Choosing the Right ColdFusion Consultant for Your Needs

Why Choose ColdFusion? If we say this is the web era then it will not be an over statement at all; because there is an overnight explosion of web development industry in the world in past few years. The industry has grown to hundreds of times within a very less span of time. Today while you are reading this sentence, there is one or more websites being lunched in the industry. This indicates the tremendous popularity and potential of websites in the world. Moreover the situation becomes more favourable due to the presence of hand held computer devices that are able to browse internet from anywhere and anytime with mobile internet network. Devices like smart phones and tablets trigger the web industry to grow further and to improve their quality in order to sustain in the market. When there is a demand there must be supply and hence there are lots of technologies born in past few years to fulfil the demands of the users and the industry as well. Technologies like PHP, JSP, Python, and Ruby on rails etc are in the list. ColdFusion is yet another attempt to help the web developers in developing quality web solution at affordable price and in less time. In past few years, ColdFusion has received an overwhelming response in the industry due to its unique features that enables the ColdFusion developers in developing industry standard web solutions.

Their Experience matters a lot for you: If you are choosing ColdFusion for your next application then make sure that the organisation or farm has adequate experience in ColdFusion development. In IT industry, experience matters a lot; because, an experienced ColdFusion programmer can handle your application not only carefully but also efficiently. Their experience can help you in predicting most of the future requirements and expenditure for your application before you start your venture.

Expert team can give you more comfort: When you choose a ColdFusion consultant, you must search for an expert team of ColdFusion that can help you in saving not only time but also money in long run. They can help you in quick web solution development for your requirement due to their expertise in the field. Moreover these ColdFusion experts can help you in getting a quality and reliable product at the end of the day. They can also help you in avoiding all unexpected situations during the development process that may arise at any point of time due to lack of expertise.

Pricing is a damn must factor to consider: Who don’t care for savings? You must compare the pricing of different ColdFusion consultants before you come to a conclusion for outsourcing the project. Well you should never compromise on quality for cost saving; and for the same you must follow the above two points strongly. Now once you shortlisted few ColdFusion consultants that are not only having a good experience but also expertise in the field, you can compare their pricing and choose the best among the rest.

Track record should be verified: This is yet another important factor to consider before you outsource your application to a third party ColdFusion development centre. It will be a wise decision if you choose a software farm that has good reputation in the industry in providing quality service and reliable output. To get maximum benefits of ColdFusion development, you may consider hiring services of a custom ColdFusion development company.

We provide ColdFusion web development services. If you would like to discuss with a ColdFusion developer from our team, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

Benefits of Migrating Application to Latest ColdFusion Version

When it comes to migrating applications to the latest and higher versions of ColdFusion, the process is quite quick as well as simple. Still, there are quite a number of businesses, which tend to continue with the outdated and older versions. Not updating CF to higher version may lead to lesser work. Yet, working with the outdated versions will mean that there are scopes of vulnerabilities and the site(s) getting exposed to hackers and competitors.

Furthermore, updating to newer versions will improve the platform’s overall performance speed, plug in all the potential security holes, and help in efficient coding. It will provide the customers and consumers the option of enjoying stable applications through a number of access points.

Hence, it is wiser to migrate to the latest versions as soon as they are introduced. However, let us discuss the issue in further details.

There is a wide range of web applications available. While on one hand that has helped the end users, on the other, it has increased security risk for everyone. Particularly with the instances of hacking on a steady rise, platforms with the older versions of CF are all exposed to the hackers. Hence, upgrading to the higher version will plug this loophole. For instance, CF version 10 comes up with a unique feature that has become its key coding element, and is excellent in ensuring security of the platform. The two most important changes that are noticeable in this higher CF version are Secure Profiles and the Hot Fix Notifications. Thus, when we talk about the higher versions of ColdFusion, security is the biggest determinant.

Again, another significant benefit of upgrading is the availability of options like hot fix installer and notification. This option helps the users to provide notifications to the administrator whenever any hot fix is required to be incorporated. This can be done by enlisting all the regular updates that are readily available in Adobe. While in the earlier version, users could not be awarded hot fixes without pulling up the information; with the new version this can be done without searching the websites or determining the fixes that need to be installed. This can be a significant time saver, especially when the scans are run regularly.

Following are some of the other benefits of migrating

HTML5 WebSockets

The higher versions of CF, namely version 10 provides supportWebSocket protocol on the server. Thus, when it comes to transferring data to the end clients from the server, the procedure becomes much simpler. Again, this feature can also be used for developing a wide spectrum of real time web based application, which gives end user experience a real shot in the arm, more so with the use of dynamic data.

HTML5 Charting

Furthermore, when it comes to searching a web application based platform with a support for interactive client-end charts, upgrading to the higher versions of CF is the best available option. The higher versions come up with support for charts that are based on Canvas, Further, Flash, SVG. This helps to improve the performance of the web application, mainly through the process of incorporation of interactive charts. Furthermore, the CFCHART tag can also be used with ease for creating and integrating all these interactive charts. Again, it also becomes possible to customize them, with the help of JSON objects.

Migration to the higher version of ColdFusion also helps in enjoying revamped and improved web services. Most of the web applications use RESTful web-based services instead of relying on HTTP or HTTPS. With the migration to the latest CF version, it becomes easier to add attributes to the components.

Migration also helps in enhanced settings of cache. The way a particular web application caches the user data, directly affects its performance. With the version of CF getting higher, the cache setting also makes specific data creation much easier.

Migration to higher version of ColdFusion also allows the developers in indexing databases in more efficient as well as easier way. Also, the developers can take the advantage of Data Import Handler support that the higher version provides. To get maximum benefits of ColdFusion development, you may consider hiring services of a custom ColdFusion development company.

We provide ColdFusion web application development services. If you would like to discuss with a senior ColdFusion developer from our team, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

ColdFusion and Various Code Coverage Tools for Testing Applications

While testing an application, testing professionals have to test the amount of code that is actually tested by the test suite. So code coverage is used as an effective instrument to determine the completeness of the testing done. Also, code coverage can be used as a diagnostic tool to check the code executed for a specific functionality or transaction. Code coverage makes it easier for testers check the objects, modules and functions running while a transaction is being executed. The testers also have option to choose from a variety of code coverage tools while testing an application.

Some of the Widely Used Code Coverage Tools

Rancho for ColdFusion Applications: Rancho is designed as an experimental tool to check code coverage while testing any ColdFusion application. The testers have option to use Rancho either as an application or a ColdFusion Builder extension. As the tool is written in CFML, it provides only line coverage of CFML application. The testers need to use Rancho to instrument the CFML application before running the test suite. After running the test suite, they can use Rancho to generate a code coverage report.

JetBrains dotCover: Along with being a code coverage tool, dotCover can also be used as a .NET unit test runner. The tool comes being integrated with Visual Studio. It highlights the covered and uncovered code in Visual Studio. The tool generates the code coverage report as HTML, XML or JSON. The testers can further use dotCover along with multiple unit testing frameworks including xUnit, NUnit, MSTest and Mspec.

OpenCover: As an open source code coverage tool, OpenCover is designed for both .NET frameworks and Silverlight. OpenCover is also effective in handling both 32 and 64 bit processes without any hassle. The test professionals can install OpenCover in the Package Manager Console by running a simple command. However, they have to use ReportGenerator 1.9 to view the code coverage report in a more precise format.

PHPCoverage: As an open source tool, PHPCoverage is used widely by PHP developers to measure and report the code coverage provided by the test suite. While running the code, PHPCoverage can effectively instrument and record the line coverage information for PHP scripts. It uses Xdebug Extension collect code coverage data. PHPCoverage is also designed with features to generate extensive reports through standard HTML report implementation. However, the tool is compatible with PHP 5.0 and newer versions.

NoUnit: The open source code coverage tool enables testers to determine the quality of their JUnit tests. After the testing, it generates reports directly from the code, and presents the information graphically. Along with highlighting the number of project's methods tested by the test suite, the report also conveys the extent of code coverage.

InsECT: Instrumentation Execution Coverage Tool (InsECT) is a tool written in Java to get code coverage information for Java programs. It aims to provide detailed code coverage information about Java programs. InsECT also fully considers the language features and object-oriented behavior of Java while testing the code coverage. Also, the open source test coverage tool for Java can be used in an extensible way to carry out a variety of dynamic analyses.

GroboCodeCoverage: It is a code coverage tool that implements pure Java 100%. GroboCodeCoverage tracks the code coverage by using adding logging statements to Java classes after their compilation. However, it relies on Jakarta's BCEL platform to track code coverage by adding logging statements to Java classes after their compilation.

Despite being effective in reflecting the code covered during testing, no code coverage tool can guarantee enhanced testing quality. Also, the testers need to understand the major differences between code coverage and white box testing. It is also important for testers to choose the code coverage tool based on the programming language and development framework. To get maximum benefits of ColdFusion, you may consider hiring services of a custom ColdFusion development company.

We provide ColdFusion application development services. If you would like to talk to one of our certified ColdFusion programmers, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

ColdFusion engagement with SOAP web services

For ColdFusion, integration acts as an important focal point as well as key strength. Most messaging frameworks along with protocols for effective communication with various platforms are supported by ColdFusion; the same is applicable for web services. The architectural style categorizes web service into two main divisions- those based on SOAP or Simple Object Access Protocol and REST or Representational State Transfer compliant ones. SOAP, the lightweight protocol is used for messaging systems or to invoke remote procedure cells so that information can be exchanged in distributed environment. Creation as well as consumption of SOAP-based ones are very easy for ColdFusion.

Web services are technologies related to software which facilitate machine-to-machine communication through a network. All machines supposedly understand as well as process the Web Services Discovery Language or WSDL format which sets up engagement rules for the interaction. The rules are in turn enforced through sending of messages which are carried by SOAP envelopes. The popular protocols like SMTP, HTTP, etc are used for carrying as well as delivery of the envelopes. The interaction language between machines is XML or eXtensible Markup Language. XML forms the basis of SOAP which consists of three parts-

• Convention for representation of remote procedure responses as well as calls.
• Encoding rule sets to interpret data types that are application-defined.
• Framework to describe the essence of the message and the way to process it.

The onerous task of data translation as well as data types conversion between service providers along with consumers is handled by SOAP.

Apache Axis is used by ColdFusion as the underlying engine for the implementation of web services that are SOAP-based. It is in fact a reliable and proven implementation of SOAP. The very first step in the building of ColdFusion-based ones is by writing a CFC or ColdFusion component which takes object-like approach for related functions grouping as well as business logic encapsulation. A leading role is also played for the accessing and defining of a single one. CFC may be created or prebuilt CFC may be reused with operations that may be exposed as functions to make the CFC remote call-accessible through specification of access=”remote”. Then web service makes the CFC location its endpoint with the remote functions becoming operations which may be invoked on it.

After the creation of web service, it can be invoked from ColdFusion through a variety of ways. It may be called with <cfinvoke>, <cfobject> and CreateObject. Then Stubs are refreshed or proxy is created.

When the services are developed, one very important thing to consider is security since many business functions get exposed with them, thus expanding the interaction boundaries which increases your security responsibilities that include access control, authentication, privacy as well as data integrity. The web service can be published over HTTPs as that will ensure point-to-point security since communication is secured by SSL at transport level. ColdFusion can also be used for control access.

While using web services we often feel confused which form to use- REST or SOAP-based ones. When opting for SOAP-based ones you must remember that they are object-oriented which helps in easy solutions. The declarative nature ensures that standard WSDL format is used for description. The tooling support is great as well. Using SOAP-based web service will ensure that access through middleware or intermediate server is beneficial.

Creating web service in ColdFusion can be quite an easy job especially if you have the basic knowledge to write components and functions. Consumer coding is very easy as well; just WSDL reference, arguments necessary for service and return variable must be provided. Great SOAP functionality is provided as well and encapsulating them into the components will yield you good results. You can hire developers from top custom ColdFusion development company in India who can help you build applications within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide ColdFusion development services. If you would like to get your application developed by our certified ColdFusion programmer, please contact us at Mindfire Solutions.