David Epler

1
Choices The Other ColdFusion Servers

• David Epler
• Constella Group
• depler_at_constellagroup.com

2
The Choices

• BlueDragon 6.2.1
• www.newatlanta.com/products/bluedragon/
• Railo 1.0
• www.railo.ch/en/
• IgniteFusion 2.8
• www.ignitefusion.com
• Coral Web Builder
• www.pcaonline.com/coral/

3
BlueDragon Editions

• Server (aka Free Server)
• Limited database and webserver connectors based
  on OS
• No support for HTTPS
• Server JX
• J2EE
• .NET

4
BlueDragon Pros

• Most widely used alternate CFML server
• Been around for years, has good support and user
  community
• Excellent documentation
• CFML Compatibility Guide
• CFML Enhancements Guide

5
BlueDragon Cons

• Perceived to be behind Adobe CFMX

6
BlueDragon Resources

• BlueDragon Interest List Archive
• www.newatlanta.com/support/bluedragon/self_help/ar
  chive_search/
• BlueDragon FAQ
• www.newatlanta.com/c/support/bluedragon/self_help/
  faq/home
• BlueDragon Bug Tracking
• www.newatlanta.com/c/support/bluedragon/bugtrackin
  g/home
• Vince Bonfanti's Blog
• blog.newatlanta.com

7
Railo Editions

• Community
• Limited to one site per server, but free
• Removed functionality
• CFX tag support
• Lucene search (cfsearch, cfindex, cfcollection)
• Professional
• Licensed by of sites served on server
• Enterprise
• Unlimited sites per server, sandboxing

8
Railo Pros

• All editions can be deployed to any J2EE/JSP
  Servlet engine
• Flash Remoting using AMF
• Supports Fusebox 4.1, Mach-II, and ModelGlue
• Fairly complete CF5/CFMX language support

9
Railo Cons

• Newest kid on the CFML block
• Currently no support for webservices
• Documentation is not as complete as Adobe or New
  Atlanta

10
Railo Resources

• Railo Documentation
• www.railo.ch/en/index.cfm?treeID106
• Yahoo! Group
• railo_talk_at_yahoogroups.com

11
IgniteFusion

• Free
• Windows only CFML engine
• Use IIS, Apache, or iPlanet
• Documentation is in Windows Help File
• Does not support frameworks (Fusebox, Mach-II,
  etc.)
• No XML and WDDX support

12
Coral Web Builder

• More akin to CF Everywhere concept from Phil Cruz
  and Dick Applebaum
• philcruz.com/cfeverywhere/
• Not a lot of information regarding CFML
  compatibilty on the site

13
Getting Code to Run

• Expect errors
• Most CFML engines strive to be as compatible to
  CFMX as possible
• Usually can fix with minor changes to code
• Use the debugging output and logs to track down
  errors
• Run code side-by-side in other CFML engine and
  CFMX to compare

14
Getting Code to Run

• Stay away from implementation specific tags and
  functions
• ltcfchartgt, ltcfimagegt, ltcfforwardgt, etc.
• Use support forums, email lists, and Google
• Someone else might have already found the answer
  and posted it
• Read the docs!

15
Example BlogCFC v4.03

• Ray Camden's BlogCFC relatively prominent
  application deployed
• Works out of the box for BlueDragon
• Minor previous gotchas
• v4.0 had a function in blog.cfc called render()
  which conflicted with BlueDragon 6.2.1 because it
  added a function called render()
• BlueDragon uses a different RegEx library and
  behavior was slightly different from CFMX, fix
  was to modify the RegEx

16
Example BlogCFC v4.03

• Railo 1.0 only required 1 change
• ping.cfc lines 74, 128, and 168 needed
  namexmlStuff added to the ltcfhttpparamgt
• Railo treats the name attribute as required
  although it is optional for CFMX and BD when type
  attribute is body or XML

17
Thanks

• QA
• Contact
• www.cfmlengines.info
• depler_at_cfmlengines.info