4 Things I Learned About BlueDragon on .NET
As previously blogged, Charlie Arehart spoke about running BlueDragon on .NET at the SDCFUG meeting last night. Charlie had a running copy of it on his laptop and showed us some pretty neat stuff. Here are a few of the many things I learned about BlueDragon for .NET:
- BlueDragon for .NET extends the .NET framework. This means that once you've installed BlueDragon on your .NET server, all your .cfm pages are processed by BlueDragon through the .NET engine.
- You can CFINCLUDE .aspx pages in .cfm pages and vice-versa. Since BlueDragon for .NET extends the .NET framework, it's all compatible and interchangeable.
- BlueDragon for .NET is essentially BlueDragon re-compiled on .NET using
JscriptJ#. Yes, changes had to be made to make this work correctly, and it's still pre-beta and not perfect, but it's pretty cool that virtually the same code can run on .NET and J2EE platforms. - You can CFIMPORT .NET classes and use them in your CFML code. Charlie demonstrated this using a calendar control, but there are endless possibilities.
These are a very small percentage of the cool stuff I saw last night at the SDCFUG meeting. If I have more time I'll post more...
Note: I am not a .NET developer, so please excuse any misuse of terminology and feel free to submit corrections in the comments.
# Posted By Matt Liotta | August 5, 2004 7:49 PM
# Posted By Cameron Childress | August 5, 2004 8:49 PM
When he points out his 3rd bullet above about "BlueDragon for .NET is essentially BlueDragon re-compiled on .NET using J#", I want to make sure all readers realize he's NOT talking about your CFML code being re-compild on .NET using J# but rather that the BlueDragon engine was ported to .NET that way. That's otherwise transparent to you as a CFML developer.
This is an occasional source of confusion. Bottom line: as his other points did convey, BlueDragon/.NET allows your CFML to run natively on the .NET platform leveraging many powerful benefits not available on ColdFusion, even if running on a machine having the .NET framework.
If anyone else would like to have this presentation offered either to their CFUG or even just to their company or a couple of key folks, don't hesitate to ask. As he notes, there's more than can be conveyed in just a brief blog entry. Plenty more info (and a free trial edition) available online via the link he offered above.
"We now return to your regularly scheduled programming." :-)
# Posted By charlie arehart | August 17, 2004 4:35 PM