some experimentation to try and approximate what that limit is. I stuffed as many characters as I could into a response header, and the value was truncated at 6,653 characters (including spaces). I created two custom headers with the same 6,653 characters in it, and both were returned, so I'm assuming the limitation is per header (though common sense tells me there is probably a cumulative maximum size as well). Knowing that there IS a limit, my recommendation is that you use headers for smaller pieces of data and never to convey something as large as a JSON data set unless you know that it will be limited in size.

That's it boys and girls! Now go out there and leverage those response headers!

I am currently working on a project that has proven to be very challenging, architecturally speaking. I've been learning a lot along the way, and I have come up with some approaches to addressing the challenge that I feel are pretty doggone sweet, so I thought I'd share some of the details in case it helps spark ideas for other people.

Let me describe how this challenge came about, and the challenge itself.

I'm sitting in my office working on something when I hear several people in an informal meeting discussing how much in time and money it will cost them to pay several temps to enter data from a spreadsheet into a remote system. I wrestle with the idea of making work for myself for a few seconds, then inject myself into the conversation and ask them a few questions about the remote system and what ways it provides for inputting data. As it turns out, the remote system has an interface for receiving this same data in the form of an XML file. Simply drop the XML file into a special folder in their system and it is automatically imported. "So, can you turn our spreadsheets into xml files"?, they ask me. "Of course"!, I reply. And so it begins.

As I try to always do, I explored what potential future requests might entail surrounding this process, examined the possibility of this process' usefulness to other companies, and bore in mind the potential of using this process to accommodate OTHER spreadsheet sources and OTHER xml destination formats. The result was a full blown utility application that allows a user to define a spreadsheet layout, map that layout to a targeted xml layout, then be able to import spreadsheets and produce the xml files in the target format, fully populated and validated; upload those files to their FTP destination; and monitor the status of the uploaded files via feedback mechanisms built in to the target system.

Bear in mind this application is not finished, but I have a substantial amount of the architecture completed and code working up to the point of the FTP process, so its the ins and outs of some of those moving parts that I wanted to share with you.

System Overview: How it Works

1. User logs in and chooses 'Upload Claims'
2. selected spreadsheet is uploaded and validated
3. validated spreadsheet is imported via POI
4. xml node to spreadsheet column mappings are retrieved
for each row in the spreadsheet
  5. blank xml file is created by applying an XML stylesheet (xslt) to the xsd on file;
  6. node values are translated from their tokens to actual values
  7. nodes are located within the xml file via their id and their value replaced with translated value
  8. xml files are "cleaned up" (optional), removing all empty nodes and node trees by applying an XML stylesheet

9. completed xml files are FTP'd to their destination (based on client settings)

DETAILS

Maintaining XML Definitions in the System

So, the first aspect I tackled was the best way to maintain target XML definitions. Well, since I know I want to be able to validate the XML files I create, and since the existing methods of xml validation of necessity ARE a definition of the XML, it made perfect sense to me to start with either a DTD or an XML Schema that represents the targeted XML format. DTDs don't have near the depth of metadata that I would need for future use, so I opted to use XML Schemas (or, 'xsd' files). Every potential target XML format this system maintains will be represented by an existing XSD file stored in a subfolder of the app.

If you aren't familiar with XML Schemas, let me tell you they are invaluable if you want to validate your xml in any detail. You define elements, the data types they hold, any rules that should be applied to those values (such as "only one of the items in this list of values", "a date in the following format", etc.), what attributes an element has and the rules for the values THEY hold, what elements are required, how many instances of a particular element are legal, what order elements should appear in, whether an element is required or not, and pretty much ANYTHING else you can think of! If what you need to store about the XML is NOT available as a standard XSD item, then do what I did and create your OWN namespace within the XSD and add whatever other attributes you want!

For the system I am building, one vital step is to ensure that every node, or potential spot for storing a system value, had to have a unique id. Since there was nothing in the existing xs namespace that allowed for that, I created my own namespace named after the app and added an "ID" attribute to every element and attribute defined for the target XML format. Here's the header of my XSD (notice the 'xclaim' namespace defined): 

 Having defined the xclaim namespace allows me to legally do the following: 

So, in my system, to add a new XML target, simply create an XSD schema file that 'describes' that format, complete with the xclaim namespace's 'id' attribute, and you have accomplished your goal! 

Maintaining Spreadsheet Definitions

I wanted to be able to "head off at the pass" as much confusion or needed validation code as possible, so I opted to 'validate' an uploaded spreadsheet before attempting to process it. What this means to me is that, when a spreadsheet is uploaded I will first check to see that it contains all of the columns (appropriately named) as the user said it should and that all of those columns appear in the correct order. If the spreadsheet passes these two checks, I call it good and we proceed. Otherwise, I reject it and give them a nice message so saying.

In my UI I provide them a way to create and maintain spreadsheet definitions. Essentially they tell the app what the name of the column is and what order it appears in.

Simple enough, eh? 

Maintaining Spreadsheet Column/XML Mappings

Ah, now THIS little bugger was much tougher than one may think at first glance. You see, properly populating your target XML poses many challenges, such as:

-not every column maps directly to only one xml node (element or attribute). This is a one to many relationship, for sure!;

-not every value needed in your xml file COMES from the incoming spreadsheet! Values such as today's date, the client's name, address, or other metadata, etc.;

-not every value needed in your xml file is a SINGLE value, but could very well be a CONCATENATED value! Such as in my case, where the values from three columns needed to be concated along with today's date and placed into a specific element's text, or where one attribute's value had to be the concatenation of a fixed string "COV" and an iterating value (COV1, COV2, etc.)

So you see, designing a storage mechanism to allow such fluidity and yet still be easily maintainable was no easy task to conquer! The solution I came up with accommodates all of the above, but still does have its limitations. Not a perfect solution, but close enough I'd say!

Here then is what the stored column-to-node mappings look like:

Some highlights of this approach:

-nodeID values correspond to the "xclaim:id" values spoken of earlier with regard to the XSD file;

-nodeID values with decimal counters indicate that there may be multiple occurrences of that node's branch in the final xml file. The decimal indicates which iteration of that branch the value belongs in;

-I created "tokens" as placeholders for those values that must be dynamically determined at run time. {column-x} refers to the value in column X, {column-x-name} is replaced with the actual column name, {iterator} is an incrementing value, {currentDateTime} is the current date and time, etc.;

-by including a targeted xsd for a node-value mapping (note the xsdID field), I can effectively map a single spreadsheet to multiple destination xml formats;

-the sortorder field is used in cases where a nodeid has multiple values indicated. This means that those multiple values should be concatenated in the order of 'sortorder'.

By using mysql's really awesome group_concat function, I can return a nice list of values, in their proper order. Here's the query I use to retrieve my mappings. Note the use of group_concat: 

 The results looks like this:

With the query above retrieved, I can now walk through each row of my imported spreadsheet and calculate the appropriate value for the targeted node IDs. :) 

Creating the Blank, or Skeleton XML File

In this system, the only thing we maintain regarding a tarteted xml format is its XSD schema file. Since the XSD schema file is itself an XML file, the logical most expeditious approach to creating our skeleton xml is to leverage XML Stylesheets, or XSLT. I searched high and low for an XSLT that would transform a valid schema file into the skeleton XML it represents and could not find a single example. I thought surely such a thing would have been done many times over! So, since I couldn't find one, I wrote one. It's not all that lengthy really, so here it is in all its glory:

This XSLT is not quite generic enough to work with any XSD, but I hope to make it so before I'm finished (if anybody else wants to make that happen, please do!).  The XSD I'm applying this XSLT to is fairly complex, and includes some "named complexTypes" as well. For those who aren't aware (I know I wasn't), a named complexType is almost the equivalent of defining a variable, and then re-using that value throughout the rest of your document simply by referring to the variable's name. For instance, if I have a chunk of my schema that defines an address block, and there are several places within my xsd where this exact same xml is repeated, rather than actually write it each time i can write it one time, give it a name such as "addressblock", and then wherever I want to include that I simply refer to it by name.

CONCLUSION - FOR NOW

There are a LOT more details to all of this that I haven't touched on, like the xpath statements I use to find and populate the values of nodes, how I reproduce node trees that have multiple occurrences, etc. I'll save more of the nitty gritty details of that sort of thing for another post. In the meantime, if you have any questions or input (especially on how to make my xslt more efficient!), please do leave a comment for me! Most of this was fairly new territory for me, so there's likely lots of room for improvement and efficiency, and I'm all ears.

Prelude

The Basic Nutshell of Ajax Chaining

Simple Requests

Update Requests

Registering Responders

Why Would I Ever Want to Chain My Calls?

The Scenario

In setting up a new IIS7/Windows 2008 server, I had a need to automate the backup of my MySQL database and so pieced together a little batch file that I then scheduled via the Task Scheduler. The file first removes all backup files that are more than a week old, then performs a sql dump and finally zips the dump. Files are named according to the date and time they were created. Anyway, it took me quite a while to find all the pieces and parts I needed, so thought I'd post it here as a starting point for others who may be wanting to do the same.

Oh, one prerequisite for this particular script to function: You have to have a copy of winzip installed (I have version 12) WITH the optional command line utility, which is a separate download (http://www.winzip.com/downcl.htm). Hey, the whole deal costs $29 bucks...spring for it!

MySQLBackup.BAT

Telling Coldspring About Your Objects

Accommodating Coldspring Within Our CFCs

A SPECIAL CASE

In Closing

I haven't been a member of very many Coldfusion/Adobe-centered User groups, but the few I have participated in seem to have a common, perpetual and prevalent concern floating in the air: membership and attendance.

I have very recently had the privilege of being part of the resurrection of San Antonio’s own Coldfusion Users Group. It is being born out of the existing, more general, Alamo Area Multimedia Users Group due to the sudden influx of hardcore Coldfusion users. Our first meeting was two weeks ago. Nine of us sat in a library and talked about what we wanted to gain by participating in the group, who the group Manager would be, when we would meet, where we would host our site, etc. It was fast paced, and everybody in the room was SO zealous, it was contagious. All levels of skill were represented, and you could just feel the hunger for knowledge that the junior among us harbored. Being a brand new group, however, did not exempt us from the same question of attendance that even well established groups entertain: “How would we increase our membership”?

Here, O Best Beloved, is where the true heart of this post begins, as I found myself engaging in a session of combinatory play while looking at this scenario from a whole other perspective. My first inclination was to think of all the companies in town that I knew used Coldfusion, and then come up with ways to solicit their developers. Then came the epiphany that I must say seemed at the moment (and still does) to be absolutely brilliant:

If we want more Coldfusion developers, then why on earth don’t we just MAKE them ourselves?

We who are intimate with Coldfusion KNOW the deep level of satisfaction and sustenance that it can provide. We know that learning it is not so very difficult, we know the true power that it puts into the hands of a developer, and we know that if more people who already have a propensity for technology and problem solving were exposed to those basic truths, they would very likely adopt it in a heartbeat as we have we.

I raised my hand (keeping things orderly, you know) and when called on shared my idea with the group. The sudden silence and ambiguous faces made me feel as though I had just suggested that the emperor had no clothes, my idea appeared to be so foreign to them. In a moment, though, as they mentally extrapolated what investing the time to teach Coldfusion basics to newbies could mean, they heartily seconded the motion to do so (hammering out the details of who, where, and what will be fodder for the next meeting).

Now, I am not vain enough to think that no other User Group has ever come up with this idea. But again, in all the group’s I’ve had the privilege of sharing time with, and in the midst of all the apparent “worry” over attendance, I never once have heard anybody step outside the mindset of “bring in the Coldfusion developers!” and say “hey, why don’t we grow our own”? Isn’t it a marvelous idea, though? If I were a User Group Manager, or an Adobe corporate brain, and my prime directive was to increase User Group participation, I would be organizing and marketing free “Intro to Coldfusion” classes within my target area. I would put an ad in the Thrifty Nickel; I would post it on Craigslist; I would have all my existing members put flyers up on the corkboards at the office. Shoot, I would bring my kids! (we all know that even a child can learn Coldfusion…) I would follow the true spirit of Evangelism and I would preach Coldfusion to the ignorant and uninformed, not just those already converted. I’d gather as many people as would come and meet in a donated conference room with a few cookies and cokes in the back. I’d fire up my laptop and I would INSPIRE these people! The beauty of Coldfusion’s simplicity and elegant folding together with HTML would be revealed to them; the mystery of the request lifecycle would be elucidated to their previously darkened minds; the POWER of loops and conditionals would be handed over to them; and the secrets of interfacing with amorphous backend data would be made secret no more. When they would leave that one hour revival, those people would walk away filled with the spirit of Coldfusion, empowered and enlivened enough so that they would not soon forget what they had learned. That thin foundation would be the catalyst that would bring them back to the NEXT free session to add yet another layer, until they were brought to the point (as I was so long ago) where they could begin to add onto that foundation for themselves. The end result (in my optimist’s vision, anyway) would be a thriving, zealous San Antonio Coldfusion User Group whose collective affection for their craft would inspire all who approached us.

Wow. I think I’ve just cheerleaded myself to the point where I need to go sleep it off. Lol. But, my point is this, Coldfusion (and other Adobe-oriented) User Group Managers AND MEMBERS: If your membership and attendance leaves something to be desired, don’t be afraid to deviate from “the way we’ve always done it”; get creative, think outside the bun, and why on earth not make the time to grow a few of your own from scratch?  The process of introducing someone to Coldfusion and imparting your knowledge of it to them is SO rewarding and SO educational, most especially to those who are teaching. Everybody profits, the Group grows strong, and Adobe Coldfusion (and other products) lives long and prospers.

Doug out.

• Every term is given a generic name;
• Every term will have a default value with the ability to have customized override values for specific clients;
• Every term is given a language identifier, to accommodate the fact that languages other than english may be needed;
• The component that performs lexicon lookups is made available to every display template in some global scope (application, session, request, viewstate (when using Modelglue), etc.);
• Terms are output inline within the display template via a "getTerm" method call;

• 'ID' is an autonumbering field;
• 'itemID' contains the generic reference to the term. We utilized a hierarchical naming convention that identified the specific area of the app the term applied to, but any identifier could be used here, including a simple GUID;
• 'ClientID' is either NULL (indicating this is the generic default term to use) or contains the ID of a specific client (indicating that we should use this client's term for this item);
• 'term' is the actual text that will be displayed;
• 'languageID' is the id of a language record from our 'languages' table (a simple list of languages we wanted to support). In our case, 1 = english, 2 = spanish, 4 = rap;

We just moved into a new house. Fairly large, 2,500 square foot, two story house nestled (very tightly!) in a new subdivision in north San Antonio. The back porch is extra large and shaded by its own roof from the cruelly hot south Texas sun. This provides an absolutely lovely place to set up the hammock and relax on a breezy evening with a cold glass of white merlot and some tuneage; but, for fear of scorching the underside of the porch roof, it provides us no place to put the grill!

Anybody who knows anything about Texans, especially south Texans, knows the absolute imperativeness of BBQ at least once a week. Grilled skirt steak (fajitas), corn on the cob, asparagus dowsed in olive oil and lemon pepper, brauts, and all the other fixins that accompany such a cornucopia are as much a requirement for us as the thick humid air that keeps our terrestrial gills in working order. Now, you may wonder why we wouldn’t just put the grill right out there in the yard somewhere like people in places such as Missouri or Michigan do. What are we afraid of? That we might perspire if we have to stand in the sun? Do we have a phobia of grass? Nay, my foreign brethren (everybody NOT from Texas is a foreigner); The thing that deters us from spending too much time standing in one spot in our yards down here is a little thing I like to call Fire Ants. If you go to any house in San Antonio, step into the yard and stand still for more than a couple of minutes, a Fire Ant WILL climb onto you, find a bare piece of skin, and with great purpose, sting you repeatedly until you put it out of your misery. Though we South Texans have learned to live side by side with them to a degree, it has only been by accepting that the grass, any and all grass, is their territory. Hence our family’s need for a place to put the grill. The solution we came up with was to build a patio.

HOW TO BUILD A PATIO

Items Needed

• One Long-Handled Flat Blade Spade
• Two each 40 pound bags of course sand
• One each 40 pound bag of crushed (or decayed) granite
• Thirty three bricks
• Your spousal unit, if applicable, and all the kids you got

Directions

1) Gather your family together and discuss the idea of making a patio for your BBQ or outdoor fireplace. If you don’t own a BBQ or outdoor fireplace, discuss getting one. As the father, husband, and guide of your household, ensure that the conversation ends up as all in favor of the project by using your experience, wisdom, and skills in gentle persuasion.

3) Take all or as many as possible of the family on the outing to procure the needed items. Make sure to include the kids in on the process of deciding which sand, spade, and granite to purchase. Also, make sure you ask them if they can think of anything else you might need for the project (suggest gloves, bottled water, and other such amenities if no one else thinks of them  ).

• A waterboy/girl and general purpose gopher or two;
• Someone to provide and maintain the background music;
• Mud puppies (kiddos to help remove mud/dirt from the hole and to dig through clods already removed to find worms and grubs to study);
• A surveyor (someone to help you measure and layout the patio boundaries)

CONCLUSION

Few things promote such sincere togetherness and family unity as do joint projects, and this was no exception. So many good things came from this task...the cooperation, the sense of accomplishment, the planning and procurement skills, the practicing of the mindset to not be afraid of hard work, the sweat equity that everybody contributed and thus a stake in seeing it succeed, the exercising of love and patience, the overall feeling of ‘togetherness’ that was promoted; And more than that, the hope that this patio represents: the future memories we’ll all make out here BBQing as a family.

• Were there any performance advantages of using JSON over XML?
• Was there significant differences in the length of the string produced by a JSON conversion as opposed to an XML conversion (significant in the realm of web services where that string will have to be sent over the wire)?
• Were there any compelling reasons to adopt JSON in leiu of XML or WDDX?

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Doug Boude

July 3, 2007

[insert ignorant landlady's name here]

 
Dear Miss Ignorant Landlady:

 
I received what I can only assume is your handwritten letter postmarked June 29, 2007 which cited a lease agreement signed by myself on July 2, 2005 and stated that due to failure to provide thirty days written notice, all security deposits had been forfeited. This letter appeared to be a copy of a faxed document, and was signed by a person unknown to me and claiming to be co-owner of the property at [my old address].

I respectfully request that you and the true home owner, [true homeowner's name], reconsider your decision to withhold the entire amount of my nine hundred forty dollar deposit, paid by check on July 2, 2005 for the following reasons:

1. As of July 2, 2006, the lease agreement I signed on July 2, 2005 and all terms therein expired; no other lease agreement was ever signed. The supposed reason for withholding my deposit cited, vaguely, an expired agreement.

2. I was a very good tenant at all times, caring for the property as if it were my own and always with the mindset that if the homeowner were to show up at any time, she would not be disappointed with the state of the property. I paid the full amount of my rent every month, and only deviated from the acceptable window of payment when previous arrangements were made with you; hence the fact that there is no back rent due at this time. In addition, I performed countless hours of maintenance and repairs (approximately valued at $1,195), many at my own expense for supplies and all with my own time, in order to maintain the property in good working order. AC filters were bought and changed regularly; lawn maintenance was above par (mowed and edged, yard fertilized, trees fed/spiked, flowers planted, shrubbery trimmed, grass watered and kept green – I even contracted with a lawn care company for a time in order to keep the lawn healthy), lawn equipment (which came with the house) was maintained exquisitely (mower blade changed, cracked fuel tank replaced, synthetic oil used in the motor), toilet internal parts were replaced, loose towel racks repaired, shower fixtures repaired or replaced, incandescent light bulbs replaced with low wattage energy saving fluorescent (all of which I left with the house), exterminator called as needed, garbage disposal repaired, clogged toilets and sinks unclogged…and any other thing that needed attention: I took care of it all, and willingly so.

3. I am uncertain as to who is actually making the decisions and judgments that are affecting the return of my good faith deposit. Since I was given no contact information for the home owner (who I understand to be in the military) and was directed to deal with you, her proxy, I could not contact the owner directly to discuss the terms of the return of my deposit. I then requested of you, in writing, to be put in communication with the actual home owner on June 14, 2007 and received no response whatsoever to date, effectively and purposefully preventing me from contacting her. Even the handwritten letter I received on July 1 omitted any return address nor did the letter itself contain any contact information (though the postmark shows it was sent from San Antonio). In addition, according to the Bexar County Appraisal district records, [my old address] only has one owner, [homeowner's name], and that at 100% ownership, making the claim of someone else touting themselves as “co-owner” very much suspect.

4. My failure to give a full thirty days notice was not done maliciously nor was it premeditated. The circumstances surrounding it were strictly financial, wherein a plan that would have allowed me to meet my financial needs was suddenly and unexpectedly disrupted. As soon as I was aware that I would not be able to pay the rent for the following month of June, I contacted you in writing to let you know and even went so far as to put the “for rent” sign out into the yard for you and repair it when the wind had knocked it down. I also answered inquiries from passers-by who were interested in the house and took them on tours of it in order to assist you in finding subsequent tenants. I acted with my, yours, and the homeowners best interest in mind and with fidelity at all times, as my deeds do attest.

5. I did everything in my power to leave the house in as good or better condition than I received it, with the one exception of repainting three or four walls back to the original color. The repainting issue was discussed with you, I informed you that I would not be able to do that, and so there was no miscommunication on that matter. Everything else, however, I did do. I cleaned the house in its entirety, including kitchen, floors, and refrigerator. I disposed of all trash in the bins and even came back after I had moved out to ensure that the bins were set on the curb to be emptied. I’m sure that there was yet more cleaning that could have been done in order to pass the white glove test, but due to my grandfather having a stroke on May 27^th and me being the only family he has locally, my cleaning efforts were delayed. I informed you of that situation in writing on May 31^st. The hole in the garage which you brought to my attention as not being pre-existing, I purchased the supplies for and performed the repair of. The process of repairing such a hole is two step, and since the second step of sanding and painting had to be performed after my move-out date, I informed you of that need as well and offered to return to complete it. Once I had received from you a rough list of items that you deemed as deductible from my deposit (including items deemed by the attorney general as ‘normal wear and tear’), I offered to return and take care of any of them that you wanted me to. I received no response in the affirmative or negative…there was no communication from you. Again, as with the general care of the property while living there, my intentions and mindset regarding the state of the property at the time of my departure were completely upright and with the owner’s and my best interest in mind, even informing you that I was making myself available after my departure if it was desirable for me to return and take care of any outstanding matters.

For the reasons stated above, it is my contention that withholding of the full deposit amount is absolutely unfounded, morally wrong, and is not a just reciprocation for the very good tenant I have been for the past two years. If there were legal precedent that enabled a landlord to withhold the entire amount of a tenant’s good faith deposit when no valid lease agreement is in place due solely to the lack of a full thirty day written notice to vacate, that does NOT justify the doing of it when all other factors cast the tenant in so favorable a light.

My desire at this time is to be in communication directly with the home owner herself and not her proxy, in order to come to an amicable, fair, and just agreement regarding this matter as soon as possible.

I respectfully request that this letter be immediately forwarded to [homeowner] and that she contact me at the address in this letter’s header section within ten business days, in writing, regarding a fair and equitable agreement as to what portion of the deposit should be returned to me.

 Sincerely,

 DOUG BOUDE

PREVIOUS TENANT, [my old address]

(JULY 2005 – MAY 2007)

My mind swam as I drove the thirty minutes to the hospital, my thoughts wandering back and forth between the cares of my day and my love and concern for my grandpa. I had just walked in from a pleasant lunch with one of my fellow Masons when the front desk lady flagged me down and handed me a scribbled note that read “grandpa – hospital – emergency – call mom”. Sometimes I really despise the way I always analyze things. Rather than allowing the naturally occurring emotions of such a surprise scenario to run their course, I immediately and instinctively subdued them, opting rather to convince myself that there was no cause for alarm or concern at this point since I had no real information upon which to base a judgment. But c’mon…with keywords such as those scrawled on that yellow piece of paper, how many conclusions could there be that don’t end in a situation where emotions are absolutely appropriate? I do believe that it’s more from fear than strength that I do that to myself…that I throw logic at myself in order to postpone the inevitable. Others look at me and see me as the strong one, the reasonable one, the one who is really able to think clearly and rationally. In reality, I am the one most afraid, and only do it as a self-protective measure. I tend to equate crying with vomiting…both are natural and healing reactions that our humanity thrust upon us when necessary, yet I find myself going to the greatest of lengths to utterly avoid them at all costs. I believe it’s because both of them are involuntary, and nothing frightens me more than not being in control of my situation. Well there, I’ve done it. I’ve just auto-analyzed my own psychology in a public forum. But I don’t care. I’m only writing about this in order to provide some sort of relief for myself, a vent for the anguish I kept bottled up as I helped my grandpa…no, suffered with my grandpa, through the stroke he had had that very morning.

I love that man, so very, very much. One of my greatest regrets is that I never put forth the effort to get to know him better in my younger years. He was always traveling here and there with my grandma, living what I envisioned as a very exciting and lavish life. Their home base was Texas, mine was Missouri. I married right out of high school and immediately had my life swept up with responsibilities I was trying to grow into. Our paths crossed only on occasion over the course of thirty years, and even when it was that I eventually ended up living in the same city as he and grandma, I still never seemed to find time in my schedule to invest in our relationship. How sad. What a rich and meaningful relationship I robbed myself and my children of by not being more determined in that.

In the past year, I had finally made up my mind to turn over a new leaf in that department, and I embarked upon an endeavor that gave grandpa and I some common ground: Masonry. I didn’t do it just for him, but I was glad that we now had something to ensure we would spend time together. Entering into Masonry necessarily involves the requirement of spending one on one time with other more experienced Masons, and whenever possible, I chose my grandpa. In what Masons refer to as esoteric work, I began to finally get to know who my grandpa was. How smart he was, how even tempered; his wit, his sincere care for his wife, myself, and family (even those of the feline persuasion). He wears his 84 years as though he were just barely entering retirement age, always smiling, laughing, helping with something.

When I finally completed my brisk walk of the hospital’s length (I parked at the wrong end of the facility…fancy that) and entered the room where they were still examining him, it was a completely foreign way to be seeing my grandpa. Whereas he was always the active one, the one helping somebody else, now it was his turn to receive the attention and assistance. And oh, how it grieved him so! I saw my beloved, strong grandpa weep multiple times that day. Not out of self-pity, but for the worry that others had over him and the time they were taking out of their own schedules for his sake. When he cried, I would be strong for him, put my hand on his shoulder, smile at him so he could see that I was there to fill in for whatever strength the stroke had temporarily taken away. My mind was set, and I told him so, that we would all overcome this together and press on as the happy loving family that we were no matter what it might require of us all. I was so glad for my own youth and strength and health so that I could lend it to him, that my abundance could be supply for his lack at that time, as his has been for me in past situations.

My grandma…she who is always so beautiful and elegant and graceful in every way; she really rose to the occasion as well, impressing me mightily. The love I always knew was there between them was more evident now than ever, as she tirelessly held his hand from her wheelchair, looked at him so lovingly and dear, smiled at him, and kept him energized by her amazing love for him. He reciprocated, and though few words were spoken between them, the air between their mutual gazes was alive. Her stamina, which normally is quite short due to her progressing Parkinsons, was as good or better than my own; her speech, which is normally not more than a whisper (again, due to her Parkinsons) was quite audible and clear. Though my grandpa may not see it right now, his unfortunate illness has brought out so much good and strength in everyone around him…his weakness, his lacking, has given those around him who love him so such a blessed opportunity to give back…there honestly can be so much beauty in tragedy, such that the tragic event itself is paled in comparison and appears as nothing more than an insignificant thing that should soon be forgotten.

This is the second day since my grandpa realized he was having a stroke when he couldn’t lift his spoon of cereal to his mouth, but the sadness that plagued him yesterday has been set aside, and he even walked a couple hundred feet today down the hall of the hospital wing. Tomorrow my mom and Aunt will arrive to see their father and perform the happy duty of a child to their aging parents, and I am excited to see them as well. I was my mother’s eyes, ears, voice, and arms while she couldn’t be here, and I feel very privileged to have fulfilled that role for her. I’m glad I was here when my grandpa got sick, and I will continue to offer myself to them all for the love I have for them, most especially grandpa.

There is nothing more beautiful, satisfying, nor purposeful than to give yourself for the sake of another. May I encourage everyone who reads this to consider those who are nearest and dearest to them, and even those who aren’t but should be, and take advantage of the precious moments you have so that when all is said and done (and it will eventually be), you will have no regrets.