coldspring

Report · May 17, 2006

anyone using coldspring? what's the concensus so far on how stable it is,
how useful, etc? increasing productivity, lending itself to better testing
of coldfusion apps, etc?

anyone finding it's just not worth the learning curve?

all opinions most welcome.

Report · May 19, 2006

Marc E wrote:
> anyone using coldspring? what's the concensus so far on how stable it is,
> how useful, etc? increasing productivity, lending itself to better testing
> of coldfusion apps, etc?
>
> anyone finding it's just not worth the learning curve?
>
> all opinions most welcome.
>
>

I'm using ColdSpring on several applications and absolutely love it.
Even though it's still pre-1.0 I've had no problems with stability. I
use it in conjunction with Mach-II. Here's some general opinions on it
from my blog:
http://mattwoodward.com/blog/index.cfm?commentID=212
http://mattwoodward.com/blog/index.cfm?commentID=215

Regarding your comment about lending itself to better testing of CF
apps, ColdSpring isn't a testing framework. Not sure if that's what you
meant.

Learning curve is actually pretty small--once you get the hang of what
it does, it just does its job and does it darn well.

Matt

--
Matt Woodward
mpwoodward@gmail.com
Adobe Community Expert - ColdFusion

Report · May 19, 2006

not really sure what i meant by the testing. i know, pretty nebulous.
must've been drinking.

here's what i'm wondering. with java, spring is gold. hundred times better
than struts, and doesn't seem to be on a mission to make everything super
complicated, which i always thought was the biggest problem with struts.
over-java-izing it, if you follow me. Spring is much more sensible.

but one of the things that Spring and other java frameworks attempt to solve
is database handling, either b/c the "plumbing" of a java database
connection is a pain in the butt, or because they want to remove sql
entirely, via object-relational mapping, or whatever. i could do without the
hibernate stuff, but Spring definitely makes db access almost ColdFusion
easy (not quite, but almost). But with coldfusion, that's not a problem
that needs to be solved. DB connectivity is braindead simple, which I like.

My worry about some of these frameworks is that they make easy stuff
complicated. some of the people on my team would latch on instantly. but for
some, they'd have a really hard time. i mean, it's bad enough when half of
your configuation is stored in the DB and you're used to just searching in
code for what you need to fix. but to add onto that parameters and such into
xml files, and that would seem to make things even more complicated.
So...have you found that to be true at all? for a bunch of guys who've been
doing straight old CF for 5 years, how would the framework "fit", as it
were?

thanks matt. good talk.

"mpwoodward *ACE*" <mpwoodward@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:e4kdi4$rsd$1@forums.macromedia.com...
> Marc E wrote:
>> anyone using coldspring? what's the concensus so far on how stable it is,
>> how useful, etc? increasing productivity, lending itself to better
>> testing of coldfusion apps, etc?
>>
>> anyone finding it's just not worth the learning curve?
>>
>> all opinions most welcome.
>
> I'm using ColdSpring on several applications and absolutely love it. Even
> though it's still pre-1.0 I've had no problems with stability. I use it
> in conjunction with Mach-II. Here's some general opinions on it from my
> blog:
> http://mattwoodward.com/blog/index.cfm?commentID=212
> http://mattwoodward.com/blog/index.cfm?commentID=215
>
> Regarding your comment about lending itself to better testing of CF apps,
> ColdSpring isn't a testing framework. Not sure if that's what you meant.
>
> Learning curve is actually pretty small--once you get the hang of what it
> does, it just does its job and does it darn well.
>
> Matt
>
> --
> Matt Woodward
> mpwoodward@gmail.com
> Adobe Community Expert - ColdFusion

Report · May 25, 2006

Marc E wrote:
> but one of the things that Spring and other java frameworks attempt to solve
> is database handling, either b/c the "plumbing" of a java database
> connection is a pain in the butt, or because they want to remove sql
> entirely, via object-relational mapping, or whatever. i could do without the
> hibernate stuff, but Spring definitely makes db access almost ColdFusion
> easy (not quite, but almost). But with coldfusion, that's not a problem
> that needs to be solved. DB connectivity is braindead simple, which I like.

ColdSpring doesn't involve database stuff at all. The functionality of
ColdSpring is limited to the Inversion of Control (IoC)/Dependency
Injection capabilities of Spring and that's it. It doesn't do ORM.

> My worry about some of these frameworks is that they make easy stuff
> complicated. some of the people on my team would latch on instantly. but for
> some, they'd have a really hard time. i mean, it's bad enough when half of
> your configuation is stored in the DB and you're used to just searching in
> code for what you need to fix. but to add onto that parameters and such into
> xml files, and that would seem to make things even more complicated.
> So...have you found that to be true at all? for a bunch of guys who've been
> doing straight old CF for 5 years, how would the framework "fit", as it
> were?

What Spring does for you is gives you a declarative way to configure
your object relationships, which even in a moderately complex
application is WAY better than having to manage all the dependencies
yourself. And thankfully ColdSpring is pretty darn easy to learn. In
my opinion it absolutely makes managing your model 100% easier and it
well worth the small amount of effort it takes to learn. CF 5
developers are likely going to have a bit of a learning curve with
making the move to OO anyway--that's going to be the big roadblock, not
a framework like ColdSpring. Once they get OO they'll get ColdSpring,
and it can actually make things a bit easier because they don't have to
worry about nested dependency headaches in the object model.

Matt
--
Matt Woodward
mpwoodward@gmail.com
Adobe Community Expert - ColdFusion