Steve Rittler, Philly CFUG regular and reformed uniped, is going to cover a topic specially requested by some of our members: Migrating from Verity to Apache Solr, the new search product built into ColdFusion 9. Here's what he has to say on the subject:

We're all familiar with Verity, the search product built in to ColdFusion that made most search needs much easier for many. But the time has come to move on, as Adobe has announced that Verity will be EOL with the next release of ColdFusion. In its place we now have Solr - an open source package with far greater capabilities and a whole lot of new features we should get acquainted with.

BUT FIRST...we have to get our existing Verity collections ported over. How do we do that? What's different? What do we need to know? Relax...it's actually quite easy!

I'll show you what's the same, what's different, what you may want to tweak "out of the box" and where to look to make your collections more efficient and useful. You'll want to know this - Solr is awesomely powerful and it'll make you look like a genius. And who doesn't like that?

We normally try to meet on the 2nd Thursday of the month, but in May this overlaps with the cf.Objective() conference, so we're pushing our meeting back one week:

Anteo Group, a consulting agency based in Atlanta, is currently looking for three ColdFusion developers for immediate contract positions with a Fortune 500 client. These opportunities are on-site in the Philadelphia area and remote work is not an option at this time.

These individuals will work with product development groups to develop web applications utilizing ColdFusion, Fusebox methodology in all development activities and maintenance of existing products. Implement projects using Test Driven Design, state-of-the-art JAVA/J2EE and ColdFusion Technologies. Design User Interface using CFML and JavaScript; alter existing database schema; develop effective application/system-based queries in order to avoid performance issues; develop reports; integrate third-party vendors for background checks, assessments/testing and various integration projects (as requested); and design, develop, maintain core job posting/job board models.

Desired skills:

• Experience with one or more AJAX frameworks (dojo, jquery, etc.)
• Expertise in ColdFusion 8
• Experience using Fusebox 4+ with CFCs
• Expertise in web services
• Expertise Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Expertise in Oracle 10G
• Expertise in performance optimization of code and SQL
• Expertise in Web application Security
• Expertise in XML and XSLT Knowledge of Object Oriented programming and design patterns

They also have a referral program, so if you know someone who might be a good fit, pass the info along to them and you might be able to make some money too.

If interested, contact Emily Seder: eseder@anteogroup.com or by phone, at 404-897-5152.

Just a quick reminder that our next meeting will be tomorrow, April 7th, at 6pm. See you there!

For our April meeting, Vicky Ryder will be stopping by to present MediaSlurp, which I like to think of as a case study in writing awesome applications.

MediaSlurp is a popular tool that delivers community-driven content to your desktop. The presentation gives an overview of how it was built by three people, in three weeks, leveraging the Adobe stack and community libraries: AIR, airORM, Flex, BlazeDS, ColdFusion 9 ORM, ColdSpring and Swiz. This presentation will give an overview of how the application works and an open Q & A about the tools, process and the MediaSlurp application.

Another job opening in Philly, this one is on Spring Garden:

Experienced ColdFusion Developer, Adobe Certification preferred, with strong understanding and demonstrated use of HTML standards, CSS, JavaScript and data modeling. Extensive experience with SQL Server required. Firm grasp of Object Oriented application development with ColdFusion. Experience with ColdFusion development frameworks such as FuseBox, Mach-II or Model-Glue highly desirable. Experience with Rich Internet Application development with JQuery, ExtJS and/or Adobe Flex a plus.

Send your resume by email to HR@napco.com, by fax to (215) 238-6690, or by mail to:

Human Resources
North American Publishing Company
1500 Spring Garden Street
12th Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19130

Contact Name: Darren Hill
Contact Email: jobs@weblinc.com
Contact Phone: 1-215-925-1800

We are looking for someone who is excited about technology.

You'll work with some of the best tech leads and designers to make some of the best ecommerce and content sites on the web. You will report to a Tech Lead who will help you through the rough spots, but you'll have enough rope to, uh, to do the job properly.

You'll be held accountable for your responsibilities, but you'll get the glory when things go well, which they normally do. Your ideas and opinions will be heard and given the consideration they deserve.

We're looking for people with a fair amount of experience building sophisticated systems utilizing ColdFusion. Experience with SQL Server or MySQL is also important. Obviously, if you know other languages that is also useful.

Let us know why you're the right person for this job. We're hiring immediately for positions in Old City. Send your resume to jobs@weblinc.com.

For our March meeting, Adobe Evangelist and Philly local Terry Ryan (blog) will be back in town to demo some of the new goodness that's going to be available in the upcoming release of ColdFusion Builder 2.

I wouldn't miss it if I were you!

We'll be back in our normal building, this time:

This position is based out of Radnor, PA, and they are looking for someone with both Oracle and CF experience:

Our client has a great opportunity for an experienced Application Developer. This individual will be responsible for the design, development, implementation, and maintenance of web applications on Windows Servers using ColdFusion and Oracle. The position requires excellent communication and analytical skills and the ability to work with internal clients to recommend and implement new technology solutions.

Skills & Qualifications:

The position requires 2-7 years experience in web and database programming. The following knowledge and skills are required:

• Database development in Oracle PL/SQL, data manipulation, DDL, creating functions, views, stored procedures, and analyzing and optimizing SQL code or experience in other database technologies.
• Development of software in a web environment with current practical experience using ColdFusion, HTML, Java, JavaScript, XML, CSS
• Trouble-shooting, debugging, proofing & testing
• Bachelor's degree in programming or related field preferred
• Team-oriented and work well with others
• Excellent communication skills and attention to detail
• Web Services and mobile application development experience a plus

 

Contact: Jon Morse by email at jmorse@jobscss.com or Phone at 610-747-1322.

While we normally meet in Wharton's Jon M Huntsman Hall, we were unable to get space in that building for our February meeting. Instead, we'll be meeting in Steinberg-Dietrich Hall, room 1203. A map showing Huntsman Hall (in red) and Steinberg-Dietrich Hall (in green) is below:

(click for full size)

Sorry we didn't have a January meeting. My wife just had our second child and I won't be back in downtown Philadelphia until the last few days of January. We'll just be skipping it and moving on to February.

This time around, Daria will be presenting the MVC framework called FW/1 ("framework one"), a simple yet powerful, convention-over-configuration framework for ColdFusion applications.

We hear a lot about Model View Controller (MVC) and how we should use it in our applications, but how do you apply this practically in your code?  Framework One provides a simple way to use MVC without overwhelming you with features you might not need or want. This presentation will show how you can take your existing spaghetti code and turn it into a robust MVC application.

Daria will cover the basics of MVC and why FW/1 is a great implementation of it. She'll then provide demo code showing how to convert a simple CRUD spaghetti-code app into MVC with FW/1.