I was just about to come say how happy I am with BlueDragon 6.2 in comparison to how I was two weeks ago. I've had great success working with my framework and getting it moving along nicely. But, then I started on the frontend of a project I've been working on separately, and ran into another show stopper. The UI is [going to be] built using Rob Rohan's Neuromancer, and consequently need to make some web service calls to my facade CFCs. Unfortunately, BD doesn't want to do that, it just throws a big nasty Axis fault for both ?wsdl requests and for the "my.cfc?method=myMethod" means of calling CFCs for "normal" page handling.
So here I am, once again smashed up against the almost functional BlueDragon. I suppose I should just assume that nothing works, and test every bit of functionality before planning to use it, but that seems like such a back-assward approach. Oh well.
It's not really "back-assward". I call it Test Driven Development (TDD) ;)
In addition to TDD, I set up an automated testing suite using ANT. I recommend this regardless if you're using BD or not. For Tracking Tools I wanted to support Win/Mac/Linux, MYSQL/MSSQL/ORACLE/Cloudscape, CFMX/BD. The only way to keep on top of all this is was to implement an automated test suite. It takes some time to set up but once you have it in place it's sweet. I push a button and I can test the app across all those environments. For me it was like source control. Before you use it it seems like a pain/hassle, after you use it you wonder how you got along without it and there's no going back.
-Phil
What you propose is definitely right on. However, it's not quite what I was saying. I'd have needed to test whether the functionality worked before starting any of the architecture/design of the app, to ensure that the server supported it. I.e. CFML lets you _____, lets make sure BD supports doing it. Do that for each piece of functionality needed for the app, and then design the app. That's a little different than TDD, but on the same thread.
Barney, BlueDragon certainly lets you run web services (publish via CFCs and consume via CFINVOKE/CFOBJECT/CreateObject). I'll drop you a mail off-line to work with you to see what's up.