Great little article by Kola Oyedeji, on the "Java.net" web site, as Ben pointed out.
The article begins with,
"Forget Ruby on Rails; in this article I outline why, as a Java developer, you should be perhaps be looking to another technology closer to home to leverage your existing in-house skills and infrastructure..."
I couldn't agree more, especially with what's in the ColdFusion Scorpio release coming later this year!
Damon
What is your config for future reference, what is your hardware/64-bit chipset, 64-bit OS, 64-bit JDK, 64-bit web server and 64-bit app server?
Thanks!
I've been trying to deploy on a Xeon 5000 series box running CentOS 4.4 (x86_64) and Sun JDK 1.4.2_11 (i586).
Largest blocking issue is tons of notices in the Apache error logs suggesting a permissions issue with jrunserver.store. (I've tried chmod 777 and chcon --reference=/usr/sbin/httpd). The actual error is:
[notice] jrApache[#####: #####] could not open "/opt/coldfusionmx7/runtime/lib/wsconfig/1/jrunserver. store": Permission denied
I'm considering putting CF in a Xen 32bit HVM domain to see if that works.
(..in my experiences, when you let Damon, Ben, et al know about something you're trying to do that CF can't yet do, they do their best to find a way to get reasonable requests through. Best support of any software product I've ever used, and the capability keeps on growing. my two cents)
Damon
You do need a CF runtime license for each server machine a CF app runs on (asked for in the J2EE EAR/WAR packaging tool), but we have to make money somehow, right, since the Devlopment and packaging of the app is free with Developer Edition).
That's all here is to it. And CF can pre-compile your CFML into Java byte code in the packaging process as well, so you're not deliivering source code if you don't want to. You can also code to the Admin API and (on first-time up, for example), prompt for the DSN info to configure your app on the fly in it's new home, wherever it's deployed.
So, just write, package, deploy and go!
(And shhhhh...you don't have to tell anyone it's written in CFML...it's just a smokin' fast, all Java app that runs on any app server as far as they're concerned)
:)
Damon
For future reference, official support for Debian 3.1/Ubuntu 6.06 and later (x86 & AMD64) would be excellent. I use RHEL/CentOS for ColdFusion today because they are supported, but prefer Ubuntu's "no open ports by default" approach to security over RHEL's approach of including all sorts of garbage in a so-called "minimal" install. Ubuntu seems to be much more popular for development machines as well.
Another "feature" that would make ColdFusion more Linux friendly... offer rpm/deb packages rather than (or at least in addition to) the bin installer, preferably with an adobe.com yum/apt-get repository than can be used to check for updates. (installs as dev/trial edition, which can be upgraded via CF admin after install).
Finally, though I recognize the challenge in limiting to a single instance, it would be very nice to be able to install the Standard Edition on an alterate servlet server (e.g. Tomcat/JBoss) rather than forcing integrated JRun. (Maybe use code similar to Photoshop's LM service to make sure only one instance of each serial number is running on the Subnet?)