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Big End of Year Meeting! 12/8/2009

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:27:00 GMT

Date and Time:

December 8, 2009 from 6:30pm - 9:30pm

Agenda:
Somehow another year has rolled around and it is time for the last DFWCFUG meeting for 2009. It has been a great year for CFML developers with the release of ColdFusion 9, big surges in the open source community with Open BlueDragon and Railo becoming real players in the CFML world, and locally as the job availabilities in DFW have been plentiful. We are going to send the year off with a bang. Here is what is on deck for the night:

We will be continuing our ongoing series as we explore the Head First Design Patterns (HFDP) book and give illustrations about how the concepts fit into our world as CFML developers.

HFDP4CF - Chapter 4: The Factory Pattern - If you recall, Andrew Leaf gave us a real world illustration earlier this year about how the factory pattern is being leveraged in his daily work. In this presentation, he will be walking through the topic in the HFDP book and covering their examples using ColdFusion.

HFDP4CF - Chapter 5: The Singleton Pattern - Dave Shuck will be covering the chapter explaining how the singleton pattern can be used in the CFML world. As with the other chapters in our series, Dave will be demonstrating the samples using ColdFusion.

Remember that if you would like to read ahead a bit, you can see much of the HFDP book for free on Google Books: http://books.google.com/books?id=LjJcCnNf92kC&printsec=frontcover

GIVEAWAYS!

As a year-end wrapup, we will have a number of giveaways. We will be giving away one software license for any Adobe project worth up to $2000 to one attendee (CF9 Standard definitely applies!). Additionally, our sponsor Paladin Consulting will be giving away electronic goodies, gift cards and more.

As always we will be meeting at the Paladin Consulting offices at Webb Chapel/635 in the ClubCorp building at 6:30. Food and drinks will be provided.

November Monthly Meeting - CFHFDP Chap 3: The Decorator Pattern

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:31:00 GMT

This meeting will be a continuation of our series: Head First Design Patterns for ColdFusion (CFHFDP). We are taking each chapter out of the HFDP book and writing ColdFusion implementations of each pattern that is covered. So far we have broken down the Strategy Pattern and the Observer Pattern. November brings us to Chapter 3 - The Decorator Pattern. Adrian Moreno will be presenting this topic as our main session of the night.

We have had some great feedback on this series, so make sure to join us as we continue. If you wish to catch up on Chapters 1 and 2, you can watch the recordings of those sessions at the links below:

Dave Shuck - CFHFDP - Chapter 1: The Strategy Pattern
http://experts.na3.acrobat.com/p50727167/

Adam Presley - CFHFDP - Chapter 2: The Observer Pattern
http://experts.na3.acrobat.com/p34878675/

The intro topic for the first hour is currently TBA as of the time of this posting. If you have a topic you would like to share, please contact Dave Shuck.

Additionally, we may be tackling 2 chapters, so if you are interested in presenting on Chap 4 - The Factory Pattern or Chap 5 - The Singleton Pattern please contact Dave Shuck.

Date and Time:

November 10, 2009 from 6:30pm - 9:30pm

Address:

Paladin Consulting, Inc.
3030 LBJ Freeway, Suite 1140
Dallas, TX 75234
google map

October Monthly Meeting - HFDP for CF Chap 2 & ColdBox

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:44:00 GMT

I just returned from a *fantastic* week at Adobe MAX, and realized that I have not made the "official" announcement for the October monthly meeting. Additionally, I we are adding to the agenda, so here goes!

First off, next Tuesday night (10/13/2009) is our regularly scheduled monthly meeting. This month, we will continue our progress in what I am coining Head First Design Patterns for CF as Adam Presley will be covering Chapter 2 - The Observer Pattern.

Secondly, I spent some time chatting with ColdBox creator Luis Majano this week. He has just released a new version of the framework, and will be in town offering ColdBox training in November. After some very gentle twisting of his arm, he agreed to repeat the session that he gave at the ColdFusion Unconference at MAX via Connect exclusively for the DFWCFUG.

In addition to these great two topics, I will be giving away a few of the extremely limited "Zombie ColdFusion" shirts that say "ColdFusion Lives!!!" They were hard to get at the conference, but I was able to sneak a few off for the group.

So, here is the schedule for the night:

6:30 - intro, open discussion, t-shirt giveaway (hint: brush up on your CF9 info)
7:00 - Luis Majano - ColdBox
8:00 - short pizza break
8:15 - Adam Presley - HFDP4CF - Chapter 2 - The Observer Pattern.

Also, I have had a number of people ask about the URL for the recording of last month's meeting in which I covered Chapter 1 of HFDP (the Strategy Pattern). If you are interested in watching this and getting up to speed, you can do so at:

Title:	DFWFUG - Head First Design Patterns for CF - Chapter 1_0
Duration:	00:38:45
URL for Viewing:	http://experts.na3.acrobat.com/p50727167/
Uploaded on:	09/08/2009 7:53 PM

I look forward to seeing you all next Tuesday!

Sept Monthly Meeting - Head First Design Patterns Chapter 1: Strategy Pattern

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 16:10:00 GMT

As was discussed at the August meeting, we will begin our new series of presentations as we walk though Head First Design Patterns in CFML. HFDP is widely regarded as a valuable resource for learning about development design patterns. Our goal for this series will be to take one chapter at a time, creating the examples in CFML, and exploring how each pattern might be useful for us as CFML developers. The plan is to send my HFDP book home with someone at each meeting, giving them the opportunity to create the presentation for the following meeting. That person will bring the book back when they present and pass it onto the next person and repeat that process until we have covered the book.

This month, Dave Shuck will be leading off with Chapter 1, which covers a general introduction of design patterns, and an exploration of the Strategy Pattern.

August 2009 monthly meeting - Design Patterns in the Real World

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:51:00 GMT

Speaker: Andrew Leaf - Unitrin Specialty

Agenda: Andrew will be presenting: Introducing design patterns in a real world scenario.

The presentation will take a real world scenario where a company has multiple systems and multiple business requirements for one application. One solution is to write an application for each scenario. Alternatively, by using the factory pattern, we can bring multiple systems and business requirements into a single application, preventing a nightmare.

Make sure to join us at 6:30. As always, food will be provided by Paladin Consulting, so come hungry!

Date and Time:

August 11, 2009 from 6:30pm - 9:30pm

Address:

Paladin Consulting, Inc.
3030 LBJ Freeway, Suite 1140
Dallas, TX 75234
Phone: (972) 783-1995
google map

July Monthly Meeting - CF9 CF-ORM by Steve Good and Advanced Illudium by Dave Shuck

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 22:31:00 GMT

Date and Time:

July 14, 2009 from 6:30pm - 9:30pm

We had to do a last minute shuffle for speakers, so please forgive the *extreme* last minute update, but we will be meeting 7/14 for our
regular monthly meeting.

On the heels of Monday's big news of public betas, Steve Good will be sharing some examples of working with CF9 with CF-ORM and a possible tie-in to Flex. Dave Shuck will also be doing a demonstration on how you can modify your Illudium CFC Generator XSL templates to make CFCs that are more flexible and tailored to your needs. Make sure to join us at 6:30 at the Paladin Consulting office.

Monthly Meeting - May 12, 2009 - Guillermo Cruz: Why programming TO the persistence layer hinders objects

Mon, 11 May 2009 14:29:00 GMT

Make sure to join us Tuesday May 12, for our monthly meeting. Guillermo Cruz will be presenting on OO application design and why programming to a the persistence layer can limit your application.

Topic Description: We will be discussing the pros and cons of abstracting the persistence layer and programming objects without the persistence layer, including the design of an object by using the Noun Phrase Analysis process of a given description for a stated application.

If time permits, Guillermo will also be covering re-factoring an already existing application and why the above process is extremely important.

We will also be discussing some BIG ColdFusion related events in the next month here in Big D! Make sure to join us at our regular meeting time of 6:30pm at the Paladin Consulting Inc. Offices. For directions, see our Meetings page.

April Monthly Meeting - Application Logic Management and Database Indexes

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 19:49:00 GMT

For our April monthly meeting, we have two presentations planned which you will find below. The meeting will start at 6:30 in the Paladin Inc offices. For meeting directions and info go to the Meetings link above.

Tom Woestman - Application Logic Management: While developing an internal travel application servicing over 14,000 trips a year, we found we needed to manage a complex web of roles and states to determine whether a particular user may perform operations such as: submit the travel request to the next approval step, cancel a travel request, send the travel request back for more information, etc. After initially creating the complex web of logic to manage this complex set of criteria, we developed an alternative approach that moved handling the logic of this from the programmer to the business analyst and made updating this logic trivial. I would like to share this approach with you and hope that you find it as useful as we do.
Robert Gatti - Database Indexes: One of the too often overlooked performance bottlenecks with database driven applications comes from either the lack of use, or the misuse of database indexes. Robert will be showing some examples of how proper database indexing can benefit your systems. The examples will be using MS SQL Server, but the principles apply to most DBMS.

I look forward to seeing you all there.

March Monthly Meeting - Tuesday March 10, 2009 - Dave Shuck on Painting Yourself Out of a Procedural Corner

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:20:00 GMT

Make sure to join us Tuesday, March 10 for our regular monthly meeting. Dave Shuck will be presenting "Painting Yourself Out of a Procedural Corner". The is a real world example of how an organically growing procedural application can become a maintenence nightmare, and how using objects and inheritance can help solve a real world problem. This is not about frameworks, or application flow, but how using business objects can lower your blood pressure!

As always, our first hour will be devoted to "intro" ColdFusion topics. the following topics are the slate for this meeting :

Stopping form spam without making your users do the work.
Using a simple bean, how to get data, set data, and return snapshots of the data.

See you there!

Adobe User Group member discount!

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:08:00 GMT

Adobe is delighted to offer the Dallas Ft. Worth ColdFusion User Group (DFWCFUG) members special pricing on Adobe software. Place your order before March 2, 2009, in order to save 20% on all Adobe products in the North America online Adobe Store.

Here are the simple steps required to get your discount:
1) Visit http://www.adobe.com/go/cspartners and fill out the form. You must enter the Association Name AUG and the Member Number 72360 when filling out the form.
2) A custom Adobe Store URL with an embedded coupon code will be e-mailed to you.
3) The custom URL can be used only one time, and only by the requester. Additional program terms and conditions are detailed at the URL referenced above.

If you have additional questions or would prefer to place your order by phone, contact Adobe at 800-585-0774.

Steve Good - Connect presentation on Flex/ColdFusion data exhange

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 16:16:00 GMT

At our January monthly meeting, Steve Good demonstrated interactivity between ColdFusion and Flex. If you recall, he had a hardware failure the day before the meeting and ended up giving a limited version of what he had prepared. Steve was generous enough to not only present that night but offered to to a re-do online.

We will be doing this presentation Sunday night at 6:30pm CST via Connect. It's always more fun to do these presentations with more people in the room for discussion, questions, etc., so count on joining us if you have an hour free between 6:30-7:30 that evening. Here are the details and the link:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Meeting Name: Steve Good - ColdFusion/Flex data exchange
Invited By: Dave Shuck
When: 02/15/2009 6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Time Zone: (GMT-06:00) Central Time (US and Canada)

To join the meeting:
http://experts.na3.acrobat.com/dfwcfug-sgood-cfflex/

February meeting 2/10/09 - Peter Farrell on ANT - Intro training topics and mini

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:32:00 GMT

Make sure to join use on Tuesday February 9 at 6:30 at our regular meeting location at the Paladin Consulting Inc office. Peter Farrell, who is perhaps best known for his work on the Mach-II framework, ColdSpring framework and formerly as one-half of the ColdFusion Weekly podcast, will be joining us remotely to offer a presentation on using ANT in your development. For those that were at the January meeting and got a small taste of ANT in the intro topic on using cfcompile, this will be a much more in depth look at the topic of automated builds.

As always we will have training topics in the first our as well. I will be updating the group on Monday with what exactly those topics will be.

Lastly, there are currently several job postings within the group. Aaron Lynch, Adrian Moreno, and Mike Jr. all have positions open within their companies. I know that at least Aaron and Adrian will be present, and have not received work back from Mike at the time of this posting. If you are looking for a position, I urge you to come that night with resume in hand. We are going to have the second conference room availble if you would like to sit and chat with these guys one-on-one about the positions. Don't forget the power of networking within our group!

As always, I am looking for volunteers for presentations on both advanced and intro topics. If you have anything at all that you would like to share, please me know.

See you at the meeting!

January monthly meeting 1/13/09 - Compiling code, securing data, Flex data transfer and more!

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 21:08:00 GMT

We will be having our first meeting of the year next Tuesday night at 6:30 @ the Paladin office.

On the agenda for the evening....

Dave Shuck will be doing a short presentation on compiling your code to java byte code for sourceless deployment, in addition to automating this process using ANT.
Derek Bumpas will be going a short presentation on best practices of securing data in your database with hashing techniques.
Steve Good will be doing a presentation on Flex interactivity with ColdFusion and demonstrating moving data back and forth between the two languages.

If time permits, we will also be reviewing another ColdFusion tutorial courtesy of Lynda.com

As always, come hungry as our meeting hosts will once again be providing dinner.

See you there!

RSVP for December monthly meeting

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:15:35 GMT

Due to the expected higher turnout for this event, we opted to make this an RSVP meeting. Please note that in order for you to win one of the raffle prizes including a $2000 limit software license from Adobe, an Amcor 3900 GPS Navigation System from our sponsors and meeting host Paladin Consulting Inc., and other giveaways, you will need to RSVP using the following form. If you have any trouble please contact Dave Shuck.

End of the year wrap-up: Matt Woodard

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:10:00 GMT

Title:	End of the year wrap-up: Matt Woodard "OO Back to Front" and mega-raffle!
Date and Time:	December 9, 2008 from 6:30pm - 8:30pm MST
Address:	3030 LBJ Freeway, Dallas, TX 75234 google map
Speakers:	Matt Woodward - Community Manager of the Mach-II framework project, member of the OpenBD steering committee.
Agenda:	First off in our training hour, Adrian Moreno and Derek Bumpas will be giving us a Max recap and tell us about their experience at the conference, cover the big announcements and fill us in on what we missed. We will also have two other training topics during that hour that have yet to be determined. Starting at 7:30 we will get a DFWCFUG "blast from the past" as former CFUG manager, Matt Woodward, will be joining us via Adobe Connect doing a presentation on "OO Back to Front". Those that have joined the group in the past two years since his departure probably better know Matt with his work as the community manager of the Mach-II project, or in his role on the steering committee for the OpenBD project. Matt does a great job breaking down OOP concepts so this is a presentation you won't want to miss. Our night will wrap up with the biggest raffle in history! OK... well... *our* history anyway. Our gracious sponsors Paladin Consulting Inc. have donated a GPS device which one lucky attendee will leave with that night. Additionally, this is the time of the year for our semi-annual Adobe software raffle in which one attendee will receive any Adobe software valued up to $2000. We will also have some Adobe swag to give away and as always, our hosts will be providing food and drinks for all. Just a couple more important notes: * Due to the number of attendees that the raffles tend to draw, I plan on setting up an RSVP so we can get an idea on the headcount ahead of time. Look for that in the next couple of days. * As you read above, we have a couple of TBD spots on the training topics. If you have a simple topic you would like to share with the group or a suggestion of something that you would like to see, please contact me! It should be a great meeting. Looking forward to seeing you all there.

November Monthly meeting 11/11/08 - Frameworks discussion w/ Mach-II and ColdBox

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 20:17:00 GMT

The topic has been in flux as we have been shifting around presentations for this meeting. As of the time of this email, we have a special guest pending as well. More to come on that soon.

As it stands at the time of this post, the November meeting will generally revolve around the usage of the Mach-II and ColdBox frameworks with some additional discussion of ColdSpring and Transfer.

We will have two sessions tonight, with Tom Woestman doing a "getting started" presentation on ColdBox. Dave Shuck will be covering a simple "getting started" application with Mach-II. Additionally, Dave will also show a sample application that makes use of ColdSpring and Transfer if time permits.

If you have been wanting to learn more about ColdFusion frameworks or have knowledge to contribute to this subject, or simply enjoy discussing all things ColdFusion, I urge you to come out!

October Meeting - Isaac Dealey on DataFacuet ORM

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:13:00 GMT

October 14th is our regular monthly meeting.

During the training/newbie hour, Dave Shuck will be doing a presentation on securing your application using CFLOGIN.

After a food break we will be joining Isaac Dealey for a webcast as he presents on his DataFaucet ORM framework specially for the DFWCFUG. Isaac is also the author of the onTap application framework and is prepared to cover some of that as well if the audience is interested.

As always, we will be meeting at 6:30 at the Paladin Consulting offices. Make sure to check the website for directions/details if this is your first meeting.

September meeting - 9/9/2008 - Steve Bryant on cf_sebForm

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Make sure to join us Tuesday September 9, 2008 for our monthly meeting. This month we will have a special guest presenter. Steve Bryant, manager of the Tulsa CFUG, will be doing a hands-on demonstration of cf_sebForm. The cf_sebForm custom tag simplifies development of simple forms. It provides a simple syntax to manage both client and server side validation, separates logic and display, and integrates with CFCs. The output is unobtrusive and skinnable. In this short presentation you will see how to use cf_sebForm to create a simple contact forms, add/edit forms, integrate with CFCs, manage validations (both client/server and business logic), upload files, and reduce spam.

Steve Bryant is the founder and current manager of the Tulsa CFUG. He has been programming ColdFusion since the 20th century and is the author of cf_sebForm, SpamFilter.cfc, and the DataMgr component set. He got his BA in Philosophy at Oklahoma State University and still has no idea how that led to a career in web development.

As always, our sponsor Paladin Consulting will be providing food and refreshments, so come hungry! For directions and specific meeting details, check our Meetings Page.

Please welcome Adrian Moreno as DFWCFUG co-manager

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:36:20 GMT

As was discussed at the July meeting, we have been directed by Adobe to name a co-manager to the group that will serve as manager in my absence and will share duties running the group. After considering a number of candidates, the decision has been made to have Adrian Moreno fill that role. He has been an active participant in the group for many year, is an active blogger, is active on many community email lists, and has been a regular presenter for our group. Please join me in welcoming him to this role.

Additionally I would like to thank all members that expressed interest in filling this role. It is obvious that we have a number of people that want to see our group continue to succeed and flourish, and I will be calling on all of you to contribute in the future.

~Dave Shuck

Next Meeting August 12 - Mark Piller: Building Flex Applications with ColdFusion

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:36:00 GMT

Make sure to join us August 12 for our regular monthly meeting. We will be starting off the evening as usual by covering some basic ColdFusion training topics during the first hour. August training topics will be:

Getting started with CFCOMPONENT
Working with XML in ColdFusion
JQuery and ColdFusion

In the second hour, Mark Piller will present on the subject of building Flex applications with ColdFusion. He is going to describe integrating an alternative approach to LiveCycle and demonstrate the benefits of the integration. The group will learn about developer productivity tools, remoting and data management concepts. Mark has been working on some exciting stuff in this space, and we are fortunate to get this opportunity!

About Mark Piller: Mark Piller is the founder and Chief Architect of Midnight Coders, an innovative and forward-thinking company specializing in RIA integration technologies, professional services and training. Mark has over 15 years of software development experience. For the past five years he has been specializing in building software infrastructure products designed to integrate Flex, Flash, and AJAX applications with a variety of backend systems, including .NET, Java, PHP, and Ruby on Rails. Mark is very passionate about ease-of-use of software and prides himself in creating technologies that clearly demonstrate that quality.