ColdFusion Alive

Get the inside scoop on the Into The Box 2025 ColdFusion Conference from Daniel Garcia and Michaela Light. This episode covers the event’s schedule, top speakers, trending ColdFusion and BoxLang topics, exclusive workshops, travel and pricing tips, plus special offers for developers and teams. Daniel Garcia talks about “Into The Box 2025 ColdFusion conference (all the details)” in this episode of ColdFusion Alive Podcast with host Michaela Light. “…BoxLang, we first officially announced it last year into the box the first beta of it. It's a modern, dynamically and loosely typed scripting language for multiple runtimes”. https://youtu.be/RDYMKtq03iQ Show notes What is Into The Box conference? CommandBox, ColdBox, BoxLang, all the Box products by Ortus  ColdFusion topics too Smaller conf, very easy to talk to speakers and other attendees Speakers and Topics Speaker Brad Wood Brian Klass Curt Gratz Dan Card Daniel Garcia Eric Peterson Esme Acevedo Gavin Pickin George Murphy Giancarlo Gomez Grant Copley Jacob Beers Javier Quintero Jon Clausen Kevin Wright Luis Majano Michael Rigsby Scott Steinbeck Topics highlights Integrating OpenAI API in ColdFusion Applications Reactive Front-Ends with CFML, CBWIRE, and AlpineJS IoT Hardware Integration with BoxLang and MQTT Introduction to CBWIRE 4 Open call for speakers Preconference Workshops Development and Hosting using Docker, CI, CD, and AWS ECS Getting Started with Boxlang with Brad Wood, John Clausen, and Luis Majano Just Enough Workshop Building Modern Apps with CBWire and AlpineJS with Grant Coplin and Esme Acevedo When is it? Wed April 30th - Friday May 2nd, 2025 Where is it this year? Washington, DC Why not send devs to conferences? Dev team too big to send all → send none Solution: Rotate devs each year. Eg send 3 this year, another 3 next year etc No training mentality Solutions Free video training CFCasts Daniel offer for unemployed CFers and students 9-5 Devs "comfortable" who don't want to grow in tech skills Solutions Modernize or Die Be competitive  Hiring  Attitude and Aptitude Open source Travel 3 airports in Washington DC metro area. Plus Amtrack.  Metro in the area Cost Conf only early bird $349.50, 449.50 $499, 699 25% off promo code CFAlive_2025 Deals and early bird pricing 3/31/25 BoxLang+ 1-year license included!  Special support for BoxLang Code scanner Extra bonus feature Team Plans are available for businesses - Reach out at Intothebox (at) ortussolutions.com     **Get 50% off** your second Into the Box on-site ticket.     **Buy 2, Get 1 Free** – Purchase two on-site tickets, and the third one is on us. What are you looking forward to at ITB this year?   Mentioned in this episode Into The Box 2025 conf site https://www.intothebox.org/  Comprehensive TeraTech blog about ITB https://teratech.com/into-the-box-conference-is-coldfusion-modern-or-dead/  140 BoxLang modern JVM language that runs CFML code (new CFML engine and much more) with Luis Majano and Brad Wood 121 How to Get Your Next Ideal CF Job (using LinkedIn, Resume, GitHub), with Doug McCaughan CFCasts Listen to the Audio Bio Daniel Garcia Senior Developer at Ortus Solutions  Daniel Garcia lives in Plainfield, IL, has been working with web technologies since 1997, and is passionate about what he does. He is a husband, father, "Dad"-ager for his aspiring musician son, cinephile, regaler of useless knowledge, smoker of meats, aspiring podcaster, part-time radio DJ, and has an irreverent sense of humor. His mantras are "Work smarter, not harder" and "KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid). Links Daniel Garcia | LinkedIn Ortus Solutions GitHub Garciadev https://www.ortussolutions.com/about-us/daniel-garcia CFML and Box Slack Daniel Garcia Interview transcript Michaela Light 0:00 Welcome back to the show. I'm here with Daniel Garcia, and he and I are going to talk about an amazing cold fusion conference coming up real soon. Now called into the box. You may think it only covers box things, but actually covers all kinds of cold fusion things as well. And if you don't know Daniel, he's been doing cold fusion for decades now, probably started bringing in web tech. Yes, decades started in 1997 with web tech, and he loves doing it. He's also a dad got an 11 year old son who's a musician, and he's the manager, or he likes calling him himself, the dad, manager of his son. And he's also a podcaster. DJ has a wicked sense of humor. So welcome Daniel. Daniel Garcia 0:59 Thank you for having me. Michaela, it's been years since, yes, since Michaela Light 1:03 we lost on the show. So what is this? Into the box conference? For people, I know what it is, but maybe some people listening don't well into Daniel Garcia 1:13 the box. So first of all, my name is Daniel gersim With orti solutions. We're one of the premier code fusion consulting companies out there. You've probably heard of us. We're the Box Company, cold box, command box, test box, content box, all that, and into the box. Get it into the box. It's a box theme is our annual developer conference, and so we put it on every year. Last year was the first time you moved to DC with it. Again. This year we're gonna be DC again, but it's our conference to bring together developers, engineers, enthusiasts, basically anyone who works with CO fusion box, laying any related technologies, kind of learn the best practices, networking, discuss trends, things like that, Michaela Light 1:57 all right. And so will be a lot of things about cold box and command box, and how many box things are these days? Every time I turn around, it seems there's another box, cold fusion library or tool released. Well, Daniel Garcia 2:10 the quick answer is, I don't know, and I'm gonna get made fun of for that leader by my team, in a good way, but there's a lot of boxes there are. And because not just the main core products, we also have a lot of modules and all sorts of things to get with it, I should have been more prepared. Michaela, I'm sorry Michaela Light 2:30 if you want that's okay, but there's more than 20, I Daniel Garcia 2:36 think, right there are a lot the main ones that people know are going to be cold box, command box. Love command box. We love cold box. Dude, content box, test box, stash box, all these, well, they could just go to the website and look at them, but that's less than just no

Rakshith Naresh talks about “ColdFusion 2021 Revealing Details on How it was Created” in this episode of the CF Alive Podcast, with host Michaela Light.  Show notes Today we talk about some of the challenges the Adobe CF team overcomed with corona virus lockdowns In India and the complexities of implementing multi-cloud and containers which are totally new features for ColdFusion.  CF 2021 new features Game-changing release for the next decade Cloud Easy cloud coding - even less lines of code than Node.js cloud Multi-cloud support Microservices Why? More efficient scaling apps Easier REST CF Image size and load 80%+ better Huge engineering task achieved  New master runtime to do this Command-line installer (GUI optional) Custom runtimes New Language features IIFE (Immediately Invokable Function Expressions) Lambda Rest and spread operators Parallelism Destructing assignment Identity operator Dynamic switchcase Iterator support Java integration Performance Way faster than CF 11 or CF 2016 End of Life:  CF11 already in 2019, CF 2016 in April 2021 Security Separate security team inside Adobe 3rd party vendor security certification All team devs certified in security coding best practices SSO SAML  Backward compatible  Old CFML code runs fine CF still works great on dedicated servers (not just cloud) CF admin All settings are scriptable Why the change from CF 2020 to CF 2021 name Because released at end of year Next release code name announced Testing it out Free development version  CommandBox is the fastest way to download and install  When will the first hot fixes come out? This was release last week Questions from CFers From thread https://www.facebook.com/groups/CFprogrammers/permalink/10157911453630036/  IDE support - had used it for many years and migrated to other languages and frameworks due to IDE support (one of the major factors.) I believe that a new version of CF Builder was announced at CF Summit last week - due to release in the first half of 2021. I will clarify in the interview. Thanks for the question! PS have you checked out the free VSCode - it has EXCELLENT CFML support extensions. New version of CF Builder built on VSCode Front End tools What are improvements is Adobe doing in competition with Angular, React and Vue.js? how does CF 2021 work better with these front end technologies than CF 2018 did? These are front-end frameworks and CF is server side. Both are independent of each other and can not be each other's competition. You can easily connect any front end framework with server side CF with rest calls which CF already supports. JavaScript better data type preservation Easier REST coding Possible future auto generation of REST services Licensing SaaS I'm good with the license price but for 2020 they attempted to collect a license for EACH site (application) we hosted on a single server and we moved to Lucee. We would love to use ACF (as we had since v 3.5) but their license change nearly bankrupted us. Pay for EACH SITE??? where does it say that in the licensing? See detailed response and discussion at https://community.adobe.com/t5/coldfusion/adobe-coldfusion-license-bait-and-switch-for-saas-companies/td-p/10614494?page=1  “Yesterday we had a call with the Coldfusion Technical Marketing Manager who sincerely apologized for the experience we have had the past several months.  By the end of the conversation, our position that we are not a service bureau and should not be subject to a custom agreement was accepted by Adobe, and we are able to continue to use the perpetual licenses we currently have.  If others experience something similar to what we did, you may contact adobecoldfusion@adobe.

Luis Majano and Brad Wood talk about “BoxLang modern JVM language that runs CFML code (new CFML engine and much more)” in this episode of ColdFusion Alive Podcast with host Michaela Light. “…BX is the acronym we use a lot like our file extensions are analogous to the cold fusion file extensions. So a CFM file, we call that bxm For box Lang markup, CMS, which Lucy six had his support for, which is cold fusion script”. https://youtu.be/T59ElgfjuY8 Show notes What is BoxLang? A new language for the JVM that includes CFML Inspired by cool CF, Groovy, Rust, Go, PHP etc Compiles into Java byte code, just like CF A new language for 2024 and beyond Not just targeting web server - see below for all runtime targets 7 MB core Tidy and lightweight core Super fast start up time in 100-200ms ACF core 120 to 300 MB  Lucee core 20 to 120 - 300 MB Node 80 MB Add on modules for different target runtimes Similar in ideas to ACF and Lucee packages Target runtimes Web Server Miniserver Serverless Jakarta Android Web assembly  Command line use Modules are designed from the start vs separated out as in ACF or Lucee Using tight Java libraries that are different from ACF or Lucee libraries Drastic architecture differences No OSGi copies See below for what OSGi is MVP for this language Created to be extensive in the core from the start Not a monolith Super strict on 3rd party JARs added to the core due to features in the modern JDK Oracle improvements in Java language and JVM Java 21 or higher only Other JVM that are based on Oracle JVM 21 or higher Fixes old syntax and function naming inconsistencies from CFML backwards compatible Has two parsers Antler parser library for BoxLang code 100% legacy CFML code via transpiler AST = Abstract Syntax Tree This is what compiles to Java byte code Linting and code quality metric tool and VS-code extension IntelliSense and semantics of the language. Open source AST so easy to extend and hook into it. In-line debugger is built in with scope introspection Can innovate in BoxLang language without breaking legacy CFML Transpiling Dynamic and can continue to edit legacy CFML code Or one-time translate to BoxLang language (BX) Can you translate back from BoxLang to CMFL? Not currently and technically it can be done - it is open source The syntax is very close to CFML script and tags Why bx vs cf script Not tag first language - it is script first then adds components / class (aka tag) What is it really? JVM  100% interoperable with Java No bridge like ACF or Lucee Extend from Java classes Import Java classes Framework capabilities built into BoxLang Event-driven programming Event listeners and extension is built-in Cache engine built-in vs added on Can talk to Redis and Couchbase Async and parallel programming  Built into the core from Java vs adding in Quartz Java library to do this Easy unit testing of tasks Keep the CFML productivities of RAD coding BoxLang templating language Like Groovy GSP Most modern JVM language  More modern than ACF, Lucee OR all other JVM languages such as Groovy, Clojure, Kotlin, Rust etc Super dynamic language with built-in dynamic concepts from the modern Java engine vs a 3rd party library Comparison chart to other languages? Coming in future Why are most modern languages similar in appearance? Common programming metaphors over time are used with similar syntax. But under the hood, they are different engines Tooling IDE Community Is ACF or Lucee embedded in BoxLang? No ACF is closed source Lucee - separate development. Chinese wall separation of BoxLang development. Can see the full source code edit history in GitHub which shows it is not a fork from Lucee What about QA on the language? 6000 automated tests in GitHub Why did you create it? A lot of work to make a new compiler etc Alternatives not taken Suggest features to ACF Tried. Too radical a change Have done for years. They have their own limitations. Tickets exist for these feature requests Pull requests to Lucee for a fork Looked at this for several months  Lack of docs from the lead of the Lucee open-source project Major architecture differences with a fresh start Tickets exist for these features for years New JVM language without the emotional baggage of taggy CF Fast release cycles Weekly release cycles Lucee monthly releases ACF annual release plus as needed hotfixes  CI process to immediate deployment CommandBox can run different versions of BoxLang, just like it does for ACF and Lucee What are you looking forward to at CF Summit? Seeing other CFer Teaching REST class Ok to ask questions on the side and let’s respect Adobe CF conference is focused on ACF.  Addendum - What is OSGi OSGi, or Open Service Gateway Initiative, is a Java framework that allows developers to create and deploy modular software programs and libraries. It's based on a set of specifications that define a component system for Java, and includes a standard for building modular components called bundles.  Here are some benefits of OSGi:  Loose coupling OSGi focuses on loose coupling of functions, which allows for modular functionalities that can be easily moved between source codes. Dynamic component model OSGi implements a dynamic component model that allows applications to be remotely installed, started, stopped, updated, and uninstalled without requiring a restart.  Microkernel architecture OSGi utilizes the concepts of a microkernel architecture, also known as a plug-in architecture.  Reusable components OSGi allows developers to create applications from smaller, reusable, and collaborative components.  The OSGi Alliance was originally responsible for managing the OSGi framework, but in early 2021 the Eclipse Foundation took over the OSGi specification.    Mentioned in this episode TeraTech’s BoxLang overview article  BoxLang Download - free download and paid options, plus lots of language info BoxLang Full source code repo on GitHub plus docs and 1000s of test cases Try BoxLang - similar to TryCF site to try out BoxLang code without having to install it first BoxLang book - full docs and examples to get you going fast.  Listen to the Audio Bio Luis Majano Luis Majano is a Computer Engineer who has been developing and designing software systems since 2000. During economic instability and civil war, he was born in San Salvador, El Salvador, in the late 70s. He lived in El Salvador until 1995 and then moved to Miami, Florida, where he completed his Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering at Florida International University. He is the CEO of Ortus Solutions, a consulting firm specializing in web development, BoxLang, Java development, and open-source professional services. He is the creator of ColdBox, ContentBox, CommandBox, WireBox, TestBox, LogBox, and anything "Box," and he contributes to over 250 open-source projects. He has a passion for learning and mentoring developers so they can succeed with sustainable software practices and the usage and development of open-source software. You can read his blog at www.luismajano.com Luis is passionate about Jesus, tennis, golf, volleyball, and anything electronic. Random Author Facts: He played volleyball in the Salvadorean National Team at the tender age of 17 His favorite books are The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit (Geek!) His first computer was a Texas Instruments TI-99 that his parents gave him in 1986. After some time digesting his very first BASIC book, he had written his own tic-tac-toe game at the age of 9. (Extra geek!) He has a geek love for circuits, microcontrollers, and overall embedded systems. He has, as of late, become a fan of organic gardening. Links Luis Majano | LinkedIn Twitter  Ortus Solutions   Brad Wood Brad grew up in southern Missouri and after high school majored in Computer Science with a music minor at MidAmerica Nazarene University (Olathe, KS). Today he lives in Kansas City with his wife and three girls. Brad enjoys all sorts of international food and the great outdoors. Brad has been programming ColdFusion since around 2002 and has used every version of CF since 4.5. He is a software engineer at Ortus Solutions, lead developer of CommandBox CLI, and open source contributor. Links CFML Slack Box Channel Box Team Slack Channel Brad's Website Brad Wood | LinkedIn Twitter Ortus Community Forum Techempower Nightly Builds Interview transcript Michaela Light 01:10 Hey, welcome back to the show. We're here on sea of life with two mega geniuses of cold fusion, Luis majano and Brad wood at water solutions. They're joining us actively Spain and from Kansas, so and I'm right now in Austin, Texas, so we're quite spread out here, but we're here today to talk about box Lang, the new cold fusion engine that is joins the stable of cold fusion engines, of Adobe cold fusion and Lucy, and it's now an alternative to that, which I think, and I'll tell you why I think it's really great thing to have for the Cold Fusion community later. But I'm going to let Luis and Brad talk about that. But before I do if you don't know who Luis is, he is the founder of all his solutions. He's behind a lot of those box products, cold box, you know, wire box, you name it. Box. It's got a box in it. He's probably had his hands in it, except for command box, which Brad.

Mark Takata talks about “All About Adobe ColdFusion 2023 (Part 2: PDF, CCS, SSO, perf, security)” in this episode of ColdFusion Alive Podcast with host Michaela Light. “…So we decided to build this thing called CCS central configuration server. And it runs at the command line, basically, and allows you to control your servers from a central location.”. https://youtu.be/n_PNO4jYOuE Show notes Enhanced HTML-to-PDF Conversion New HTML-to-PDF conversion engine Supports new CSS features for pixel perfect PDFs Imbed audio, video and SVG Old tags features for manipulation of PDFs and forms etc still work Increased file size limit by x100 Optional future features eg DBX merge / header engine New PDF Engine and Library Updates Updates several libraries, including Java, Solr, and Hibernate More secure Runs faster Central Configuration Server (CCS) Simpler management of multiple ColdFusion instances Undo changes “Young” feature, UX a bit hard to set up, easy to use once set up. SSO CF Admin Integration (SAML/LDAP) Users can log in using their corporate credentials with SSO (Single Sign On) Pin point access to parts of CF Admin Groups support Performance optimizations to the ColdFusion engine. ACF 2023 came with Java 17 update which broke some security issues Cause initial slower in first release Was speed up with hotfixes.  Future improvements in ACF 2024 Enhanced security features and protocols. SSO Java 17 Protect logs Integration with new technologies and frameworks. Updated libraries used by CF Improved support for cloud platforms and services. Developer tools and IDE enhancements. Accessibility improvements. Security, Stability, RAD and performance Bug fixes and stability enhancements. 200+ bug fixes 500+ for ACF 2024 Christmas holidays bug bash in JIRA https://tracker.adobe.com/  for public bug reporting Annual release cycle and ACF 2024 beta Features fully defined and beta for show at CF Summit West (Las Vegas) in October 2024 Better keep up with changing tech eg AI Why are you proud to use CF? He built his entire career on CF Has professional used 13 other languages too and always comes back to CF Can explain why CF compared to other programming languages RAD - fast prototyping CF is growing More CF jobs Hack and code in CFML 40 lessons Junior devs now asking about CF Easier to learn esp for anyone knows JavaScript Modern ecosystem WWIT to make CF more alive this year? TryCF Mark’s learning resources - ask him CF Community Talk about CF a local dev meetup Education CF Summit East announcements coming up What are you looking forward to at CF Summit East? https://www.carahsoft.com/learn/event/50994-adobe-coldfusion-summit-east-2024  April 24th, 2024 Reston VA, on the metro, near Dulles airport CF product manager Charvi Dhoot will be ther Free and free breakfast and lunch CF certification training April 23rd $99 Mark’s CF Summit talk on PDF all features CF Summit Online too https://adobe-coldfusion-online-summit-2024.attendease.com/ Happing now Smaller and more intimate event where you can talk with more other CFers and Adobe dev team.  Dedicated conference space. Mentioned in this episode 063 Scaling Your ColdFusion Applications (Clusters, Containers and Load Tips) with Mike Collins 110 CommandBox Workflow Magic (modules to speed up CF development), with Brad Wood 044 Let’s get GraphQL! (Smart API access from CFML), with Mark Drew 120 How is CFML Speed vs Other Languages? (Hint: really fast!), with Brad Wood Listen to the Audio Bio Mark Takata Senior ColdFusion Technical Evangelist Mark Takata is Adobe’s Senior Technical Evangelist for ColdFusion. With more than 25 years of experience in the tech industry, Mark brings a deep knowledge of programming, design, and his love for mentorship to this role, where he is the main touchpoint for the CF community. Links Mark Takata | LinkedIn CFML slack channel [email protected]  Interview transcript Michaela Light 1:34 So I think we should move on to PDFs because a lot of enterprises you know, need to produce PDFs, either reports or, you know, other cute PDF stuff. And there's two major enhancements here. First of all, how you can create pixel perfect PDFs, which sound very sexy, particularly if you're producing things like tax forms or other forms that must be absolutely perfect. And then I think you did some under the hood stuff too. So tell us about what the you know, you've got this HTML to PDF version feature Mark Takata 2:08 All right. So in fact, all of those things are all coming from the same location, which is the new engine that we put in, the old engine that we had in there was really not brought up to date very much, or very often over the years, it had gotten a little bit long in the tooth, it still worked fine for the things that it did. But things like HTML, CSS, they kind of moved on without it. And so it didn't support things like, you know, CSS Grid, or Flexbox, or all of these new features that allow you to really position things exactly the way that you want them. So to make these pixel perfect pages, say that sometimes fast, you needed to do all sorts of stupid web tricks, right? And it was frustrating and annoying. And I was one of those people I made so many reports, I lost track years and years ago. And you know, you had to do these silly little things like add a pixel here. And then why didn't the pixel to make it so that this line lined up? Right? It was just annoying. And to be fair, every reporting system on the planet that I've ever used had this problem. So this was not necessarily anything new. But you know, we felt that we could do better. So this new engine improves all of those things. So now when you output something, it looks the same in the PDF as it looks on your screen in the browser. Pixel Perfect. Oh, I don't hear you. Michaela Light 3:35 I muted myself, I was shocked, I was so shocked, I had to meet myself. No, but that's great that it can look the same in the browser as as in the PDF, and that makes doing creating PDFs so much easier. Because, yeah, and all your tricks and all your designers to to make it look great. On the webpage, Mark Takata 3:58 I actually had a really, there was a really neat use case that I saw that I had never thought of and you mentioned tax forms, and government forms and things like that, which are super important. I know, you know, most of the government uses ColdFusion Sure, everyone knows that, you know, Social Security Administration, and NSA, all those guys use it. But this one company was so excited about this feature, because the thing that they do is they actually will get invoices. So you know, people buy stuff from them, they'll get an invoice and the invoice is something went wrong, right? Somebody ordered 20 reams of paper, but the invoice said 21 or whatever. And they had to regenerate the invoice but because it was they did work with the government, they had to alter the the invoice that was coming if or something along those lines, it needed to be exactly the same as the invoice because they had it recorded. And then they were going to add this as a new version. And it had to like match up. So they were able to use this engine to generate an identical pixel perfect copy of the old version with just the change that they needed, the number of the invoices, the price or whatever. And it worked seamlessly out of the box first time, and they were just blown away. I mean, like that was they had been waiting for this forever. They tried like other external PDF generators, and no one else was quite able to do it this way. But here, it's a tag, it's it's enough PDF, you create your HTML, the way you want it to look, boom, it outputs to, to what you need. So yeah, that's, that's a really big deal. It also added a bunch of support for things like you can embed audio and video that's new, and really cool. It doesn't work. If you print it, though, just know. I tried really hard to get him to do that. But, um, and it also supports SVG. Which, as you might know, SVG is scalable, scalable vector graphics. And that, that allows you to have like things like logos, or photographs, or pictures or architectural diagrams, or whatever. And you can scale them to nearly any size. And they're used by a lot of people in a lot of different industries, and we just have not had any kind of support for them at all. Now we do. And again, it's it's about pixel perfection, right? Like, because those are, you know, if you're familiar with vector graphics, they don't have pixels, they describe the size of the lines, the width of the lines, the alignment of the lines to each other, all of that. So you can scale it to the size of a building or, you know, the size of something you'd print on a pen. Yeah, and it should still work across both of them. Michaela Light 6:44 So those and you still have all the the old tanks for you know, manipulating PDFs merging different files into one PDF or PDF forms or, yeah, Read more   Michaela Light is the host of the CF Alive Podcast and has interviewed more than 100 ColdFusion experts. In each interview, she asks "What Would It Take to make CF more alive this year?" The answers still inspire her to continue to write and interview new speakers. Michaela has been programming in ColdFusion for more than 20 years. She founded TeraTech in 1989. The company specializes in ColdFusion application development, security and optimization. She has also founded the CFUnited Conference and runs the annual State of the CF Union Survey.   Join the CF Alive revolution Discover how we can all make CF more alive, modern and secure this year.

Mark Takata talks about “All About Adobe ColdFusion 2023 (Part 1: containers, GCP, GraphQL, JWT)” in this episode of ColdFusion Alive Podcast with host Michaela Light. “…So we support Google's version of Pub Sub. And it's fairly simple. You know, you've got a you've got someone creating a message. You've got a subscriber that you can create to listen to that message, messages of contact message that I gaze at It just have, you know, timestamps and things like that”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1XLGUoRTX0 Show notes In this episode, we look at all the Adobe ColdFusion 2023 new features with the Adobe CF evangelist, Mark Takata.  Modular, Secure, and Containerized Approach Adobe ColdFusion 2023 offers a modular and containerized way to build applications run across multiple cloud providers or on-premises without the need to rewrite your application.  Future proofing your apps to future cloud tech changes. CF compiles to Java Even can run CF on Steam Deck (Linux game box) Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Services Integration The new version enhances project efficiency through seamless integration with GCP services like  Cloud Storage buckets (all levels) Doc versioning, aging / retention PubSub. - MQ - app messaging Firestore A NoSQL database Like AWS Dynamo but easier to use Access rights definable in CF admin or via code. Great docs Can use any other GCP features as APIs using CFHTTP Authentication is easy Including Google AI models such as Bard and Gemini  Databases: MS-SQL, MySQL BigQuery VS Code extensions to help write this code Cool for more scaleable and modern CF apps! (Multi-Cloud support was added in ACF 2018 ACF 2021 already covers Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS cloud features. For doc storage and MQ features one tag Authentication is handled the same For NoSQL separate tags as features so different syntax GraphQL Support What is GraphQL?  GraphQL is a query language for APIs and a runtime for fulfilling those queries with your existing data. GraphQL provides a complete and understandable description of the data in your API, gives clients the power to ask for exactly what they need and nothing more, makes it easier to evolve APIs over time, and enables powerful developer tools. It is Open source (The GraphQL Foundation) Ahead of the curve More efficient data retrieval and manipulation.  Make complex data queries and updates with fewer requests Improved the performance and code flexibility. ACF 2023 provides native GraphQL Query Support Direct consuming of GraphQL endpoints Future - serving GraphQL too JSON Web Tokens (JWT) JSON is Structured Text data - more compact than XML. JWP secures your JSON that you are passing around or saving to prevent man in the middle or injection hacker attacks.  ACF 2023 has built-in support for JWTs enhanced the security of your CF app   Mentioned in this episode 063 Scaling Your ColdFusion Applications (Clusters, Containers and Load Tips) with Mike Collins 110 CommandBox Workflow Magic (modules to speed up CF development), with Brad Wood 044 Let’s get GraphQL! (Smart API access from CFML), with Mark Drew 120 How is CFML Speed vs Other Languages? (Hint: really fast!), with Brad Wood Listen to the Audio Bio Mark Takata Senior ColdFusion Technical Evangelist Mark Takata is Adobe’s Senior Technical Evangelist for ColdFusion. With more than 25 years of experience in the tech industry, Mark brings a deep knowledge of programming, design, and his love for mentorship to this role, where he is the main touchpoint for the CF community. Links Mark Takata | LinkedIn CFML slack channel [email protected]  Interview transcript Michaela Light 0:01 Welcome back to the show. I'm here with Mark Tatar Cocker, would I make a mince meter? You're nearly close. How do you say Mr. Takata? The cutter sounds very precise when you say He is the senior ColdFusion evangelist for Adobe. And he knows a lot about ColdFusion 2023, which is good because that's the subject of today's episode, we're going to look at all the cool features that got added in to 2023 that you may not be aware of at home. So we'll be talking about containerization and the Google Cloud platform integration graph, QL, JSON Web Tokens, cool PDF enhancements, the centralized server admin, stuff, ss, O single sign on, and also the whole revamp of the PDF engine that happened so and a whole bunch of other things. I haven't got time to fit into 30 seconds promo there. So welcome, Mark. Mark Takata 1:06 Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. Always a pleasure to see you and be on be on your podcast. It's good to see amps. Michaela Light 1:14 Absolutely. It's great to see you. So I got your title on you're actually senior technical evangelist. Mark Takata 1:21 I am I am that was a new I got I got an upgrade. Yeah, Michaela Light 1:26 Basically means you go around to customers cold fusion and meet them online, meet him at conferences new. Tell them about what wonderful in confusion. And I think you also kind of do a little bit the other way you listen to people and pass stuff back to correct Mark Takata 1:42 It. And that I'm that herb and that connector between the community and the internal folks. You know, I say the things in meetings internally that maybe we don't want to hear or we don't hear very often. So I'm, I'm that voice from the community to try it out. I mean, you know, it's, that's my job, it's my job to be that voice, whether it's positive or negative, we need to hear what's coming from the community. And then the other way back is, you know, I communicate stuff from the internal folks back out to the community about changes, things that are coming up, talking about, you know, support issues, things like that. So I cover the gamut. I work with engineering, product support, sales, everybody is sort of math, I guess. Michaela Light 2:27 And you're also a ColdFusion. Developer. I used to do cold fusion development University California at Davis. I think I remember right? Mark Takata 2:35 Yeah. A lot. Yeah. I've worked in cold fusion for over 25 years, and worked at UC Davis, UC ANR. Did CF, both of those did CF at a company called line tech, plus another like 13 Other languages across a multitude of different companies. Michaela Light 2:54 You have a perfect, perfect person to be the evangelist for cold fusion? I think so. Mark Takata 2:59 I think I think so. But hopefully others do too. Michaela Light 3:03 Yes. So let's start talking about containerization. Yeah, that's something a lot of people are interested in and have been doing for a while. But what does Adobe ColdFusion add to that? was added new on earlier versions. Read more   Michaela Light is the host of the CF Alive Podcast and has interviewed more than 100 ColdFusion experts. In each interview, she asks "What Would It Take to make CF more alive this year?" The answers still inspire her to continue to write and interview new speakers. Michaela has been programming in ColdFusion for more than 20 years. She founded TeraTech in 1989. The company specializes in ColdFusion application development, security and optimization. She has also founded the CFUnited Conference and runs the annual State of the CF Union Survey.   Join the CF Alive revolution Discover how we can all make CF more alive, modern and secure this year. Join other ColdFusion developers and managers in the CF Alive Inner Circle today. Get early access to the CF Alive book and videos Be part of a new movement for improving CF's perception in the world. Contribute to the CF Alive revolution Connect with other CF developers and managers There is no cost to membership.