Tom Peer

One of the reasons I was first drawn to ColdFusion was the built-in functionality for such things as sending e-mail, making HTTP requests, FTP uploads - all the myriad subsidiary functions you inevitably find yourself using when you build and manage large sites. Content has to be downloaded from here, uploaded to there, and e-mailed to thousands of users every day. Using only standard ColdFusion functionality keeps things neat and easy to support. And for all the warnings about not running an SMTP server on the same machine as your Web server, I'm sure many developers have a site running somewhere that's doing exactly that and working extremely well. I also suspect many developers have pushed things a little too far and found that nothing soaks up resources quite like a... (more)

JavaScript Without the Headaches

Coding ColdFusion and coding JavaScript are about as far apart on the productivity spectrum as it's possible to be. CF tags are neat, easy to read, tolerant, and fun to write. JavaScript is none of that. It has all the drawbacks of traditional languages, with the added disadvantage of sitting somewhat awkwardly within the HTML document model. Anything but the most trivial JavaScript is di... (more)

Thinking Outside the Table PART 1

A two-part series looks at techniques for shifting workload away from the application server onto the database by using "extra" database tables. Most ColdFusion programmers understand that when it comes to bulk inserting into a database, it isn't good practice to loop over text files one line at a time with a . However, when faced with the realities of a data feed that needs prepr... (more)

Thinking Outside the Table PART 2

A two-part series looks at techniques for shifting workload away from the application server and onto the database by using "extra" database tables. It's just an average search - three full text indexes, ten subselects on many-to-many joins, and a bit of Pythagoras - to find results within 2km using latitude and longitude. It's the sort of query that makes your database give up just think... (more)

Building SQL Front Ends with Article Manager

Given the number of applications available for developing database front ends, it might seem strange that the most popular method of doing it is using HTML and an application server. It's become apparent, however, that the Web offers something in terms of simplicity and familiarity that users value more than the added functionality that dedicated packages can bring. No doubt their bosses ... (more)