Data Manager by Steve Bryant
A couple of weeks ago at the Nashvile CFUG Steve Bryant presented on his Data Manager product. It is a set of CFCs that helps abstract your database layer, reducing the amount of SQL you have to write. It also has a nice feature known as Synchronize Database Structure. This allows you to generate an XML schema that represents your tables and fields. Using this, you can then easily load that schema into a new database. The new database does not have to be the same product either. For example, you can easily take the tables from a MS-SQL db and port the structure over to MySQL. It does not do the data itself, but Steve does have a separate tool for that purpose.
This morning I had a use for such table structure copying. I didn't have SQL admin access to just run a SQL file, but the CF Datasource priviledge can create tables. So I pointed Steve's Data Manager at my local db, which had the needed tables and generated the XML that represents those tables. Then I uploaded that XML to the server, used Data Manager's loadXML() function and it created the tables without a hitch (and in the blink of an eye, I might add).
Very nice Steve. You can see the presentation via a recorded Acrobat Connect Presentation (see link on NCFUG web site).
CF Online Meetup - I won a Fusion Debug license!
Big thanks to Steven Erat, Charlie Arehart and the folks at Fusion Reactor for last week's CF Online Meetup. Charlie gave a great overview of Fusion Debug's capabilities. If you aren't familiar with Fusion Debug, check out the website. A couple of weeks ago I downloaded the trial and played around, but now I have to really dig in and learn how to use it. And if you aren't familiar with the CF Online Meetup group, check their site out.
Denver CFUG example files
See the link below for the files I created at last night's Denver CFUG. As they are now, you'll need ColdSpring installed to run index2.cfm. You can simply uncomment out the 3 lines in the PersonService.cfc init function to revert back to the non-ColdSpring version. Then the index.cfm file should work.<br /><br />These files are similar to the Person Address example I did back in May.<br /><br />Thanks to all those who came, asked good questions and helped troubleshoot my errors (again, the errors were on purpose and meant to be a way to help those attending learn). :)
Denver CFUG tonight: Beans, DAOs, Service Layers & ColdSpring
I meant to blog this earlier, but I will be presenting at the Denver CFUG tonight. It starts at 6:30, but I probably won't be on until about 7:30. I'm hoping to cover quite a bit regarding Beans, DAOs, Service layers and ColdSpring. It is quite ambitious, but will hopefully get some people interested and more familiar with all of the above. It will definitely be very code-centric because I haven't even made any slides.
The best part is that there will be pizza and cookies. So come one, come all to the greatest show at the University of Denver. There are already more than 30 people RSVP'd, so it seems there must be a bit of interest in the topic at hand.
See you there.
Denver CFUG in July
I'll be giving a presentation at the July Denver CF User Group. There I will cover how I created and used the Service, DAO and Bean CFCs from my blog post last week or so. This will be my first speaking engagement on anything CF related so I'm excited. So if you are in the area, I encourage you to come on down. I would also recommend coming to the June meeting at which Rob Rusher will give an introduction to CFCs talk. I plan to go to that so I can see where he leaves off and pick up from there.
For more info, go to the Denver CFUG Web Site.