The Blackstone Keynote Segment
Last year at MAX 2003 I announced Blackstone for the very first time, and presented a single slide listing the themes for that release. Since that time we have been very busy turning those themes into actual features and technologies. Here are the stats I presented:

• 15 months in development
• Over 20,000 development hours
• Over 2,000 beta testers
• 7 months of customer testing
• Over 15,000 regression tests

Tim started by incrementally building a Flash-based electronic voting application, using just CFML tags. He started with this code:

<cfform format="flash"
        action="process.cfm"
        width="554"
        height="500">
</cfform>

This code created an empty Flash SWF in the ballot page using the existing <cfform> tag with format="flash". He then added a login form:

<cfformgroup type="panel"
             width="300"
             height="200">
   <cfinput type="text"
            name="login_id"
            value="" label="Voter Registration ID:"
            mask="A99-999-9999"
            required="yes">
   <cfinput type="password"
            name="login_password"
            value=""
            label="Voter Registration Password:"
            required="yes">
   <cfinput type="button"
            name="login_sbmt"
            value="Login and Vote!">
</cfformgroup>

The form is enclosed within a <cfformgroup> which defines the group type as "panel", making the login form appear in a pop-up?type panel. Notice also that the login_id field uses a character mask to enforce correct data entry.

Tim then wrapped this page into a tab navigator control using this code:

<cfformgroup type="tabnavigator"
             height="450"
             style="backgroundImage:'#imageUrl#';">
   ...
</cfformgroup>

This placed the login screen on the first page of the tab navigator, and then additional pages were added for president selection (using buttons containing pictures of the candidates), ballot initiatives, and a final confirmation page.

When finished, Tim had created an impressive Flash forms application using only CFML tags, demonstrating how Blackstone will help developers build richer, more engaging data-entry forms, leveraging Flash without needing anything more than Blackstone itself.

Then I took over. Electronic voting critics demand a printed paper trail, and printing Web pages is not trivial. I showed how Microsoft Internet Explorer often cannot print Web pages properly, even simple pages (truncating data, losing data, and worse).

To create a printable version of Tim's ballot I simply wrapped his code using the following tags:

<cfdocument type="flashpaper">
...
</cfdocument>

I then voted using Tim's form, and when I was done, Blackstone generated a perfect printable FlashPaper ballot. I also created one other printable page, taking that same Web page that Internet Explorer could not print, and wrapping it in the following code to generate a perfect printable PDF version of the page:

<cfdocument type="pdf">
   <!--- Get page using CFHTTP --->
   <cfhttp ...>
</cfdocument>

The next thing we needed was a way to run a report on all votes to determine who won the election. To do this I used the ColdFusion Report Builder, a tool that creates report templates (.cfr files) that are then processed by the ColdFusion <CFREPORT> tag. Using the Report Builder I did the following:

• Ran the report wizard
• Used the SQL Query Builder to select data from three tables, using joins and an aggregate function to calculate totals
• Grouped data by candidate and state
• Selected formatting and presentation options
• Embedded a pie chart showing voter breakdown by candidate

• CFML expressions (using CFML functions, variables, and more) could be embedded in reports
• Data need not be embedded in a report, and any query could be passed to the <CFREPORT> tag at runtime

The last demo in the Blackstone segment showed how a ColdFusion-powered SMS application could be built. Tim fired up the SMS server and gateway (included with Blackstone) and ran the SMS client (a phone emulator). He then wrote a few lines of code in a CFC method allowing him to send a request from the SMS client to obtain voting tallies.

We wrapped up by telling the attendees that every one of them had a copy of Blackstone Beta 2 in their bags.

Meet the ColdFusion Team BOF
BOF stands for "Birds of a Feather," informal chats or panel discussions. This year I once again moderated the "Meet the ColdFusion Team" BOF, and a standing-room only crowd used the opportunity to interrogate the ColdFusion engineering, QA, business, and marketing teams. Here are some of the questions and answers:

• What will the Blackstone upgrade cost? And how will features be packaged and editioned? Sorry, we can't discuss that yet.
• Will subscription customers get the Blackstone update? Yes!
• How can CFML code be executed asynchronously? Via the new CFML gateway in Blackstone.
• Will ColdFusion support null? JavaCast() in Blackstone makes it possible to pass null to Java calls, but support for null throughout CFML is on the wish list, but not implemented at this time.
• What application events are supported by the new application event model? OnApplicationStart, OnApplicationEnd, OnSessionStart, OnSessionEnd, OnRequestStart, OnRequestEnd, OnRequest OnError.
• Will the new spell checking in Verity support custom dictionaries? That is not necessary, Verity (in Blackstone) performs heuristic matching against text in indexed data, and does not actually use a dictionary at all.
• Can the Blackstone beta coexist with CF5 or CFMX? Yes, absolutely, we designed Blackstone so that it can live alongside current versions, so there is no reason not to try the beta.
• What must we do to use the Blackstone beta CD provided to all MAX attendees? Install it, agree to the terms, and provide us with feedback.

Summary
MAX 2004 was a blast, and if you did not attend, don't make that same mistake next year. Blackstone played a prominent role in this year's conference, both as a product and as the power behind the scenes. I can best sum it up by sharing the following statement extracted from an e-mail I received from a very happy (and tired) attendee: "I no longer have any doubt about the future of ColdFusion, and of Macromedia's commitment to the product. My only complaint is that I want Blackstone now!"