Great Article on Requirements Gathering Essentials

Great Article on Requirements Gathering Essentials on Sitepoint.com check out the rest of the article.

clipped from www.sitepoint.com What do all these sayings have in common? They're all about thinking before acting. Why? Because it saves time, money, effort and embarrassment. It's plain common sense, yet, when it comes to software development, this common sense seems to disappear. All too often, projects start before thought has been put into the project's purpose, its desired results, and how its sucess will ultimately be measured. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. A stitch in time saves nine. Measure twice, cut once. Look before you leap. Studies have shown that as many as 4 out of 5 software development projects go over time, over budget or don't deliver expected results (The Chaos Report, 1994 Standish Group). With such long odds, it pays to put in the effort upfront to minimise the risk of failure. The question is, how do we achieve this?

Don't Disable CreateObject

If you are a ColdFusion host and want good ColdFusion Developers to use your service DO NOT Disable CreateObject. You can disable COM, CORBA, and JAVA. We need to be able to use CFC's and I can not use ColdBox on my host currently due to this issue.

clipped from www.adobe.com How to select a ColdFusion hosting provider CreateObject: This function should be disabled as it can be used create Java and COM objects that can compromise the server's security. New in ColdFusion MX 7 is the ability to specify the types of objects to disallow with the choices being COM, CORBA, JAVA, and WEBSERVICE. The COM, CORBA, and JAVA variants of the CreateObject function should be disabled, thus leaving room for CFC and web services as required.

ColdFusion Frameworks

There are tons of ColdFusion Frameworks now. Choosing one can be a daunting task. My comments are not to mean I am pushing any one framework. I am just making comments as best as I can see them to help you in your search for a framework. There is no perfect choice. I do suggest you choice one for your company and try to stick to it for a long time so you can hire people who already know the framework you use. This should speed up the time they have to learn your systems.

There will be more information about ColdBox as the company I am at is leaning toward using ColdBox for its framework. Please, send me comments about the framework you use and why. Also send me other frameworks to test out and try.

Frameworks to consider

• Model-Glue
• Website: http://www.model-glue.com/

This information is taken from the notes of the Joe Rinehart talks at Frameworks 2007. Model-Glue uses XML files as configuration of the application. This framework also can integrate ColdSpring, Reactor, Transfer, and even the use of Scaffolding.

• Mach II (Started 2002)
• Website: http://www.mach-ii.com/

This information is taken from the Mach-II Wikipedia. Mach-II is an open-source object-oriented web application framework based on the model-view-controller design pattern. The framework focuses on trying to ease software development and maintenance. Mach-II was the first object-oriented framework for ColdFusion.

The mission of Mach-II is to do MVC and do that well without sacrificing extensibility. Mach-II is highly extensible through its filter and plugin architecture. This design allows you to leverage third-party functionality or other frameworks easily. A by-product of this basic credo is that Mach-II is not hampered by the release schedules or bugs of other frameworks because they are not intrinsically integrated into the Mach-II core. This allows Mach-II developers to "virtually customize" Mach-II so your application always have your architecture and specifications without being forced to abide by convention over configuration.

• ColdBox
• Website: http://www.coldboxframework.com/

This information is taken from the ColdBox Framework Website. One of the best features of ColdBox is its Documentation. What is a software foundation without proper documentation? ColdBox will always provide you with the latest and most up to date documentation that will help your development team stay ahead of the technology game. With over 450 pages of documentation and guides, you will be on your way to ColdBox development in no time. There are over 30 step by step guides on almost every topic that ColdBox Development will lead you to.

• FuseBox (Started 1997)
• Website: http://www.fusebox.org/
• History: http://www.fusebox.org/go/history

Fusebox is a MVC Framework that does support OOP. However due to it being one of the first sometimes it gets looked down on. Even with it being the most popular they say in their history link I am not sure how you can tell which is the most popular. When you reach a high level of use I think it does not matter who is most popular.