In this issue of ColdFusion conference and training news: * Fusetalk Forum on CFUNITED! * CFLive - Hal Helms Thursday 12:30pm EST via breeze * Special Thanks to CFDynamics * Only 10 days left on timely bird price - ends 3/31/06 * Interview with Jeff Peters "XML, XPath, and XSLT" * Interview with Simon Horwith "BOF: Celebrity Death Match"
CFUNITED is the premier ColdFusion Conference near Washington DC 6/28-7/1/06 (Four whole days!) Check out speakers and topics at http://www.cfunited.com/ - Michael Smith TeraTech, Inc "It is simply the premier CF conference, with excellent training by CF gurus. Anyone working in CF can go there and meet others who can help you with your current projects or give you new ideas to tuck away for future projects. I stumbled upon CFUnited for the first time last year, and went without any idea of what it would be like. It was so fantastic, I had to go again this year for the advanced CF track!" - Judy P. (previous year Attendee) Have 3 years of CF and love helping other developers? http://www.teratech.com/index.cfm?go=About.JobDetail&JobID=7 Conference and training news **************************** * Upcoming TeraTech classes Cost $59 - $349 see http://www.teratech.com/training/ for more details and registration CF101 - Welcome to ColdFusion May 2 2006 CF102 - Intro to ColdFusion May 9 2006 CF201 - Intermediate ColdFusion May 16 2006 FB101 - Intro to Fusebox May 23 2006 FB201 - Intermediate Fusebox Jun 6 2006 * Pre-conference classes Cost $449 see http://www.cfunited.com/classes06.cfm for more details and registration Register before March 31st and enter to win a free 8 GB memory stick! Location: Bethesda North Marriott and Conference Center CU210 Leader of the Pack (strategies for building better software) - Simon Horwith - Monday 6/26 CU211 Fundamentals of Relational Database - Kurtis D. Leatham - Monday 6/26 CU212 ColdFusion Server Administration: JRun J2EE Deployment - Adam Wayne Lehman - Monday 6/26 CU213 Testing ColdFusion - John Paul Ashenfelter - Monday 6/26 CU214 Ajax intensive for ColdFusion Developers - Rob Gonda - Tuesday 6/27 CU215 XML, XPath, and XSLT for ColdFusion Developers - Jeff Peters - Tuesday 6/27 CU216 Domain Modeling - Hal Helms - Tuesday 6/27 CU217 Beyond Basic SQL for CF - Nate Nelson - Tuesday 6/27 CFUNITED NEWS! * The First 750 registrations will get our cool new laptop book bag, courtesy of our platinum and gold sponsors! Don't settle for the tote, register today! See photo at http://www.cfunited.com/bag.cfm * Fusetalk Forum now on CFUNITED! Start talking to other register conference attendees today. If you are registered as an attendee, login into http://www.cfunited.com/login.cfm Discuss topics, arrange ride sharing or meeting at the event. Thanks Fusetalk for letting CFUNITED use your cool message board! See http://www.fusetalk.com/ for more info. -- Our Common Interest page is coming soon too! * 320 people are already registered for CFUNITED-06 and the main hotel is full! (That is more people than the same time last year). * We have an over flow hotel: Bethesda Marriott (Located about 1.5 miles from the conference center - there will be a shuttle to the conference center all day) 5151 Pooks Hill Road Bethesda MD 20814 To make reservations call: 1.800.228.9290 Use the group code: CFU See http://www.cfunited.com/travel.cfm for more details. *CFLive Hear CFUNITED speakers from your office via breeze talks every Thursday 12:30pm - 1pm EST. Learn new tips and ask questions live. Hal Helms on DuckTyping in CFCs, Design Patterns, Variables & Conditions Thu, Mar 23, 2006 at 12:30 PM US/Eastern http://coldfusion.meetup.com/17/events/4874948/ Future talks 3/30/06 Jeremy Kadlec SQL Server tips 4/6/06 Sean Corfield Managing CFCs with Factories, Objects and Persistence 4/13/06 John Paul Ashenfelter Agile Programming 4/20/06 Simeon Bateman CFEclipse 5/4/06 Steve Ritler Farcry CMS 5/11/06 Maxim Porges Secrets of Top Notch Teams * www.cfunited.com is hosted by CFDynamics. CFDynamics is known as a leader in the ColdFusion Web hosting community in providing reliable and powerful hosting. With hosting customers across the globe, we know and understand the standards that developers have come to expect in a host. Our expert administrators fine-tune our servers to provide ideal efficiency and reliability as well as top-notch performance. CFDynamics is your partner in web hosting and we will do what it takes to keep your site running smoothly. To learn more about our Web hosting services: http://www.cfdynamics.com * Only 3 months until CFUNITED (96 days). * Only 10 days left on timely bird price - ends Friday 3/31/06 * Can't afford to come for 4 days? Or can't take time off work during the week? Come to our Saturday only CFUNITED event. * Full time students and umemployed programmers substantial discounts available - email liz (at) teratech.com for your discount code. ****************************************************** And now our CFUNITED spotlight interview. Michael Smith: Today's CFUnited Preconference Class topic is "XML, XPath, and XSLT". I'm talking with Jeff Peters, who will be teaching the class. Thanks for joining me, Jeff. Tell me a little bit about the class. Jeff Peters: Thanks, Michael. It's hard to believe CFUnited is almost upon us again! I'm really looking forward to the conference and the class. The title is somewhat self-explanatory--we'll be spending the day learning about how to use XML and its related technologies in CFML. MS: That sounds as though it will be very useful. I see XML everywhere these days. JP: You're right. We use XML in Web applications all the time, whether we know it or not. Being able to take advantage of it can be a very powerful addition to your toolkit. XML has become the standard of choice for exchanging data over the web. Everywhere you look from BLOGS, Web services, Business to Business data transfers, that is just off the top of my head. Now with many database vendors providing XML support to automatically mark up the resident data it is becoming even more widely accepted and easy to use. So with all of these XML "packets" flying around we must be able to use this data in the many ways required by our customers. MS: So I assume you'll be covering XML, XPath, and XSLT, yes? JP: Very astute, Michael. Yes, we'll be starting from the beginning with what XML is, some basic rules that govern XML, and how to manipulate XML objects in CFML. Then we'll be moving into using XPath syntax, in particular with respect to the XmlSearch() function in CFML, to extract data from an XML dataset. Finally, we'll learn XSL and how to use XSL stylesheets to transform XML data into just about anything we want. MS: So what exactly is XSLT? JP: XSLT is a way to transform XML without writing traditional code. XSLT stands for XSL Transformations and Extensible Stylesheet Language. And XSL is a language for creating a style sheet for XML (Extensible Markup Language). You can think of XSL as CSS for XML! XSL specifies the styling of an XML document by using XSLT to describe how the document is transformed into another XML document that uses the formatting vocabulary. One thing I would like to clarify here, Michael, is that XSLT is considered a language. It has variables, looping, conditional logic and more. That is what makes XSLT so powerful. You use this power to transform the XML data you are working with into what you need it to be. Whereas, CSS provides you a means for "styling" but it limited by the fact that there is no inherent logic, as there is in XSLT. MS: So what can you do with it? JP: While many applications provide ways to manipulate XML data, including ColdFusion with the XML tags that come with CFMX, XSLT gives developers the freedom and flexibility to do what they need with this XML structured data without being confined to "tags" or "functions" written by software vendors. If you will be working with XML data at all in the future, and it looks as though you will, XSLT is a great tool to keep in the toolbox and pull out when the whatever else you may be using just won't give you the functionality that you need. MS: All that in one day? That's a lot of information. JP: Well, it sounds like a huge amount, but the three topics all go hand-in-hand, so as we move along we'll be reinforcing all the concepts all day. MS: Will there be hands-on work? JP: Yes, a lot of it. My hope is that everyone will come equipped with a laptop and a subject area they want to use while exploring XML. We'll be doing lots of practical work and exercises, and helping each other along as well. Students should be ready to roll up their sleeves! MS: Very good. I understand you'll be using your new book on XML as the text. JP: That's right. "ColdFusion XML Objects" has just been released by Proton Arts; we'll be using it in class in addition to students' custom projects. Each student gets to take their copy home, too. See http://www.protonarts.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Books.showBoo kDept for this books and other books on Fusebox, Lists and other cool topics! MS: Great! I'm delighted to see that you have a new book out, and that the CFUnited class will be the first to use it for a text. JP: Thanks, Michael. I think it will be a great class, so I hope we get a lot of curious students who are ready to explore. I'll see you in June. MS: I will check out the class description at http://www.cfunited.com/classes06.cfm and see you in June. ******************************************** Michael Smith: This time we are talking with Simon Horwith about his CFUNITED-06 BOF session "Celebrity Death Match". So why should a developer come to your session Simon? Simon Horwith: To see Hal get the living cr*p kicked out of him. Ha! I'm just kidding, of course. I've got the utmost respect for Hal, both as a speaker and teacher as well as developer. There's been a lot of talk in the community about the pros and cons of frameworks - Hal's very well known for his pioneering efforts and support of frameworks and I'm... well, not. I guess the politically correct thing to say is that I'm one of the more outspoken opponents of frameworks. People should come to this session because, though I'm sure it will be very fun, it will also be very educational. This is an opportunity to hear expert opinions from both sides of the framework debate in an interactive format. Audience participation will be encouraged, as long as it doesn't involve rotten vegetables. MS: Ok, I will be there! Bricks are ok to bring right? SH: No, the only objects allowed will be those in CFCs! MS: Groan! Well I am glad that this BOF (Birds of Feather) session is in the evening when folks will be relaxing, maybe with a beer in hand - just the way a good boxing match, I mean serious debate should be. You can see more interviews at http://www.cfunited.com/interviews.cfm CFUNITED-06 is Wed 6/28/06 - Sat 7/1/06 in Bethesda MD, just outside Washington DC. It costs $749 until 3/31/06 then $849. For more information on CFUNITED see http://www.cfunited.com/ --- Celebrity Death Match ************************* Frameworks--Who Needs Them? Why do some people swear by them while others swear at them? What's all the fuss about? Hal Helms is the pioneer of the popular Mach-II and Fusebox frameworks, and Simon Horwith has, after several outspoken public comments on the subject, managed to become the unofficial opponent of framework use. This is a steel cage match. Audience participation is encouraged, the fight... err...umm... debate, will be limited to 10 rounds, and there will be no hitting below the belt (we'll see about that). But remember, at the end: There Can Be Only OneĀ Speaker Bio: Simon Horwith is Chief Information Officer at AboutWeb, LLC., a Washington DC based company, specializes in staff augmentation, consulting, and training. He is the Editor-in-Chief of ColdFusion Developer's Journal, the only magazine in print devoted exclusively to ColdFusion. Simon has been using ColdFusion since version 1.5 and is a Macromedia Certified Master Instructor and Member of Team Macromedia. He specializes in ColdFusion application architecture, including architecting applications that integrate with Java, Flash, Flex, and a myriad of other technologies. In addition to presenting at CFUGs and conferences around the world, he has also been a contributing author of several books and technical papers. You can read his blog at www.horwith.com. ************************** * Speakers include top names like Simon Horwith, Charlie Arehart, Hal Helms, Michael Dinowitz, Ray Camden, Ben Forta and many more respected CF authors and presenters. * Great tracks: * Bootcamp - Basic ColdFusion and Flash topics * Advanced - Advanced ColdFusion topics * Manager/Empowered - Fusebox and Project management topics * Flex/RIA - Flash, Flex and other technologies integrated with CF topics * Accessibility / usability - section 508, CSS and disabled access * Deployment/Platform - tuning, install issues, OS, picking a database * Included in your full conference registration is the following: * Attendence for 4 days (6/28/2006-7/1/2006) * Keynote and General Sessions * All conference sessions including repeat sessions on Saturday * Entrance to Expo Area * Networking Events * Badge and Badge holder with bar scan code * Free Lunch for each show day (Dinner is not included) * Access to all presentations after the event, including all the recordings. * Promotional bag with materials including show guide, CD, coupons, etc. * Opportunity to participate in all raffle drawings * Can't stay 4 days Wed - Sat? Optional 3-day and Saturday only packages available too. Saturday will consist of repeats the most popular sessions from the week - something many attendees asked for last year! * The early bird price of $649 for CFUNITED-06 ends 1/31/06. Price expires 4-day 3-day Saturday-only Early Bird 01/31/2006 $649 $549 $249 Timely Bird 03/31/2006 $749 $649 $299 Regular 06/16/2006 $849 $749 $349 Late 06/28/2006 $949 $849 $399 Door 06/29/2006 $1049 $949 $449 Save up to $400 by registering now! Register today at http://www.cfunited.com/ -- Michael Smith, TeraTech Inc - Tools for Programmers(tm) TeraTech voted Best Consulting Service by CFDJ readers! CF/ASP Web, VB, Math, Access programming tools and consulting 405 E Gude Dr Ste 207, Rockville MD 20850 USA Please check out http://www.teratech.com/ - email mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED], or call us for more information; in the USA at 1-800-447-9120, +1-301-424-3903 International, Fax 301-762-8185 Thanks! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Message: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=i:4:235990 Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/threads.cfm/4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=s:4 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.4 Donations & Support: http://www.houseoffusion.com/tiny.cfm/54
