portal entry

Hi Rakshith, w00t!! I'm very glad to see another Public Beta =D Thanks!!, -Aaron

Comment by Aaron Neff

Is there a "what's new in 2018" page somewhere?

Comment by Michael Kear

Hi Guys, i don't see any arrow functions in the document. Is it coming in next beta update? Thanks -Siddiq

Comment by Siddiq Mohamed

Yes there is one https://coldfusion.adobe.com/files/2018/04/Public_Beta_Whats-new-and-changed.pdf. You might need to login to the community portal though.

Comment by amar lungare

What’s new and changed in the 2018 release of ColdFusion 1. ColdFusion (2018 release) has a new User Interface. The new interface is based on a tiled interface. We have also enriched the search experience on the Administrator portal. 2. We have removed Server Monitor. We have introduced a tool called Performance Monitoring Toolset, which is more intuitive, includes more features, and provides better visibility of your application’s performance. 3. We have made significant improvements to the core language features. Here is a brief list of the changes: a. Introduced NULL support b. Introduced closures in tags c. Introduced Asynchronous programming using Future d. Enhanced Object-Oriented Programming with the following: i. Abstract components and methods ii. Final component, method, and variable iii. Default functions in interfaces iv. Covariance e. Semi-colons are now optional in a cfscript code f. Introduced named parameters in functions g. Introduced slicing in arrays h. New operator support using name-spaces for java, webservices, dotnet com, corba, and cfc i. Introduced support for typed arrays j. Introduced string literals and support for numeric member functions k. Introduced negative indices support for arrays l. New functions- ArrayFirst, Arraylast, QueryDeleteColumn, and QueryDeleteRow 4. Enhanced CLI and introduced REPL. 5. Introduced REST Playground application for testing your REST APIs. 6. Added support for REST PATCH verb. 7. Filter fields from JSON request. 8. Enhance performance through Caching with the newly added engines: a. Memcached b. JCS c. Redis d. Using a custom cache plugin 9. New Admin APIs to support the caching engines 10. Hibernate upgraded to ver 5.2 11. New configuration settings in wsconfig tool 12. Updates to ColdFusion Builder.

Comment by amar lungare

So no Docker support? I don’t see what the new benefits are, especially without moving to modern devils delivery. Organizations are moving away from monolithic apps, to micro services running in containers. I thought 2018 was to move in that direction, yet nothing.

Comment by Thomas Case

Michael, there are two docs for you to look at (to start), both linked to from the page about the beta (https://coldfusion.adobe.com/coldfusion-2018-public-beta/, linked to from that top right banner on the portal). There, you'll see a "documentation" column to the right of the downloads. First, is the "what's new" page, which you can also just get to directly with this link (during this prerelease beta): https://coldfusion.adobe.com/files/2018/04/Public_Beta_Whats-new-and-changed.pdf. It's just a one-page overview of the 12 key new features they've chosen to highlight (there are always still more they do not). There is then what they label (currently) as "ColdFusion 2018 Documentation" (https://coldfusion.adobe.com/files/2018/04/Public-Beta_Documentation.pdf). One might reasonably miss this, presuming that was a link to the 2018 version of the complete docs, but it's not. It's really the kind of "what's new" or "release notes" that I suspect you were really seeking, and it's (in this beta) 62 pages, including screenshot of most of the major new things. There's more I'd want to say about the new docs, including using them and some improvements I'd like to say, but it started to become a long comment, so I will create it as a blog post instead.

Comment by Charlie Arehart

Arrow functions? In which document, Siddiq?

Comment by Charlie Arehart

Hi Charlie, yes Arrow functions just like lucee. not sure that was implemented in CF 2018. here is an example (bad one) queryName.each( (row) => { // do something; return row; } )

Comment by Siddiq Mohamed

download ColdFusion 2018 Documentation and i looked for it.

Comment by Siddiq Mohamed

So the answer would be, no, there's no such feature documented there (if you refer to the => aspect of your sample line of code). You speak your first comment as if you expected it to be a feature that would have been added to CF2018. Was that based on someone from Adobe telling you that it would be? If instead you're presuming that because it is in Lucee it will be added, that's not the case. In each release, each engine sometimes takes on board features added by the other (and it's gone both ways). If it's not in this release (and no one from Adobe says it will be but is just not documented), then your next step would be to file that as a feature request at tracker.adobe.com. Hope that's helpful. I'm just another reader here. I don't work for Adobe.

Comment by Charlie Arehart

Thanks Charlie and yes i did assume it would be there too bad

Comment by Siddiq Mohamed

The feature request already exists at https://tracker.adobe.com/#/view/CF-4020372 It's been marked as "To Fix" since 2015, so it seems Adobe agrees it's something to fix but have not prioritized it enough to make this release.

Comment by Kama Sama

Thomas, just to be clear, there was indeed supposed to be docker support added in CF2018, as had been announced in various events and comments leading up to it. But you're right, it's not listed there now (in the larger "what's new" document). It's also not mentioned in the "known issues" document. Curiously, there's this in the "issues fixed" document: CF-4160098 Official Adobe ColdFusion Docker images do not exist. That refers to the ticket at tracker.adobe.com, but it's only got (as of today) comments and votes from 2017 and earlier. It would indeed be helpful if they would mention the plans for Docker support (or if they have been dropped) somewhere in these docs or on this page.

Comment by Charlie Arehart

That blog entry is now created and posted here: https://coldfusion.adobe.com/2018/04/on-finding-whats-new-in-cf2018-per-the-current-state-of-the-beta-docs/

Comment by Charlie Arehart

The last I heard, the Docker images were held up on some internal issues related to licensing. If you need to deploy Adobe ColdFusion on Docker today, check out the Ortus Docker image which has been out for quite a while and supports all versions of CF. https://hub.docker.com/r/ortussolutions/commandbox/

Comment by Bradley Wood

Docker support is not specific to CF 2018. That is the reason you do not see a mention of it under what's new. Within a couple of months from now you will see official images for ColdFusion 2016 coming out. Once CF 2018 is released, we will have images for CF 2018 as well.

Comment by Rakshith Naresh

Hi Rakshith, +1 for a Windows-based ColdFusion Docker image as I don't use Linux. Thanks! -Aaron

Comment by Aaron Neff

Until there's a bug fix for https://tracker.adobe.com/#/view/CF-4198746, the whole package is completely useless. I've had to find workarounds just to keep the old sites I have left on CF up and running. Very few companies rely on running their own mail server anymore. I have absolutely ZERO intentions of forking out the cash for another version until this bug is fixed. So has it been fixed, or has mail server integration been tossed to the side in this version too?

Comment by Richard Orchard

I seem to be having trouble with the Elvis operator. Every time I encounter it in code so far, it seems to throw a null pointer reference error, see below: ================= The system has attempted to use an undefined value, which usually indicates a programming error, either in your code or some system code. Null Pointers are another name for undefined values. java.lang.NullPointerException ================= Is anyone else seeing this?

Comment by Benjamin Reid

Yes, this is a (now) known issue that has been fixed and will be corrected in the next update, according to an email from Adobe I saw elsewhere today.

Comment by Charlie Arehart

Thanks Charlie!

Comment by Benjamin Reid

With regard to Java versions: I see the ColdFusion 2018 Public Beta is currently shipping with Java 9.0.4. Given that Java 9 has already reached Public EOL in March 2018, and Java 10 is GA but due for Public EOL in September 2018 (due to both Java 9 & 10 not being classified as Long Term Support releases): what version of Java is Adobe planning on shipping ColdFusion 2018 with for the public release? Obviously Java 11 is not GA yet, but would it be correct to presume the long term plan is to offer CF2018 with Java 11? Similarly, what is the intention with regard to ColdFusion 11 & 2016: is the plan to provide updates to support Java 9/10/11, as was done previously with the transition from Java 7 to Java 8?

Comment by Benjamin Reid

Adobe have responded regarding Java versions and ColdFusion 2018. Suresh Jayaraman said: ===================== Regarding the official support for Java 10 for CF 2018 , the current plan is to support it even though we have shipped the installers with Java 9 JRE .. we are contemplating on switching to Java 10 . BTW , even the Public beta build was certified in Java 10 before release so you are safe to continue to test with Java 10 =====================

Comment by Benjamin Reid

That's great news to hear, Benjamin. Thanks. And for any who may wonder where Adobe shared that info, it was in a reply to another thread he'd opened: https://coldfusion.adobe.com/discussion/2488557/ Sadly, I can't seem to find a way to provide a direct link to the specific comment, whether via a feature in the UI or the underlying html. But interested folks can search for that quote from Adobe there.

Comment by Charlie Arehart

Installed 2018 Public Beta and while I love some of the enhancements, especially around performance and caching options -- However, the new Admin UI look-and-feel is absolutely horrible. It looks CHEAP, WIDE, GAPPY, UNBALANCED and generally unprofessional, lacks in sharpness, focus and alignment. I sincerely hope the GOLDEN release of 2018 has a much better Admin UI than this, and by "much" I mean MUCH. Furthermore, please give admins the choice to flip between the older table based column/row UI and the newer panel based UI. Please don't reinvent the UI for the sake of doing something new, make it optional, even if you choose to make it panel by default, give the Admin the option to flip it back.

Comment by Jason Caldwell

Those are strong comments ,I have to say that we are hearing something negative for the very first time post the new UI implementation as we have run this through our pre-release program , showed the same to our customers in summit 2017. While UI is subjective and everyone can have their views I strongly believe we have not just made the UI better but also improved the experience 1) finding a setting is now easy through new search 2)improved the way you edit the setting 3) admin now supports proxy 4)Schedule tasks now has status UI call back and control 5) Single page app navigation experience. Give it sometime i am hoping things would get better. thanks for taking time to express yourself

Comment by Suresh Jayaraman

Appreciate the reply. The opinion I expressed was based on 100% scale view in Safari. Once I reduced the scale to 90%, it all sync'd up and aligned. So, the only problem I see now is that that UI doesn't scale (collapse or grow) with a user's given browser width. If you correct this, then I think the UI will be quite fine indeed.

Comment by Jason Caldwell

I do have a question on Coldfusion pricing and CPU limits (licensing). Coldfusion is built on-top of free software: Tomcat, SOLR, Java, Open Office, Memcache, REDIS, etc... 99% of Coldfusion is running on Open or Free software. So, you might say, that 1% is proprietary, CFML itself, but even that is an Open Standard now. Given that developers at Adobe are merely creating an abstract layer on-top of Java/Tomcat whilst depending on numerous other free and open software projects -- how does Adobe justify an $8500 price tag? Or for that matter, 2 versions, standard and enterprise? Or for that matter restricting the number of cores/cpus, based on licensing, when Java bytecode under a JVM is doing all the work, and there's no core or cpu restrictions on Java? I often thought that for Coldfusion to survive it has to do something different with it's licensing. 1) There should be no restrictions on CPU nor in server functionality/performance. Base Coldfusion should be free or incredibly affordable to use, with licensed features as addons or plugins, ie. actual licensable products, like PDF integration, etc. Currently there are two versions, STD and ENT. While STD is clearly more affordable, it has (I believe) unreasonable limitations, such as Threading and lack of Clustering and the ability to run multiple apps, when it should have no such limitations whatsoever because the underlining java bytecode has none and the functions (you) Adobe wrote cannot be so sophisticated as to cost the end user thousands of dollars per server. I hear the rumors as we all do, that CF is dead or dying, hearing it for years, and while its not dead -- its only being kept alive by the initial investors and fanboys. I would think adobe would do much better with an affordable uncompromised Coldfusion that reaches more and more developers and competes better overall in the market with small companies rather than just catering to an established Coldfusion club.

Comment by Jason Caldwell

Per my question above, I think it important to add this link to it: http://teratech.com/state-cf-union-survey-2018-final-results/ I think it is pretty clear that Coldfusion suffers in the market space and I'm pretty certain that you can make many of those graphs (in that survey/article) much more impressive with a less greedy and restrictive model. Making it more affordable and Sane in licensing will go a long way to not only keeping CF alive, but also making it flourish amongst a whole host of other excellent free or affordable competing solutions.

Comment by Jason Caldwell

Jason, this is a debate that recurs like a fever blister with each new CF release, and while I barely have the energy to engage in it deeply myself again, still I do want to at least offer a couple of corrections to your comments. The Standard edition DOES have threading, and it DOES support "multiple applications". On the former, it's that it has a limit of 10 concurrent threads, while Enterprise has no such limit. That's not really a show-stopper for many. On the latter, are you maybe referring instead to multiple instances? Yep, that and some other things (like clustering) are held by Adobe to be distinctions of Enterprise over Std. They're a publicly held company. They're not going to just give CF (and its profits) away out of the goodness of their hearts, of course. And arguments that "they better do it before it dies" fall flat, because it still makes tens of millions in profit (not just sales) each year (as indicated by various pronouncements). And FWIW they DO offer a free version, called Express (it's not the stinky CF Express of CF4 days, but a more full-featured implementation of CF). Sadly, they DO restrict that to not being licensed for production. As we already have the free Developer edition, it really then just becomes a it of a curious implementation alternative. (And of course those wanting "free CFML" for production can find it elsewhere.) As for the argument that "it's all just built on open source anyway", well that too is not true. Sure, much of it is, but much of it is not (including things in Standard), so Adobe charges for CF because a) they are covering costs of such bundled software, b) they are covering the costs of engineering, marketing, and administration, and c) to make a profit. But mostly they charge for it because d) they can and e) people do still buy it. Kind of hard to argue too strenuously against that, though of course most prefer a party with an open vs a cash bar. Finally, the argument that it's "only being kept alive by the initial investors and fanboys" is also off-kilter. First, "the initial investors" would seemingly all have cashed out when Allaire was sold to Macromedia. But maybe you meant there are only "the folks who initially purchased CF long ago" who are still "holding it together". That's not true, either. Adobe has explained at recent conference keynotes (and occasional blog comments) how thousands of new CF licenses are sold each year--not upgrades, not maintenance, but new clients who never owned it before. So it's just not the initial users Let me note that it's also NOT just "the Federal government". I myself work with dozens of clients per week (in my CF server troubleshooting consulting), and few are Fed agencies. Some are state govs, some are higher ed, many are large corporate entities. You just aren't going to hear about them because a) it's not in their interest to promote that they use CF (any more than most would promote that they use any particular technology). And b) consultants like myself are often bound by NDAs not to announce such that we have clients as customers. I can only say (as I do each release) that things are not as dire as some want to make it out to be. Like you say, CF's death has been announced for literally decades, and yet here we are on the cusp of CF2018, the 13th major release. And as another testament to its livelihood, the Adobe CF Summit brings together a few hundred CFers each year, and there are a few other CF conferences each year, each with dozens of speakers with topics that people find compelling. So CF isn't dead. Is it mature? Sure. Could Adobe make some interesting moves as it does? Sure. And it's your prerogative to push them to consider that. I'm not discouraging it. Again I just wanted to offer some counterpoints to some oft-misstated assertions.

Comment by Charlie Arehart

Thanks Charlie for the well thought out reply. I'm a seasoned Systems Engineer for some 32+ years and program in over 10 computer languages fluently. I support very large corporations and their worldwide datacenters. In all my years of supporting, building and maintaining these systems and infrastructures, I can honestly say that I've run into CF being used in a production capacity once, maybe twice, and even then, in each case, it was one or two Enterprise licenses. I do not believe you are being completely honest in your answer, and it sounds more like a Corporate response rather than a developer's response (and I get it, you may work for Adobe, so that's all I can expect). The reason these issues come up again and again (1) if CF is dead and (2) it's pricing has a direct correlation precisely with the way Adobe has decided to price the product. Furthermore, CF development has been slow and misguided, with a lot of time wasted on Flash infrastructure carried on way beyond when it should have been, mobile app development too, that was and is all rubbish. I would say that CF 2018 and it's features should have been done at least two major releases back. I'm surrounded by hundreds of developers every day and have been since time immemorial. I was personally interested and learned CF back sometime around CF 3/4 and have kept up with it over the years more or less. I understand its feature set and what it can offer the companies I work for. But NO ONE is interested in CF. None of my Datacenters run it and if you speak any of the thousands of developers I've worked with, when CF comes up, the question is always, "CF is still around?!" or "Whats CF?" In regards to my argument that CF has almost entirely an open source foundation -- this is just absolutely true and while a small part of the overall CF package may be proprietary, there are likely hundreds of thousands of more lines of code that are open source running CF than the Libs that comprise the foundation of CF itself. If you look at that link I posted below, the Survey -- it clearly shows where Adobe can improve, and it is dramatic. If you look at any of the popular programming indexes online, CF is in most cases, no where to be found. So, yes, while you may be getting some new licenses every year, those licenses are surely coming from developers or contractors that have moved from one company using CF to another they think should be using it. It is impossible for me to understand that what you say and how it could be true any further than I've just explained it to you, simply because 99% of the devs out there think CF is dead or should be -- it is no wonder you're exhausted answering questions like that, don't blame us, blame Adobe's extremely greedy and poor marketing of this product. Look, I like CF. I want to see it thrive and I think it's a good platform. I'm actually on your side. However, I'm not on Adobe's side. They're grossly overcharging for it and packing in ways that, well, is difficult to wrap a brain around. And, again, development has been very slow -- the Flash crap just has to go completely out of the product. And the mobile app stuff, is again, nonsense -- you're just making CF try to be too many things when it should just be an excellent but a simple web engine. There is no justification for the $8500 price tag and especially given the competition and especially (and this makes my face make those cring'y expressions the most), especially when it pretty much is mostly comprised of open source stuff. So, if this message isn't reaching you, then maybe it should reach Adobe HQ. Fix CF, while you and a small group around it don't see it as dead --- EVERYONE else does and that just means Adobe has been poorly marketing and managing the product. Good luck with 2018 -- I'm playing with the Beta, but can't see myself using it even for my own company purposes at $8500/ea. Adobe HQ if you read this, make CF a single product without artificial limitations and greedy licensing, charge for it, but be reasonable and sensible. The platform isn't worth more than $1500. For the record, COBOL is still around, being used and developed too. CF has gone the way of COBOL. People knew about it, but don't know much about it now, or care to and are often surprised to learn it's still being developed and used. Wake up.

Comment by Jason Caldwell

No, Jason. I do NOT work for Adobe and I am being absolutely 100% HONEST in my reply, without equivocation or hesitation. So do you mean you think I'm lying in saying I help dozens of clients per week? I didn't even remember to point out how many of those are indeed DIFFERENT clients each week, so it's about 100 per year, and about one new one per week. I absolutely stand by my counter-assertion that there are far more people using CF than is asserted by those who say (as you are implying) that "hardly anyone uses it anymore". That's just not true. And not only do I not work for Adobe: I am not even a partner. I don't get any of my consulting from Adobe. People find me on the web, because I put out there information and lessons learned about troubleshooting, and by word of mouth from satisfied customers, I'm sure. I don't do any sort of advertisement or even SEO stuff. I don't say that as even a humble brag: I say it as all the more a testament to how I can't be reaching "everyone" who uses CF--I'd only reach those taking the time to look for answers, and of those who find my stuff, and of those who want to ask for help, and of those who get approval from their higher-ups to do so. I suspect I serve less than 10% of the CF customer base, from assessing various things. (But in God's good providence it's all enough for me to make a living, focusing only on that.) BTW, Adobe has admitted their mistakes in the focus on mobile and some other things. They've repeated at at the last few CF conferences I've attended the past couple of years. So what you're calling them on the carpet for there is not new info for them. And don't think I'm only being a sycophant for Adobe. I've made blog posts (here and on my own site) and comments here where I call them to task as well (including just last week, https://coldfusion.adobe.com/2018/05/upgrade-path-to-coldfusion-2018-release/#comment-4709). And I even said at the end of my last comment to you, "Could Adobe make some [more] interesting moves as it [matures[? Sure." Anyway, moving to your next point, just because you (or anyone reading this) can say that they "don't see anyone using it nor do any devs I talk to", well that doesn't mean "no one does". We all know about echo chambers in the current cultural moment. And you may say that I am in one. OK, but I am in the one which sees thousands of organizations using CF, whether judged from the conferences, the various outlets for knowledge sharing (social media, forums, slack, facebook CF pages) or again from my own direct interaction with folks. You can say you don't see them. Again, that's your prerogative. It doesn't make you right and me wrong. Sorry, it just doesn't. (And my "exhaustion" as you put it is from having to hear and respond to these same tedious arguments every couple of years.) Again, I'm not saying all's great. I'm not saying CF doesn't have things that could be improved (some vastly). I'm not saying that the CF team has guided it perfectly. None of that changes the fact that there is a base of people that use it, just like there are for many mature technologies. I like you have been in IT for 32+ years, so I've seen this before. I just don't choose to decry it like others do. And I was about to say, "If you don't like the party, why not just leave. No need to make a boisterous exit. No need to paint those of us remaining (and reasonably happy with it) as Luddites and idiots (or worse, liars)." But then you say you "like CF" and am "on my side", just "not Adobe's". Well, that's an interesting way to put things, but ok. So like I said in closing, "it’s your prerogative to push them to consider [changes]. I’m not discouraging it. Again I just wanted to offer some counterpoints to some oft-misstated assertions." To wit, you keep talking about CF costing 8500 for what should cost about 1500. Well, that's the very cost of CF Standard (1499). I countered some of your assertions about what was "not in Standard", but you have not replied to them. Clearly plenty of people go with just Standard and are satisfied. (In my own client base of about 1000 clients the past 10 years, it's been about a 50/50 split.) Finally, if CF indeed has gone or may go "the way of Cobol", so what? There are clearly organizations using it (and some choosing to stay with it, not just held ransom) and people out there supporting it (http://cobolcowboys.com, for instance). There are even organizations modernizing it (http://ibmsystemsmag.com/mainframe/trends/modernization/devops-z14-applications/ and https://www.microfocus.com/products/cobol-development/, for example). And in just the first google search about it, here is even a newcomer to the language praising it (https://devops.com/the-beauty-of-the-cobol-programming-language-v2/)https://devops.com/the-beauty-of-the-cobol-programming-language-v2/. And that's stinky old "dead for 30 years" Cobol. So if you're really on "my side", you can continue to call for change. Just please do it with less accusation (I don't need to "wake up" any more than I need to be more "completely honest"), and perhaps with a more open mind. I'm trying to keep one, in helping people like you frame your arguments. Let's each put our facts on the table and let people decide (if indeed many will even see our little tussle here). But you clarify that are hoping Adobe sees what you have to say. This is their blog, so they should. Whether you will get a response is another question. I'm just saying you're not really offering much that they've not heard before, so I wouldn't hold out much hope of a response. BTW, if you do decide to offer more thoughts, it may be best for you to create a new reply at the bottom, rather than a reply to this. They stupid threaded interface not only makes it hard for "the most recent" replies to be seen, but the column gets smaller and smaller each time. Some good news there is that the CF team has said publicly that they will be revisiting the blog and this portal after the CF2018 release, to try to improve many such things.

Comment by Charlie Arehart

So this is all great stuff (new features, a new...Admin UI?), but the proverbial elephant in the room here (and it looks like someone took a stab at it above with the Docker comments)...Gartner reported last year that over 40% of web workflows are going to serverless environments by 2021 (and we can assume much, much higher 5 years from now). Aka AWS Lambda, etc...so panel-like Admin UI aside, what is Adobe doing to future proof the CF language? Obviously having NULL support is important, but if we can't run any CFML in a modern environment because of licensing issues or what not, it would seem like these updates wont actually benefit anyone within the next half a decade. Is anyone working on a lightweight Java wrapper that can be utilized in a Lambda environment to execute CFML via serverless infrastructure? I'd give my first child for such a thing :).

Comment by John Egbert

From what I gather in your rather emotional reply is that your job is supporting CF? While my job is supporting large datacenters and global corporate infrastructures and EVERYTHING that entails. Since you're immersed in CF only daily, it only makes sense that you see it being used a lot, especially if you believe have 10% of their customer base. You're point-of-view is from a tunnel, whereas mine is from 10,000 feet up. I work with all kinds of tech, servers, languages, devs and engineers. I have the unique experience of being in it all, you might say. So, when I tell you that very few are using CF, it's true, like it not, wether you see it or not. If more people were using CF, I would know about because I'm boots on the ground, waist deep in it, everywhere, everyday for over 3 decades. When I said I don't believe you're "being completely honest", I wasn't calling you liar per-se, but implying a BIAS, which you've confirmed in your reply above. In regards to "So what?" about CF going the way of COBAL. Really? Of course COBAL is still being developed, that was my point -- it's still being developed, but people are surprised by that. It's an important point because there's no reason for CF to go that route, to be the ancient and forgotten web framework 99% of the internet doesn't care about anymore. I make these jarring points to enlighten and inform those at Adobe to make better choices about their product so that MORE people can enjoy it, like it and use it. You are correct for stating the obvious, the STD version is $1500, but if you read my comments before that, I said more or less, that the two tear model is stupid and what I meant in that reply was the product should just be ONE and no more than $1500. Ie. no STD vs ENT nonsense. The features they're selling as "Enterprise" are inherent and available for FREE in the underling open-source layer that CF is running on-top of (Java/Tomcat). Those features are simply crippled in the the STD edition and made into "bonus" features (which again, are free and available in the underling framework/tech). I just don't understand how you can defend an $8500 price tag? Not only do we have the ridiculous pricing, but then companies are also expected to pay for the Servers (hardware) and the OS licenses upon which CF runs. The $8500 price tag quickly exceeds $10,000 per install. You've got to be mad to this this is OK. Furthermore, there is absolutely nothing wrong with Adobe making CF open-source. In-fact, not only will the product reach more people/companies, but Adobe can profit and so will you, by charging for optional support. This is the Open Business Model. You give a product away for free so that the masses use it, and a percentage of those people and companies will pay for ongoing support of that platform, meanwhile a large developer community is built around it and plugins can be made and sold for it. However, I don't think asking $1500 either, is unreasonable per seat. Asking $8500 is however. CF offers some nice functionality and in some cases can be rapid to develop in, but when it comes to larger more complex websites, the notion of "rapid" falls flat on it's face. Other languages have many libraries and plugins that are free or otherwise that are just as "rapid" to develop in. Look, it's a new world (from our three decades of experience). New younger developers and engineers are coming online everyday and the further Adobe keeps CF from these people (money is distance), the further CF will fall into decline, it may not even see the longevity and success COBOL has. These young people are being taught in Java, C#, PHP, Python and other new and trendy languages/frameworks. I guess we're just going to have to agree to disagree.

Comment by Jason Caldwell

One final thought (from my reply below) and in the name of Science. If you're responsible for supporting 10% of Adobe's CF customer base as you claim, then math'ing that out would compute to an average of 10 consultants like you supporting 100% of Adobe's CF customers. Think about that ! By your suggestion alone, you absolutely prove my point. Contrast that with the thousands of individuals, companies, books and universities alike that support .NET, Java, PHP, Python, etc. 10% would be a staggering number. But in your case, it would only take 10 consults like you, to support 100% of Adobe's CF client base. Ultimately it doesn't matter what you think, regardless if you're immersed in the product daily, or even what Adobe thinks. If you grow tiresome of answering "Is CF dead" questions, its a RED-FLAG and you should looking to Adobe, not the people asking the question, to get answers why so many people feel this way. After-all, your business depends on it.

Comment by Jason Caldwell

Indeed, Jason (that we will just have to agree to disagree).

Comment by Charlie Arehart

And yes, Jason, there are about 10 companies that provide the kind of CF server troubleshooting I do. I list them in fact, on my cf411.com site, specifically http://www.cf411.com/cftrouble. Now, if you are trying to assert that by that I'm saying there are only 10 companies doing CF *DEVELOPMENT*, well that is where you have made a mistake. I suspect there are dozens. Indeed, there are so many I don't even try to keep track of them all. I do keep a list of some of them, they ones I come across fairly often in the community, in next category. But I know there are many, many more who just are not active in the community, just doing heads-down work supporting whatever clients they have--just as it is in about any tech field. Of course, all this is conjecture (yours and mine). We can't know the absolute numbers for any of this, as it's too big to grasp and there are simply no means to track them.

Comment by Charlie Arehart

John, looked into running CFML on Lamda but never finished, mostly because no one was paying me and it looked like it would take some learning on my part. That said, I'm pretty sure you could do it fairly easily with CommandBox. It just that it would necessarily be Adobe CF... ahem. I'm not sure if a JVM lang is really the best choice for Lambda tho where you literally pay per the ms. Even a CLI start time of 2 to 5 seconds (which CommandBox has) wouldn't work well $$-wise for running thousands of tasks that only take a few milliseconds to complete. That said, I'm always looking to make CF faster and smaller so maybe there will be hope for this in the future!

Comment by Bradley Wood