cf.hsphere.cc

[Spirited]

Originally Posted by Revolution

I'm still down

I was experiencing some problems where the new DSN would not work, after I had gone through the complete process. And, waited for a scheduled restart. Then realize the pre-latest problems DSN's did work. When Erin (is I spelled that correctly) would verify the db connections then the new DSN would immediately start working. Strangely that only happened on one of 5 CF sites?

[Ram_Argid]

No, it's not frustration talking. I too used to be terribly against PHP. However, PHP 4 and now 5 is a terribly robust language complete with support for classes and runs excellently with most databases (with a little tweaking).

PHP is, in many ways, more powerful that CF especially when you calculate in flexibility. However, it is not for the faint of heart. I do agree that .NET is superior in many ways to both alternatives. However, there is a much steeper learning curve with .NET as well when compared with CF.

It is my opinion that CF will never recover from the fiasco that Macromedia has created. Perhaps Blackstone will be all that it promises. Perhaps it will be another turkey. At any rate, it's too costly and has lost enough credibility that coupled with its cost, I don't believe that it can continue to compete in todays market place.

CF is, in my opinion, another Netscape that will eventually fall down to a few die hard supporters with no real support. I could be wrong, have been in the past, but I doubt I am in this case.

[tkraffty]

It's the same old problem... Larger companies tend to like the codebases that have more name-recognition, even if they suck. Like it or not, Microsoft and Macromedia are better at selling and promoting their wares than the folks running PHP.

From a technical perspective, .NET is mostly used by super-geeks with CS degrees or companies that can afford those developers. CF is used, in part, by people who still long for the good old days when CF first came along, giving them an easier way to do things they had previously been forced to do through CGI/Perl scripts - and it does have a few better features than the current (anti-MS) foundation of PHP.

PHP and ASP are very nice for people who don't want into buy into all the other required MS crap and steep learning curve, but still want to do some dynamic/interactive things. PHP is still weak on security and a few other key areas... By the way, does anyone remember JSP, or all that flatulance surrounding XTML which never really materialized for the *average* website owner? Or what about, long ago, when Adobe honestly believed the entire Web would be comprised of nothing but Acrobat documents?

All that having been said, there are a few key players that have survived the code wars (for now), and for the most part, they all have very dedicated users. Sure, you can push pre-packaged PHP, ASP or .NET code on people who will never open a text editor, but for everyone else, ASP, NET, PHP, CGI/Perl, and CF are all still in-demand by customers... (luckily, XML only requires some DLLs... But if it required it's own server, it would have died last year I think)

And as hosting resellers, it makes business sense to try and support the market demand. In fact, those who support CF now are finding they actually get MORE customers these days, exactly because of the number of *other* hosts who are not supporting it anymore.

So what should Vortech do? Well, that's their business decision to make, but in terms of mine, I *was* hoping to do more promotion of CF as part of my offering now that I've figured out most of the basics. There does seem to be that loyal CF following which is worth money to us hosts, and in spite of comments here to the contrary, ColdFusion usage is on the *rise*, with developers and companies who want something they consider the only comparable and alternative server to Microsoft (which is how Macromedia is selling it). PHP isn't quite at that stage yet, or I should say they just haven't done as good a job of selling themselves yet.

But there's that one problem with CF, where it feels to me that it was developed with the notion that it's users will all have their own separate servers (it can be a resource hog, and the interface/control panel required direct server access until the latest psoft upgrades)... So, maybe the solution to that problem is just to set a maximum number of users/accounts for your CF boxes before you add another to the network, just like I'm sure you do with accounts on your IIS or Unix boxes.

Either way, seems to me if you have customers signing up for CF, then it's probably a good business idea to continue supporting it. But if no one is using the CF server, then it should be killed. My feeling from this latest issue is that there are a whole lot more CF users and customers on your systems than even I had previously thought... And those folks are like any other businesses and site owners, have already invested what they can or will in building CF-based systems, and it's ridiculous to expect they will ever switch to some other codebase, as I saw suggested somewhere above. I don't know what color the sky is where that person lives, but development still costs money where I'm from...

And as far as the CF version? Who knows... CF-MX users have very particular dependencies on the new platform, and then there's the whole issue of CF developers tending to use all the latest gizmos (like any other developers do)... So, downgrading would be sort of like asking a .NET user to go back to ASP. I'm hoping the next upgrade will resolve the issues that are causing you problems here, but if not, then some other data-center and their respective resellers will get all that CF business - if you decided to stop supporting it...

Anyway, ...that's my $0.02 (or more like $3.50)

TK

[mresell]

These kinda situations suck, but you can't blame vortech for someones software issues. While they may need another server, I don't recommend that until they get a grip on the ism's. I love much of macrmedias stuff, but am frustrated that they charge what they charge for something that doesn't deliver. I hope they get cf straightened out. Frankly, if someone would come out with a good IDE for php it would take off. I like php.

[Ram_Argid]

tkrafty, excellent post! That is it in a nutshell. However, PHP isn't a company, it's an open source movement. Will it ever "take off"? Who knows. There are an awful lot of Unix geeks out there that code in PHP. I would argue that PHP doesn't have any more "security flaws" than MS.

I for one tend to gravitate toward .NET. I'm pretty sure .NET (or some derived hybrid) will be around 5 or 10 years from now. PHP is a language that can get a site up fast, if you know how to leverage other peoples code. There are rumors that PHP is leaning toward a Java core. I'm pretty sure that they're just rumors. If not, many people will most likely stop using PHP. I know I will.

CF just comes with too much baggage anymore, I do agree with you about the demand, although whether or not it's on the rise (relative to other languages) could probably be debated.

Yes, coding time is a cost. So is maintenance. So is completely changing the way a language works (like moving to a Java core). CF lost a lot of stability when they went there. I used CF Studio for all kinds of development because of the flexibility and speed. It sure blows away Dreamweaver.

When I ran my own servers, they were the most stable servers in town and were mainly CF servers (combination of CF5 and MX). I laughed at the competition who just couldn't seem to keep their servers up, or had to reboot them every day (or more in some cases). However, MX was definitely harder to optomize and maintain than CF5.

I avidly argued that CF could blow away any language in speed and was totally extensible. The speed and modularity can't compare with .NET anymore. And the extensibility really isn't there in a hosted environment. I can't create my own C++ code and compile a tag expecting Vortech to register that tag on their servers. I can create as many DLL's as I want with .NET. On a Unix box, in a hosted environement, I can manage my own permissions. I can also enjoy MS standardized security protocols with .NET.

I guess it all boils down to who is using the various languages and how. I would agree that the best solution IMO is probably to maintain the fight and hope for the best with the new version from Macabremedia.

[jrm98]

Please don't completely ditch ColdFusion! Despite the current problems, Vortech has been a very good hosting company with excellent tech support. I don't want to have to switch again. Downgrading to CF5 would be fine...

[admin]

I think we will stay with CF MX even though I hate the darn thing. People use CF and like it for the most part its just when it breaks it breaks good. Kind of sucks. But we will live. The neo-quary.xml thing is the wrost I have seen from CF MX so far. I hope that will be it. Everything else I can fix really easy and know it like the back of my hand.

But a 50,000 - 60,000 file on one line sure does suck. I hope MM fixes or at least reformates that file to standered XML at some point.

[jgouger]

mresell:

Check out the following:
http://www.nusphere.com/

They make one of the best PHP IDEs (or for that matter any web language) that I have seen yet. It features a real-time debugger!! Syntax checking, and best of all breakpoints and watches!!! Ala VS.net you can actually run the interal compiler and see all of your variables, structures, etc. Now if only Macromedia could figure out how to do something like that.

[tkraffty]

Damn... I'm still having trouble with the datasources on CF, and the errors seem to keep changing as the day progresses. Out of four (4) datasources, one datasource that gave me no troubles yesterday is now throwing READ errors (somethign about "Datasource names for all the database tags within CFTRANSACTION must be the same."). And two others could READ, but NOT WRITE - although one of those was somehow repaired by the techs last night, even though they used the same procedure for both.

Any word on resolution (and no, kicking the box is not an option at this point I suppose

[jgouger]

TKRaffty:

I'm seeing several of the same thing. I've submitted several tickets about it. I've been told that they think that its some kind of caching issue.

[nabsUK]

Yeah mine too.. up and down all day.. now another strange error:

Error Executing Database Query.
[Macromedia][SequeLink JDBC Driver][ODBC Socket][Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]Login failed for user 'caroli1_genesis1'.

[tkraffty]

here's a weird and probably dumb question for the techs...

what editor is being used to update that XML file? when I see an encoded translation of apostrophes as noted by someone above, the first thing I wonder is whether or not a text editor is being used, or some other editor is being used that might include encoding settings that could cause problems. I've had problems with Textpad32 for example, where the DOS-vs.-Unix file encoding options of the program can cause related problems just by the way the line-wrap or end-of-line characters are formatted and handled on save...

[nabsUK]

I think that was answered earlier, even MM techs don't have a viewer.

Any update on cf.hsphere.cc?

:'(

[admin]

neo-quary.xml is up to it's old tricks again. Trying to see if we can't fix it again.. If I can't get it fixed we might have to go back to CF5 because this is just becoming way to big of an issue.

[jgouger]

Is there anything that I can do help out?