createConfusion()

Any fellow ColdFusion developers out there? I did some searching and found traces of what appears to be a defunct CFUG. Anybody interested in reviving it? It would be nice to collaborate with some locals.

In my last post, I outlined some steps to get Railo working with IIS. I also vented some frustrations about the [lack of centralized] documentation provided by Railo. I had the pleasure of personal support from Gert Franz from Railo. I sent him an email explaining some frustrations and he offered to remote into my machine and look things over. Within a few minutes, Gert had me straightened out and on my merry way.

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What is Railo 3.0 Community?

Railo is a free CFML engine that compares well to the commercial Adobe ColdFusion software. However, Railo differs in that it requires a 3rd party (also free) application server to work. According to Railo's web site, there appear to be multiple application servers that work, however the Community edition comes with Resin. Similar to Adobe ColdFusion, Railo also comes bundled with a built-in web server (actually, part of Resin).

I imagine that I'm not alone when I say that configuring Resin to work with IIS is a chore for a first-time user. For those that are unfamiliar with Resin, it is an open source Java (and PHP) application server. Resin comes with a built in web server, so technically, there really is no need for IIS. However, I'm a proponent for keeping things the same between environments (who isn't tho?). There are a number of sites that basically regurgitate the same configuration instructions for making IIS work with Resin. I spent nearly all of yesterday trying to accomplish this task...

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When starting a new application, I always think back through the frustrations I had with a previous project and try to prevent being stuck in the same situation. I presume (and hope) every developer does that. As my skills continue to grow, so does my base of reusable widgets I've made along the way. The allure to Object Oriented development for me was the likelihood being able to reuse mundane, time-consuming or complicated code. On the aforementioned project, the exact spelling of the business wasn't even decided when I wrote the first view. The solution to this problem was provide a mechanism to easily change common business parameters found on most sites.

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If you didn't already know, FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is inherently insecure. The files you're sending to/from your web server (including authentication params) are easily captured and read by a savvy network nerd. There are a number of 3rd-party FTP applications floating around that solve this problem on Windows servers, at a cost. I have found a solution that doesn't cost a dime other than a few minutes of your time. I have to be honest and say, I had to do a part of this process 3 times before the installer completed successfully.

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