Also I think you guys are selling Open Blue Dragon short. And it didn't really sound like you knew much about it. I've been playing with it for a week and am very impressed so far. I'd like to set a few things straight for the record.
BlueDragon *does* have built in ajax support - the ajax feature I've used the most anyway - cfajaxproxy. The other things like cfwindow can be done just as easily with rolling your own code. I've used cfajaxproxy many times but have never had the need to use cfwindow or the like. I usually write my own JavaScript code as it ends up being much lighter. Someone also wrote a set of CFGRID, CFWINDOW, and CFTOOLTIP custom tags that emulate the Adobe CF functionality but do it using jQuery.
You mentioned no Exchange support. Thats true. But I haven't heard of anyone needing that yet. Although I *have* needed to talk to an imap server for at least two different clients already. Adobe CF doesn't have IMAP support, but Open Blue Dragon does. So far I've had to make do with an imap.cfc I've found and I've had a lot of issues with it.
I'm not sure why you think the last release was in 2007. Open Blue Dragon 1.0 came out in December 2008. Version 1.1 was just released in April 2009.
You also said that "their latest release is behind what ColdFusion can do anyway". Why, because there is no cfpresentation tag!? What about all the stuff OpenBD can do that Adobe CFML doesn't? Like Amazon S3 support, imap support, and CFSMTP? Also Blue Dragon was actually the first CFML engine to have a cfthread tag. I know they were first in some other features too but thats the only one I know off the top of my head.
True there is no server monitor. There is not one in Adobe CF Standard either. You have to spend $7k for an enterprise license to get that, don't forget.
You also mentioned Flash Remoting. You can do Flash/Flex remoting with OpenBD, but I'm not sure if its built in yet. You might need to drop in a few jars and tweak an xml file or two.
As I listened to you discuss coming CF9 features I couldn't help but notice that some of those features are already out in OpenBD and Railo. I am thankful that we have three organizations producing CFML engines, I can already see this competition has been helpful.
So to sum it up, I'm really excited about the possibilities that OpenBD and Railo will open up for CFML developers. I'm already working on a project that will probably be deployed using OpenBD or Railo on Amazon EC2 - something thats just not practical with Adobe CF. Also work has aleady begun (proof of concepts are already done and out there) to make OpenBD run on Google App Engine!
Dave Ferguson Says:
May 6, 2009 at 11:37 PM
@Ryan - While you are mostly accurate about your statements you are still only compairing CF to OpenBD. You are not compairing it to the other versions of BlueDragon. The current commercial release of BlueDragon is most compatible with CF7. There is a list of things that CF8 can do that BlueDragon cant.
I personally would not want to customize, tweak, "drop in few jars", tweak xml or otherwise alter BD just so I can get all the stuff that CF can do. Why should I spend all my valuable time to make sure everything works together when someone else already did it for me?
But don't get me wrong. I fully support open source software and it's uses. I appreciate all the effort people put into them to make them better than they were originally intended. However, for me, when I have a multi-million dollar app on the line I want and need a single throat to choke when it all goes to hell.
Having said all that... Thanks for the comments. I think we should talk more about this subject in a future show and do a more detailed analysis.
Thanks for listening.
--Dave
Tony Garcia Says:
May 18, 2009 at 9:35 AM
yeah, I started to feel the same way as Ryan, but then realized that Dave's comments on the podcast were really referring to the commercial version of BlueDragon, and not really OPENBlueDragon.
Apr 27, 2009 at 9:12 PM Hi guys. I listened to your show for the first time today. I have a few thoughts.
First of all, that 32bit 1.6GB memory limit is only for Windows. On Linux the limit is actually around 2.5GB. I tested this myself and wrote a blog post about it: http://www.stillnetstudios.com/2008/03/08/3gb-of-memory-for-coldfusion-on-linux/
Also I think you guys are selling Open Blue Dragon short. And it didn't really sound like you knew much about it. I've been playing with it for a week and am very impressed so far. I'd like to set a few things straight for the record.
BlueDragon *does* have built in ajax support - the ajax feature I've used the most anyway - cfajaxproxy. The other things like cfwindow can be done just as easily with rolling your own code. I've used cfajaxproxy many times but have never had the need to use cfwindow or the like. I usually write my own JavaScript code as it ends up being much lighter. Someone also wrote a set of CFGRID, CFWINDOW, and CFTOOLTIP custom tags that emulate the Adobe CF functionality but do it using jQuery.
You mentioned no Exchange support. Thats true. But I haven't heard of anyone needing that yet. Although I *have* needed to talk to an imap server for at least two different clients already. Adobe CF doesn't have IMAP support, but Open Blue Dragon does. So far I've had to make do with an imap.cfc I've found and I've had a lot of issues with it.
I'm not sure why you think the last release was in 2007. Open Blue Dragon 1.0 came out in December 2008. Version 1.1 was just released in April 2009.
You also said that "their latest release is behind what ColdFusion can do anyway". Why, because there is no cfpresentation tag!? What about all the stuff OpenBD can do that Adobe CFML doesn't? Like Amazon S3 support, imap support, and CFSMTP? Also Blue Dragon was actually the first CFML engine to have a cfthread tag. I know they were first in some other features too but thats the only one I know off the top of my head.
True there is no server monitor. There is not one in Adobe CF Standard either. You have to spend $7k for an enterprise license to get that, don't forget.
You also mentioned Flash Remoting. You can do Flash/Flex remoting with OpenBD, but I'm not sure if its built in yet. You might need to drop in a few jars and tweak an xml file or two.
As I listened to you discuss coming CF9 features I couldn't help but notice that some of those features are already out in OpenBD and Railo. I am thankful that we have three organizations producing CFML engines, I can already see this competition has been helpful.
So to sum it up, I'm really excited about the possibilities that OpenBD and Railo will open up for CFML developers. I'm already working on a project that will probably be deployed using OpenBD or Railo on Amazon EC2 - something thats just not practical with Adobe CF. Also work has aleady begun (proof of concepts are already done and out there) to make OpenBD run on Google App Engine!
May 6, 2009 at 11:37 PM @Ryan - While you are mostly accurate about your statements you are still only compairing CF to OpenBD. You are not compairing it to the other versions of BlueDragon. The current commercial release of BlueDragon is most compatible with CF7. There is a list of things that CF8 can do that BlueDragon cant.
I personally would not want to customize, tweak, "drop in few jars", tweak xml or otherwise alter BD just so I can get all the stuff that CF can do. Why should I spend all my valuable time to make sure everything works together when someone else already did it for me?
But don't get me wrong. I fully support open source software and it's uses. I appreciate all the effort people put into them to make them better than they were originally intended. However, for me, when I have a multi-million dollar app on the line I want and need a single throat to choke when it all goes to hell.
Having said all that... Thanks for the comments. I think we should talk more about this subject in a future show and do a more detailed analysis.
Thanks for listening.
--Dave
May 18, 2009 at 9:35 AM yeah, I started to feel the same way as Ryan, but then realized that Dave's comments on the podcast were really referring to the commercial version of BlueDragon, and not really OPENBlueDragon.
May 22, 2009 at 8:05 PM Every time I open IE8, I get littered with IE process.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/devlinholliday/3516409482/sizes/o/
Even when I close it, they don't go away.
รด_o