South of Shasta

My CF.Objective Schedule

Thu, 17 May 2012 14:10:00 -0700

I'm in Minneapolis! The weather is great, the hotel is killer, the gym lives up to my expectations, and the wifi has been pretty solid thus far. Looking forward to starting the CF.Objective conference, learning a ton, seeing friends, doing some networking, and generally running myself ragged for the next few days. (I'm staying an extra day to visit with friends and check out a few local music things.)

Here's my weak attempt at trying to schedule the next few days...they're are so many good presentations, it's really hard to pick:

Wednesday night:
Reception

Thursday-day:

The TDD List
Maintaining Healthy ColdFusion Servers
Online Payments Made Easy(er)...though I might swap that for Enterprise JavaScript Applications
How Mura CMS will save CFML (and you can too)
Putting it All Together - Building Applications with HTML/JavaScript/CSS

Thursday night:

The website just says "Community Events"...that sounds incredibly suspicious...I'm in!
Lightning Talk Extravaganza (again very suspicious...I'm in!)
CF Hour live broadcast

Friday-day:

Getting closure on Closures
Ten Steps to Move your Use of Caching Beyond The Basics....though I may swap that for Application Security: Myth or Fact
Building HTML5 games with PhoneGap, JavaScript and CSS3
Getting Started with Mobile Development
How to Pimp Out Your Model
Slatwall: An Open Source ColdFusion eCommerce Platform

Friday night:

Runtime Expectations broadcast / dinner
Evening session...either The Importance of a Modular CMS or CFML Frameworks
Evening session 2...too many choices! My head may explode trying to pick one!

Saturday:

Prepping Now for an HTML RIA Future
Authentication Made Easy Using Twitter, Facebook, Google, and more
PhoneGap: Yeah it's that easy...
Creating Enterprise Dashboards with ColdFusion...or maybe Bootstrap: A developers best friend
Intro to Model View Controllers (Without a Framework)
Closing Remarks

I'll do my best to post notes about the presentations, though with so much going on that may not get completed for a few days...

-Nolan

CF.Objective and CF Hour Podcast

Tue, 15 May 2012 15:44:00 -0700

Whew! Things are finally starting to return to normal for me around here! Schedules and resources have been rather crazy lately, to say the least! And among other side-effects of that, I haven't been blogging much lately. In an effort to quickly fix that...

I was interviewed for the latest episode of the CF Hour Podcast, along with Denard Springle, Mark Mandel, and Ryan Anklam. We all talked about the presentations will be giving at CF.Objective later this week...though somehow the conversation turned to beer...I'll have to figure out how that happened.

My preso is "Intro to Model View Controllers Without a Framework". If you haven't registered yet, you still have a day or so to reserve a space and attend the conference!

I'll do my best to blog various bits of the conference, though I hear the gym in this hotel is pretty amazing. If I don't respond to email for the next few days, check the gym. I'll be the guy playing air-guitar while he's on the treadmill.

-nolan

Tuesday at SACCFUG - Intro to FW/1

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 02:59:00 -0700

Tuesday at the Sacramento ColdFusion User Group, I'll be giving an introduction to the FW/1 framework. We'll also have some new t-shirts to give away and we'll do our annual SOFTWARE RAFFLE too! Must be present to win! More details at www.saccfug.org. See you there! -nolan

Naming conventions for database columns

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 04:45:00 -0700

Earlier I was listening to the CFHour Podcast #124 (by the way, this is a great show for anyone wanting to keep up on the ColdFusion community). This particular episode discussed (among other things) databases and naming conventions for columns. The main point that was brought up was prefixing columns with the table name, and when developers should/shouldn't do this. The example given (which is probably the most common scenario) was the primary key "ID" column -- i.e. naming the column "TableNameID", rather than just "ID". The discussion of "why/when to do this?" went back and forth, and it pretty much boiled down to a few things: 1. Personal preference on naming columns -- some people use "ID", some use "TableNameID".
2. It adds to the readability of the code. But WHY? In a complex query, you're probably aliasing the tables anyway, so you'd end up with "TableAlias.ID", which is just as readable (assuming you use an appropriate name for your table alias).
3. It's redundant. If I'm in the Users table, I know that "ID" is referring to the ID of a User.
4. But what about, say, in a CFLoop? If the code contains "#ID#", it's not clear which table ID is being looped over (which is true...but really the problem in this case is, the developer was lazy and didn't scope the variable -- "queryName.ID" being much more readable than "ID").
Personally (unless there is some other shop standard to which I must adhere), I use "TableNamePK" for my primary keys, and "TableNameFK" for my foreign keys. Here's why: I've run into several projects where (because of business requirements), I'll have tables that look something like so: tblManufacturing --
ManufacturingID
Name
VendorID
PartnerID
OrderModuleID
Let's say that VendorID, PartnerID are NOT foreign keys to other tables (but OrderModuleID is), they are just columns that meet a business requirement (maybe this is data that's entered manually by an employee). Maybe "VendorID" is an industry standard term for that piece of data, predating our application by years or even decades. If I rename "VendorID" and "ParnterID" to avoid this confusion (which is only confusing to me, the developer, as the business units will never see the primary keys), it would have slowed down communication among the team members ("when you say VendorID, you actually mean the column I've renamed to VendorAccessCode", etc). So we can't really rename these "ID" columns that are based on business rules, but since the business folks don't really care about the primary key column, we can use a different naming convention for that, without slowing down anyone. Looking at it from the other side, which "ID columns" represent foreign keys to other tables? Which columns should have constraints applied to them? By just looking at this table, I have no way of answering that. This could slow down development, causing developers and DBAs to go looking for foreign key relationships that don't exist. But what if the table were named like so: tblManufacturing --
ManufacturingPK
Name
VendorID
PartnerID
OrderModuleFK
Now, by just looking, which column is the Primary Key? And which ones are Foreign Keys to other tables? And which ones store some sort of 'ID' that is part of a business rule, but isn't actually a foreign key? By using "PK" and "FK", it's much more clear which types of data are stored in the columns, and I've typed the exact same number of characters...so nobody is allowed to complain about this being too much typing. ;) Whichever convention you pick, you should stick to it consistently throughout the application (unless you have a really good reason for breaking it). I've had to write complex recursive algorithms before that traversed down a hierarchial database of roughly 500 tables, and needed to be able to "predict" the name of the next primary key in the tree. Because I used the same naming convention for every table in the database, the algorithm worked throughout the entire system. If there was no rhyme or reason to how things were named, I would have had to provide some sort of "map", listing each table and its primary key column (yet another thing to maintain, as well as a possible point of failure in the application). Additionally, I was able to write regex patterns to find foreign keys, by searching for any column name ending with "FK", which also wouldn't have worked if I'd stuck with the "ID" convention for everything. -nolan

Adding Meta Data to an Entire Site in Mura

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:33:00 -0700

This is mostly for my own reference...isn't that how most blog posts start these days? :) As some of you know, when I'm not busy with consulting, I play music in a variety of projects. Earlier I needed to update the meta "keywords" and "description" for my band's website (currently running Mura 5.5) -- the meta data is the same for every page across the site, so I was looking for one site-wide place where I can make such a change. My first thought was "there's probably a site-wide setting for that in the Mura Admin", but after poking around for a few minutes, that didn't seem to be the case. I suppose it's possible that the meta data is hard-coded into the site theme (though unlikely), so let's check there. Mura has a site-specific directory where it stores the themes, like so: /[sitename]/includes/themes/[theme name] ...and underneath there, you'll find a variety of files composing that theme (css, images, some CF templates for headers/footers, etc). Among these is html_head.cfm which contains all the things you'd typically find in the section of a website, and in there we find: <meta name="description" content="#HTMLEditFormat($.getMetaDesc())#" />
<meta name="keywords" content="#HTMLEditFormat($.getMetaKeywords())#" /> ....Okay, so the meta data isn't hard-coded, and there isn't a site-wide setting for it either. After a bit more searching, I found this link discussing "converting a third-party theme to a Mura theme" (not the most obvious of places for info about meta data, but hey it contains the answers I needed). About halfway down the page is this blurb:

Notes: Unless you specify otherwise on a specific page, Meta data content cascades down to the content nodes below. This means you don't have to set the meta data content on every page unless you specifically want to.

So let's to back to Mura Site Manager...my site content is laid out like so: As you can see, everything is below "Home", so let's click on "Home", then go to "Meta Data" and add the new keywords and description. Success! So although the answer I needed was listed as part of "converting third-party themes", the answer applies to pretty much any theme in Mura, regardless of where it came from. As long as the theme html_head.cfm file includes these lines: <meta name="description" content="#HTMLEditFormat($.getMetaDesc())#" />
<meta name="keywords" content="#HTMLEditFormat($.getMetaKeywords())#" />...this should work just fine.

-Nolan

Beginning Adventures in CentOS: Installing Apache and MySQL

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 01:37:00 -0700

Here it is, the first of the promised "Beginning Adventures with CentOS" blog posts... I started a new project yesterday. This particular client is running CentOS 5.5 32-bit, Tomcat 5.7, Apache, and a combination of MySQL and SQL Server. One of my first tasks is to build a VMWare image that mirrors that (or gets as close as possible without losing a lot of time) so we have a playground for some development work. I've installed Ubuntu on a desktop once or twice, but that was at least a year ago, and the Ubuntu installer did all the work for me really (which I greatly appreciated). So let's see how different installing CentOS in VMWare is from that experience... I downloaded the DVD ISOs (2 discs total) for CentOS Making a new guest in VMWare is easy enough. And with that "express install" option, VMWare automagically installed CentOS for me! Wow, that was even easier than the Unbuntu install I did last year! :) Firefox comes pre-installed too, so it's easy to tell if I have a working internet connection inside this new VM -- Firefox pop up and sees Google.com, so that's taken care of too. So now we need to move onto the "real" stuff -- installing Apache, MySQL, and Tomcat... Let's open Firefox again and go to "http://localhost"....instead of the default "Apache is running" web page, I get "Problem loading page". So either Apache isn't installed, or it's just not running. Fortunately CentOS has some similarities to Windows, and there is a "Services" screen in CentOS, just like in Windows. The Apache service is actually named "httpd" (which kind of baffles me, but that's a separate discussion), and we do indeed have a service called "httpd" there, so we just need to check it, and click "start". Now let's go back to Firefox and do "http://localhost" again. Success! We now have the "Apache is running" web page. Next up, MySQL and Tomcat. Since I'm more familiar with MySQL, let's start with that one... After checking the Services control panel, it doesn't seem that MySQL came pre-installed with CentOS (I was only half-suspecting it might be). I could use the "Add / Remove Programs" menu, but since the whole point of this is to learn something, let's try to install it from the Linux command line instead. On my Ubuntu machine, you install things with the "apt-get" command, so let's try that on CentOS and see what happens: >apt-get mysql ...and "Command not found". Okay so it's not "apt-get". After a bit of thinking/Googling..."yum" is the command we're looking for, so let's try this again: >yum install mysql And that comes back with "You need to be root to perform this command". Delving back into my "just enough to get in trouble" pile of knowledge, I remember that sometimes you can use this "sudo" command to bypass not having enough permission to do certain tasks. So let's try... >sudo yum install mysql "nolan is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported." Hmm....well, I just built this box few hours ago, and "nolan" was the account I used to do everything else. Maybe this is where I should have typed "sudo su" instead of "sudo"? Nope, that also doesn't work. Though this one does: > su -
> yum install mysql Success! Admittedly this is one of those areas where I just sort of "brute force" my way through variations on the "sudo" and "su" command until I find one that works. Like I said, I'm not a Linux guy, and I've never fully understood the detailed specifics of what "sudo" does. (That alone could probably be its own blog post...I could certainly use something to reference in the future when I forget...again...) MySQL should now be installed, let's double-check...a quick look at the Services control panel, I do indeed see a process called "mysqld", which is MySQL (though again, why it's not called "mysql" is somewhat puzzling...there's probably a really long geeky answer as to why, if I wanted to look it up.) Let's test that MySQL is indeed working: >mysql
ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (2) Ah...forgot to start the MySQL service. I could go back to the Services GUI and do that, but just for practice, let's try it from a command line: >service mysqld start
Starting MySQL: [ OK ] >mysql
Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g. Your MySQL connection id is 2 Server version: 5.0.77 Source distribution Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer. mysql> Success again! We're on a roll! We still have to install Tomcat, not to mention configuring everything, setting up user accounts, etc, but this is a pretty good stopping point. We'll work on that in a different blog entry.... (If there are any experienced Linux guys reading this far, feel free to chime in with feedback on what I did wrong. I'd appreciate any tips you feel like sharing.) -nolan

Beginning Adventures with CentOS

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:14:00 -0700

I'm a full time freelance consultant, and as such I deal with lots of development teams with varying skill sets. One recurring event I've run into is, senior developers that (for whatever reason) don't want to post their questions on a forum or email list. I suspect its because of... a) laziness (but I don't wanna open another window!) b) stubbornness (I'll fix it myself if it's the last thing i do!) or c) I don't want people "out there" to see me asking such a basic question on the internet, they'll think I don't know anything...which really is ridiculous. We were ALL junior developers at one point. If you search the BACFUG archives you'll find me asking all kinds of introductory questions. Ask any of the C++ programmers I worked with at my first job and you'll hear several of them say "yeah Nolan had about 100 questions about how pointers and linked lists worked". The same is true of any other senior developers. Besides, nobody knows EVERYthing. Having been guilty of all 3 myself, I can definitely relate. So in the interest of a) blogging more (one of my resolutions for 2012), and b) eating my own dog food, I'll just come out and say it: I'm not a Linux guy. As of a year ago, my Linux experience was about like so: * I had installed Ubuntu on a desktop at home, to try and wane myself off Windows, and learn something new. It didn't really work -- I still use that Windows box, though mostly for iTunes and gaming. But I have started using the Ubuntu machine as my "main internet surfing" computer. * I can FTP and Telnet from a Linux terminal and get what I need. * I took an "Intro to Unix" class in college where we went over vi, bash and korn shell, cron jobs, and a few other odds and ends, some of which I've had to revisit since then, but only sporadically. * Though I'm quite comfortable with a DOS command line, I've never had to do THAT much at a Linux command prompt. ...there are probably other points I could add to that list, but basically you get the idea. I'm the first to describe my Linux skills as "just enough to get myself in trouble". :) Over the last 18 months, I've been thrown onto several CentOS projects for clients. And while I'm definitely learning more "Linux stuff", I'd still put myself in that "knows just enough to get in trouble" category. But if I'm in that category, there are probably other people that feel the same way. So why not blog about it?! Starting today, I'm going to blog my "beginning adventures with CentOS". If you're a mid to senior level Linux guy, these will all bore you to tears. If you're like me, and still trying to make Linux stuff "click", then maybe you'll find these posts of interest. And away we go.... -nolan

Tomorrow at SACCFUG -- Template Method Design Pattern

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 15:35:00 -0700

Tomorrow (January 10) at the Sacramento ColdFusion User Group, I'll be giving a demo of the Template Method Design Pattern. This is a really useful technique when dealing with things like vendor or client-specific versions of an algorithm in your application.

Also note, this will be the first meeting at our new location! The fine folks at AcademyX (180 Promenade Circle, Sacramento, CA) have agreed to host us for a while.

More details are available at the SACCFUG website.

Hope to see you there!
-nolan

Speaking at cf.Objective

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:59:00 -0700

I was very pleased to receive an email last week stating that my presentation got approved, and now it's official...I'm speaking at this year's cf.Objective conference in Minneapolis!

I'll be giving my talk on "Intro to Model View Controllers Without A Framework" that I gave at NCDevCon in September (as well as a few local user groups). If you're still not quite sure what to make of CFComoponents, or what all the fuss is about with MVC frameworks like Model-Glue or ColdBox, then this is the place to be. This will be an updated version of my talk, including more info on "Service Layers", and probably some additional sample code too.

Two years ago was my first trip to cf.Objective (I couldn't make it last year); it was a great experience. I'm hoping to meet more people in the CF community, and am especially looking forward to the Arm Wrestling BoF Session. :)

See you there!
-Nolan

2011 Reading List

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:00:00 -0700

I didn't read as many books this year as I would have liked. But I also played a bunch of shows, spoke at some conferences, worked a TON, and actually wrote/recorded/released a few songs...which hadn't happened in a WHILE. So let's call it a win, even if I did only read 10 books. Besides, those last couple Harry Potter books are HUGE! :)

Book Of Lies - Brad Meltzer
Designing For Web Standards (3rd Edition) - Jeffrey Zeldman
Juliet, Naked - Nick Hornby
The Geometry of Design - Kimberly Elam
Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire - J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter & Order of the Phoenix - J. K. Rowling
Silent Bob Speaks - Kevin Smith
Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince - J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows - J. K. Rowling
I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want To Be Your Class President - Josh Lieb

-Nolan

Look who finally updated the website!

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 16:53:00 -0700

2011 was a busy year for us, to say the least. South of Shasta grew and grew, hiring extra developers, taking on more projects, bigger projects, learning new technologies (or delving further into things we already knew). I spoke at NCDevCon (and got stranded in Texas for a day while trying to get home), spent a week at Adobe MAX in Los Angeles, spoke at various local user groups, and lucked into a last minute ticket to MuraCon where I learned more about Mura CMS than I ever thought possible.

Now it's 2012, and like many out there, South of Shasta has its own set of new year resolutions we plan on sticking with -- one of which is to keep this blog updated on a regular basis. There are lots of new things in the works we're excited to share with you all. I'll be speaking at the cf.Objective conference in May, some open source projects are in the works, and our friends at the Sacramento ColdFusion User Group have changes coming that we'll be sharing with you as well.

We're starting the new year off with a few UI updates to the website. You'll notice a new "jobs" page in the main navigation, and some other UI enhancements, hopefully making it easier to find info around here (which will become more and more useful as new blog articles and other content is added in the coming months). If you notice any issues with the site, please drop us a line.

I'm looking forward to all that 2012 has to offer and sharing it via the blog as much as possible.

Happy new year.

Nolan Erck / South of Shasta

Part-time Software Developer Wanted.

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 19:01:00 -0700

I'm in need of a "backup developer" to help with overflow work and to split some larger projects. Most of the work can be done from home, however I'd prefer you be on-site at my office in East Sacramento at least 1 day a week (this may go up/down with the complexity of each project, may become a non-issue over time). On average I can keep you busy 15-20 hours a week. Ideally I'm looking for someone with regular amounts of free time, that likes working on a variety of projects, and has the know-how to help solve problems.

Requirements are like so:

Exceptional communication skills -- This is not boilerplate text; if you're prone to sending 3-word emails (i.e. "i don't know"), then this is not the job for you. I need to know when you're stuck, what you've tried, how I can help, what information you need from the client, etc. You will also need to provide regular updates on the progress: what's done, which roadblocks do you need me to address, etc.
Be reachable -- To compensate for doing a majority of the work remotely, you need to be reachable semi-regularly. You'll need an email address, cell phone, and ideally an IM client of some sort that you check often.
Experience working in deadline-driven environments.
Exceptional attention to detail.
Ability to "figure it out" -- We get lots of new requests, lots of new technologies need to be researched, solution ideas explored, etc.
Ability to "hit the ground running" -- Figure out what you need to solve problems, and generally be as productive as possible while working on the projects.
Ability to see "the big picture" within projects -- If you're changing an item on the back-end, how does it affect things on the front end? Should all of that be tested before the code is handed off to the client?
Ability to multi-task and be self-sufficient -- An average day here consists of writing code for 1 or 2 medium-to-large sized apps, fixing bugs / maintenance issues in older sites, maybe going into IIS and blocking an IP address for a spammer, and doing R&D on which jQuery plug-in will be most effective in an upcoming feature. The ability to effectively flip between such things is critical.
3 to 5 years of ColdFusion development on a currently supported platform (i.e. CF 8 or 9), writing both procedural and object-oriented code (or a similar back-end language, with a go-getter attitude and willingness to learn ColdFusion quickly). Ideally you've used at least one of the current CF frameworks on a "real world" project, and can learn similar frameworks without too much hand-holding. Experience w/ Model-Glue or Fusebox would be preferred.
You must have your own development machine (preferably a laptop) running ColdFusion 8 or 9, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, a Subversion client of some kind, and a Remote Desktop client.
Extra points if you know PHP, .NET, Flex (especially w/ the Mate Framework), and/or have written Facebook apps before.
Double-extra points if you've written Adobe AIR apps, or done any mobile development on a current platform (PhoneGap, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, or something similar).
Experience with all the current practices for building public facing websites -- This would include: writing table-less XHTML/CSS sites with 0 validation errors, writing JavaScript functions, using jQuery, using FireBug, etc. You understand how to test sites in a variety of browsers, you know the current practices for how to support old versions of Internet Explorer, and have dabbled in newer things like HTML5 and CSS3.
Ability to thoroughly test your own code -- Obscure business rules are one thing, and definitely require help from the clients. Making sure a form passes basic validation, or that the page matches the approved design, etc should all be no-brainers, and need to be done before marking the tasks as "completed".

Intro to Model View Controllers in ColdFusion

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 19:25:00 -0700

Tomorrow, I'm speaking at the Bay Area ColdFusion User Group, giving my "Intro to Model View Controllers" presentation. If you...

...aren't sure what the Model View Controller is
...still think frameworks are kind of a lot of work and don't see the point
...started building some basic CFCs but still don't see a lot of benefit to them, etc.

...then this is the presentation for you! I was in the same point not too long ago. Frameworks like Model-Glue seemed like a lot of work, and I was unclear why I was going to all these "extra steps" to build a website. So I backtracked, and spent some time wrapping my head around design patterns (specifically, MVC) first, which was tremendously helpful. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be a lot of material out there for learning the MVC pattern, in ColdFusion, separately from a framework.

Hence, this presentation! :) Details are available at www.bacfug.org. Hope to see you there!

-Nolan

Reading List 2010

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 16:49:00 -0700

Not as many books as I would have liked (is it ever?) but here's what I read during 2010...

Final Witness - Simon Tolkien
Flex 3: Developing Rich Client Applications
If These Halls Could Talk: A Historical Tour through San Francisco Recording Studios - Heather Johnson
The King of Torts - John Grisham
The Business Side of Creativity - Cameron S. Foote
Charm School - Nelson DeMille
*#^% My Dad Says - Justin Halpern
The Five Love Languages - Gary Chapman
Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary - David Sedaris
Talking To Girls About Duran Duran - Rob Sheffield
The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell
Stumble On Happiness - Daniel Gilbert

In Progress (will be finished in 2011)-

The Geometry of Design - Kimberly Elam
Designing for Web Standards, 3rd Edition - Jeffry Zeldman
Juliet, Naked - Nick Hornby
-nolan ?

Tuesday at SACCFUG -Flash Catalyst

Sun, 07 Nov 2010 16:28:00 -0700

This Tuesday at SACCFUG Rob Huddleston will be demoing Flash Catalyst. We've got a few books to giveaway, as well as some other swag I picked up at the Adobe Max conference. Details are available at the SACCFUG website. Hope to see you there! -Nolan