First thing I couldn’t help but notice is the beautiful location, in the middle of the mountains covered with snow. This alone makes the trip worthwhile. It must be one of the most unique locations for a conference.

Then there’s the format of this conference, which is skiing and other activities during the day and sessions at night. And yes, I do mean AT NIGHT, because sessions didn’t stop before 1 AM at least. I still find it amazing to have so many people staying for the last sessions after a full day of intensive skiing.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that I haven’t been skiing for over 12 years, I didn’t want to risk breaking and arm or leg, but that didn’t stop me from having some fun in the snow. But you know, this isn’t a vacation, it’s a conference. Well, at least, that’s what I told my boss .

About that conference, it has a great atmosphere. With a limited amount of participants the stress lies on networking. It is nice to be able to talk with so many geeks. I must say, I’ve had some inspiring conversations and got to know a couple of designing and coding nut cases.

As for my session, that was about using ORM in AIR (mobile) applications. At first I thought it would be way to much code oriented for this conference. Especially when I looked at the other session descriptions. But when I saw those sessions, I began to wonder whether it would be complex enough for this conference . I knew some of the speakers already and from them I knew what to expect. But I was pleasantly surprised by the speakers I didn’t know. There was some really great talent there and I certainly got inspired by some of the sessions.

I want to express my thanks to Fernando Colaço for organizing this awesome event and for letting me be part of it. I’ve had a wonderful time, met wonderful people, got inspired and I hope to be part of it again next year. I’ll have to make sure I’ll take some skiing lessons before that though… .

Tonight I got one of the “coolest” emails you can get: I’ve been invited to give a session at gotoAndSki(); Switzerland on January 26th, 27th and 28th, 2012, which is really awesome. Unfortunately I haven’t been to this conference before, but I’ve heard very nice things about it and let’s face it, skiing during the day and conferences with diner at night is not your typical conference setup. So I’m really looking forward to it.

Now, about my session, it’s going to be titled “Database Driven Mobile Applications: the power of ORM”. Now, some of you may think “what the hell is ORM?”. Well let me reassure you that it is not magic, but it does some really magical stuff.

ORM allows you to create database driven applications by writing virtually no SQL statements.Normally, this type of feature is restricted to the server side of your application, but now you can use this server-side feature on the client-side in an AIR application.

This session will talk you through the basics of using ORM in AIR and how to “automagically” synchronise your local data with a remote server. Whether that’s a PHP, Java or ColdFusion, it doesn’t matter. That’s not all: we’ll go one step further and take that ability to create database driven applications onto the mobile platform as well. Just like that!

If you are digging this and the other topics presented at gotoAndSki(); make sure you get your tickets in time to enjoy the conference and the gorgeous surroundings of the Swiss Alps. I hope to see you there: switzerland.gotoandski.com

Getting Started with Web Application Development Using ColdFusion
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek01
Monday 10AM PDT

Working with PDFs Made Easy with ColdFusion
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek02
Monday  1PM PDT

Introduction to ColdFusion Components (CFCs)
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek03
Monday  4PM PDT

Improve Your ColdFusion Code Through Unit Testing
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek04
Tuesday  10AM PDT

Using ColdFusion Frameworks for Application Development
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek05
Tuesday  1PM PDT

Understanding and Using the ColdFusion Server Monitor
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek06
Tuesday  4PM PDT

ColdFusion Builder: The Professional IDE to Boost Your Productivity
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek07
Wednesday  10AM PDT

Expand Functionality with ColdFusion Builder Extensions
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek08
Wednesday  1PM PDT

Developing Your First Application Using ColdFusion 9 and ORM
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek09
Thursday  10AM PDT

Speed Up Your Apps with Caching in ColdFusion
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek10
Thursday  11:30AM PDT

ColdFusion and Mobile – Browser-Based Applications Made Easy
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek11
Thursday  1PM PDT

Become ColdFusion Empowered in Under an Hour
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek12
Thursday  4PM PDT

Accessing ColdFusion Services From Flex Applications
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek13
Friday  10AM PDT

Securing your ColdFusion Applications
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek14
Friday  11:30AM PDT

Make Your Site Searchable with Solr
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek15
Friday  1PM PDT

Bringing ColdFusion to Java SpringMVC
http://adobe.ly/CFWeek16
Friday  4PM PDT

• Bind the value of one input field to a data model
• Bind the value from a data model to an input field or label
• Bind the value of one input field to a label or another input field

Now, this binding mechanism always worked by mean of events that triggered an update of the bound field. Usually this is the change event, but you can define your own events that will trigger an update of the binding expression. I’m sure most of you already know this. But did you also know hat you can use a similar binding mechanism in ColdFusion 9?

The binding expressions in ColdFusion enable you to create dependencies between form elements, client-side recordsets, ColdFusion AJAX container elements and information fetched from background data requests. You can use binding with all AJAX-aware tags, but the exact syntax varies a little bit for every tag and for every different source of the data. Let me give you a couple of examples to clarify this.

Using a CFC

When you want to bind data to a public property of a ColdFusion Component (CFC) or to the result of a function within that CFC, the syntax will have to indicate that it needs to work with such a component. Assume you have a CFC named Test. Within that CFC you have a public function called multiply that takes 2 parameters and outputs the result of the calculation. The code could look something like this then.

<cfset test = new Test()/>
<cfdiv bind="cfc:test.multiply(3, 4)"/>

Creating field concatenations

Sometimes you want a certain input field to get a default value based on other input fields. This way you can aid the user in suggesting a certain value based on what he has already filled out. One such example could be the automatic generation of an email address. Suppose you have a form which requests the user’s first and last name and you’ll probably want the email address to be firstname.lastname@company.com (unless this would create a duplicate email address or illegal characters in some cases). So why should you be bothered to fill out the email address in 99% of the times you fill out this form?

You could make use of field binding in ColdFusion and concatinate the first and last name with a fixed string for the last part of the email address. To get the binding working you will have to define when the email address is updated. In this particular case I’m just going to update it on every keystroke in either the first name or last name field. The code then looks like this.

<cfform>
    First Name:<br />
    <cfinput type="text" name="firstname"><br />
    Last Name:<br>
    <cfinput type="text" name="lastname"><br />
    E-Mail:<br />
    <cfinput type="text" name="email" 
             bind="{firstname@keyup}.{lastname@keyup}@company.com">
    <br />
    <cfinput name="btnSubmit" type="submit">
</cfform>

Using a JavaScript Function

Sometimes it’s not that simple to concatenate values and perhaps some additional checks have to be performed before you can output the value to another field. Or maybe you just want the first letter of the first name instead of the full first name in the email address. These would be a perfect situations where you would want to use a JavaScript function. So you define a function that does the concatenation for you and simply display the result of the function.

This is quite similar to using a CFC, so the syntax is quite similar as well. Just check the code below to see what I mean.

<html>
<head>
    <script language="javascript">
        emailAddress = function(firstname,lastname) {
            return (firstname.substring(0,1) + lastname + '@company.com');
        }
    </script>
</head>
<body>
    <cfform>
        First Name:<br />
        <cfinput type="text" name="firstname"><br />
        Last Name:<br />
        <cfinput type="text" name="lastname"><br />
        E-Mail:<br />
        <cfinput type="text" name="email"
                 bind="javascript:emailAddress({firstname@keyup},{lastname@keyup})">
        <br/>
        <cfinput name="btnSubmit" type="submit">
    </cfform>
</body>
</html>

These are a few examples and situations where you could make use of the binding expressions. Of course there are still other ways of using them, such as binding the result of an AJAX call to a <cfselect> tag. Or you could use binding with a <cfajaxproxy> tag as well as a few others. But this blog post acts as a teaser, so hopefully you’re curious now and start working with binding expressions in ColdFusion 9, because this is some good stuff…

In a second part join Tridib Roy Chowdhury, Senior Director of Products, and Priyank Shrivastava, Senior Product Marketing Manager, for an exceptional meet the team session where you will get the highlights of ColdFusion and ColdFusion Builder roadmap. This is also your best chance to come and raise your hand for questions and/or recommendations you have about ColdFusion.

PROGRAM:

18.30: Coldfusion powered AJAX Applications with jQuery
19.45: Meet The Team
21.00: Free drinks and networking

This event is free of charge, but seats are limited. Make sure you register quickly!

The CFUG team, Cyril & Steven

As for the topics of this event, we have found a community member to come over and share their history in the ColdFusion world.

	Claude Englebert is the EMEA ColdFusion Specialist working for Adobe. He’ll briefly introduce ColdFusion to the non-ColdFusion developers out there and talk about how to leverage your PHP, .NET or Java application with ColdFusion without writing a single line of CFML.
	Prosteps is a company that has been working with ColdFusion for quite some time and they are coming to tell you all about the cool stuff they’ve been doing with it.

PROGRAM:

19h00: Writing ColdFusion without CFML – presentation by Claude Englebert.
20h00: ColdFusion in the real world – presentation by Prosteps.
21h00: Free drinks and networking

The event is free of charge, but seats are limited. Make sure you register quickly!

Now, the ColdFusion User Group has always been meant to be community driven. However, it seems a bit hard to convince you guys to step up and talk about the things you do with ColdFusion. So, for this meeting we thought we’d set an example and do some sessions ourselves:

	Statler (aka Cyril Hanquez) will give you an overview of AIR 2 and it’s new features. It will help you get familiar with the technology and show you some cool stuff you can do with it.
	Waldorf (aka Steven Peeters) is going to take it from there and digg a litle deeper into the realm of using AIR with ColdFusion by walking you through an application that uses the ColdFusion ORM feature on the client side with an SQLite database to have automatic online/offline synchronisation.

PROGRAM:

19h00: AIR 2 overview – presentation by Cyril Hanquez.
20h00: Using ColdFusion’s ORM in AIR – presentation by Steven Peeters.
21h00: Free drinks and networking

The event is free of charge, but seats are limited. Make sure you register quickly!

Cyril and Steven, CFUG managers

We started off with Ben Nadel who talked about session management and component lifecycles in ColdFusion. I learned tons of new stuff that I (as a beginning ColdFusion developer) wasn’t even aware of. Stuff like how ColdFusion pages are constructed and when the session scope becomes available. This can be very useful to implements some extra security checks and such. Thanks Ben!