remote
     synthesis

What Adobe Should Announce at CFUnited

Posted on Jun 21, 2007

I was briefly talking with a friend who is hoping that ColdFusion 8 will be released at CFunited. Personally, I really don't think so. I feel that it would be better to give the public beta time to run its course, seeing as it has been only 22 days since it was released. This led me to speculate on what they might announce. Let me clarify that I have absolutely no insider information on this topic - this is pure speculation for the fun of it. First, I will begin with the more realistic possibilty...A New Pricing/Edition Structure
This was actually hinted at by Jason Delmore at the Scorpio Tour meeting of the Boston CFUG. I think his words were that while nothing was decided, he thinks we will be pleased by the pricing structure. Let me be clear, I personally think a free or open-source version is completely unlikely as I fail to see how this benefits the business of making money off ColdFusion. Having a free and open-source Flex increases adoption and increased adoption sells the tools (i.e. Flex Builder) and potentially the "add-on" products like Flex Data Ser...er...., I mean, Livecycle Data Services. While it is totally vague, I think we might find improved pricing on both standard and enterprise, as in lower, without any language feature differences (hello event gateways in standard!). I wouldn't rule out an additional version (like Professional) even though I am totally at a loss as to what it might entail...it's just 3 editions is common since most people like to take the middle road.

Now to my totally wishful thinking, however unlikely.

Adobe AIR Integration/Deployment Option
Imagine if you could use create an Adobe AIR (or Flex for that matter) application with a ColdFusion back-end and then deploy that without requiring ColdFusion on the client machine. To me this would be the ultimate cross-sell as you could leverage the features and ease-of-coding that ColdFusion offers, with the rich interface and easy deployment features that AIR offers.

My thinking along these lines was as follows. With the Apache Derby integration in ColdFusion, it becomes easier to deploy ColdFusion applications while only having the requirement that ColdFusion server is installed - no longer, in theory, would you need to support multiple RDBMS and send along various database install scripts. AIR went this route as well by integrating SQLLite. Projects like Artemis have already figured out how to allow your AIR application access to the JVM (assuming one is installed of course)...you can already deploy ColdFusion (enterprise) applications as WAR/EAR files, but what if they could be compiled to a jar and then deployed using a technology like Artemis to make them accessible to your installed AIR application? Am I nuts to think that might be cool and/or useful?

Ok, I Admit That is Totally Unlikely
Anyway, guess today is a daydreaming day, and these speculative articles are total fluff...but they are fun to write :)

Sadly I won't be at CFunited to hear about any of it - perhaps someone will blog it? ;)

Thoughts?

Comments

I think we will have AIR and Flex 3 at MAX and CF8 must be published at CFUnited. It is a huge marketing possibility and giving information with a public beta is not the best case.

Posted By O?uz Demirkap? / Posted on 06/21/2007 at 1:48 PM

I also had thought the release would be at CFUnited. I even picked it in the pool. After hearing Ben Forta speak last week at the Summit I am now less convinced of it. I think that they will go for the "8" imagery and release in August. Perhaps August 8. Wait, they did that with Studio 8. They wouldn't do that again. Would they?

Posted By Bob Flynn / Posted on 06/21/2007 at 1:54 PM

Given that the first public beta just started, I don't think it's realistic to think that CF 8 will be released at CFUnited - as cool as that might be. I think Adobe wants/needs a little more time with the public beta to finish polishing up the release.

Posted By Rob Brooks-Bilson / Posted on 06/21/2007 at 2:05 PM

If they did have plans for changing the editions and pricing that would be a good time to do it. Marketing wise releasing it at cfunited wouldn't have that much kick as everyone is already aware and excited about CF 8. They should wait until they are ready, which I now agree will be 8/8/2007. Bummer that I guessed CFunited on Bens picker app.

Your AIR idea would rock everyones world, and while I expect that is inevitable I don't think it will happen this year.

Another possible thing they could announce: Major partnership with [google|yahoo|etc]. Not sure what that would be, but with yahoo finally having CF example code that helps.

Bummer you can't make cfunited. Though with all the live blogging and podcasts the only thing you will really miss out on is the drinking and debauchery.

Posted By Joshua Cyr / Posted on 06/21/2007 at 2:12 PM

I think Air/ColdFusion integration would SO TOTALLY ROCK! And if you think about it, it's in keeping with recent Adobe strategy (think Flex / ColdFusion integration). I don't know what would be involved - but I was thinking along the same lines as you (CF compiled to Java byte file).

I still have some unanswered questions regarding AIR (why they chose that stupid name over Apollo is one, but that's another story)

I've seen mention that SQL Lite will be included, so that your applications can access off-line data in RDBMS format (not just flat file format), but languages like Flex and HTML are prestentation tier technologies - so how to access the DB?

An application layer will be necessary. In a connected app, you would access a server via web service or get/post, but what about true desktop apps?

Doesn't it make sense that CF could be used in this reagard? I'd hate to see AIR support the likes of PHP or Rails ONLY.

Unlikely, maybe, but necessary, in the long term.

Cheers,

David

Posted By David / Posted on 06/21/2007 at 2:15 PM

AIR and compiled CF code for a all in one solution... that would be GREAT.
Microsoft would have some problems on there hands.

Posted By John Allen / Posted on 06/21/2007 at 7:23 PM

Bear in mind that the current public beta build expires on July 31st (Damon Cooper has stated this publicly). I think several of the products that are released on labs go through more than one public beta build (am I imagining that?) so that could mean a second CF8 beta with an expiry at the end of August or maybe even September? Final release would have to be sometime before the beta expiry... but certainly later than CFUNITED... I originally guessed early August and 8/8 does seem like a tempting date...

Posted By Sean Corfield / Posted on 06/22/2007 at 5:47 AM

As for the packaged deployment of CF - I can't imagine that happening. You can package CF applications up as an EAR or WAR with the runtime included already - it's a couple of hundred Mb - and you need a CF runtime license for the target server (which is very reasonable).

Posted By Sean Corfield / Posted on 06/22/2007 at 5:50 AM