New ColdFusion TechNote : Problems downloading and installing ColdFusion MX 7

People may remember the firestorm when we first released CFMX7 to the web as users with (from what we could tell) a 28K modem line that traveled through northern Siberia before getting to their ISP tried almost 5 times to download the release and it was corrupted - why couldn't we get them the bits? Suggestions to wait for a CD didn't go over too well.

The ColdFusion support team is very proactive in trying to stop customers from calling them :-). They noticed that we still have a large number of support calls were coming in where the user was unable to get a clean download of the (350MB!) coldfusion install.

To try and address these problems, the have published a new tech note:
Problems downloading and installing ColdFusion MX 7.

Hopefully this will help customers upgrade to ColdFusion MX 7!

Which English do you want?

Talking with Ray today about some Verity things, I was sharing some tidbits about the english locale and performance that I realized should be published more widely.

First, some history. The Verity 5.5 version in CFMX7 is very different that the verity 2.5 version we shipped in CF5/6/6.1. In particular we (and verity) defaulted to the "english" locale. Since then, Verity has acquired the linguistiX technology, which is the company that used to provide their international locales, but I believe they have since bought the company and/or technology and now they default to using "englishx". Where the "x" stands for linguistiX.

But ColdFusion MX 7 still defaults to english. Why? Two reasons.
1. To ensure compatibility with previous CF releases. Users expect to get the same results from indexing and searching when they upgrade to CFMX7.
2. Performance. The englishx locale is "better". According to Verity it is much better than the old english locale. Better means better search results. In order to get these results, it takes more time in the indexing of the data. Since we were trying to maintain indexing performance, we used the english locale as it means indexing will be faster.

Bottom line: If you want better search results, and indexing performance is not critical, create your collections using English (advanced) in the CF administrator or "englishx" when using the cfcollection tag.

Axis 1.2.1 released

In the better late than never category, Apache Axis 1.2.1 was released last week. With the loooong time between 1.1 and 1.2, we are trying to get back to the 'release early, release often' philosophy that is one of the strength of open source.

Update: This version of Axis by the way will be included in the ColdFuison MX 7 updater. "Comming soon".

See you at CFUnited

As a reminder, I will see you at the CFUnited conference next week. Tons of great sessions, including mine on advanced Event Gateways.

Looking for help with CFCHART?

Prayank, one of the ColdFusion developers, has created a great blog to help answer questions about the features and fixes for cfchart in CodFusion MX 7.Check it out. Charting can get very complex, and he does a great job of showing how to solve various problems you may run in to with CFMX 7 charting.