pf » Archives for August, 2005

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm working on optimizing lots of inserts into a database, and I need solutions for different DB servers. Today I have been working with PostgreSQL. Although the PostgreSQL COPY command is recommended, I can't seam to get it to work with ColdFusion, and cfquery.

CodeFetch is a clever little app that searches published books for code samples matching your search. So if you search for cfmail you will get code samples from several books on ColdFusion. You can then of course buy the books through amazon.

If you have ever had to do lots of SQL INSERT statements you will know that they can get pretty slow. When looking for ways to speed up some inserts, I noticed that you can use a SELECT subquery to provide the values.

Both MySQL and PostgreSQL support a really cool feature called OFFSET that is usually used with a LIMIT clause.

The LIMIT clause is used to limit the number of results returned in a SQL statement.

Ivan Ristic, the author of Apache Security, and the mod_security Apache module, and Java Filter, is trying to create a spec called the Portable Web Application Firewall Rule Format.

The indeed job search engine has a pretty cool feature that you can add to your site, called job rolls. So for instance if you have a coldfusion site, and want to list coldfusion jobs then, you can paste in a job roll for coldfusion jobs:

Jobs from Indeed

I whipped up this shell script for adding items to your backpack todo list. I've tested this on Mac OSX 10.4 (Tiger) but it should work on any mac, and most unix operating systems if your using a bash shell.

I decided to redesign my blog today, I was getting really sick of the old design, which has been up for a few years now. As you can see the new design is not too far off from the old one.

Doug Hughes has posted a very clever technique for allowing you to run Java classes without adding them to your classpath. This means that people who build ColdFusion apps that include java classes can make them super easy to install.

On Internet Explorer in order to write AJAX based web applications you have to use an ActiveX object.

var request = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.

I have been doing a lot of XML parsing, and manipulation in java lately because I'm building a super dynamic configuration editor for XMS. Its going to be pretty cool once its done because you can even configure third party modules with it.

I was just updating my cell phone plan on T-Mobile's web site. They asked me to enter the last four digits of my social security number, or my birth date to confirm my identity.

I was just making a quick change, so I didn't read the instructions on the form written in font size xx-small.

Greg Murray, the Servlet specification lead is asking how do you use the Java Servlet API, and where would you like it to go:

As part of Java EE 5.0 servlets will be undergoing a maintenance release.

It would be handy if you could specify a default datasource name in the cfapplication tag, or Application.cfc, and then omit the datasource attribute in the cfquery tag.

Another performance option in MySQL is the DELAY_KEY_WRITE option. According to the MySQL documentation the option makes index updates faster because they are not flushed to disk until the table is closed.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that the boston globe was planning on doing a podcast with Jeremy Allaire, in their BizCasts series. They have published the podcast, and at least half of the interview is about ColdFusion, Allaire Corp, and Macromedia.

Did you know that there were some date/time mask shortcuts for the DateFormat, and TimeFormat functions? They were added in ColdFusion MX 6.0, and they flew under the radar for many. I have seen them in the docs when I lookup a mask, but I always forget about them.

I just noticed that Macromedia Studio 8 has dropped the MX branding that all their web development products have had for the last few years.

ColdFusion version 7 still has the MX branding, and was released about 6 months ago.

If you don't use Safari as an RSS Feed reader (I use bloglines), the feature can get kind of annoying. Every time you click on an RSS feed, it is redirected to a feed:// url.

Here's a little lifehack I discovered due to the heat wave we have been having this summer.

Every day after work I go out to the parking lot, and get inside my 100° inferno. After a few weeks of sweating it out, I started thinking about the best way to coll down my car, quickly.

I found an article on Information Scents on SmartMobs. The term Information Scents was first coined by researchers at Xerox, whose research showed that the way people search for information is closely related to how animals hunt for food.

We recently did some analysis on our bayesian spam filter corpus (spam assassin token database), and came up with a list of words with a high spam/ham ratio.

By using the spam/ham ratio, and not the spam count, we came up with a better list of words to avoid.

I am seeing a lot of new web services are implemented using a REST style architecture these days rather than a SOAP one. Lets step back a second and explain what REST is.

I just discovered that MySQL has some handy optimization hints, and commands that you can pass in your SQL statements. Since there is a lot to cover with each tip, I will be posting them in separate blog entries. I have already written about the MySQL Query Cache optimization hints.

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Here's a little productivity tip for those of you using a bookmarking system that supports tags (such as del.icio.us).

I like to call it Action Tagging, here's how it works.

Ryan Campbell has posted some good tips on practical approaches to writing better comments.

His article should help you find the median between over commenting, and not commenting enough.

#The lid of my snapple tells me that an octothorp is another name for the pound / number / hash sign... the # symbol. Quite a familiar glyph for CF developers.

According to Octothorp press, the word is so obscure that it isn't even in the Oxford English Dictionary.