Robb asks: I have an architecture question. I am building a site with MG2/Transfer/Coldspring and looking to refine my model. I have a User object that can handle several different "user-roles" i.e. admin, prospect, agent, etc... I have been struggling with the best way to provide the configuration details/properties for each user-role. I don't want to end up with class explosion with say a strategy pattern or even a quasi-abstract CF factory method.

Christopher R contacted me through my contact form to ask about object composition. I thought I would answer it here in case it helps other folks as well. I'm also planning on answering questions like this going forward, so if anyone has questions that you think I can help with, feel free to contact me through the blog and I'll do my best to answer! greetings...i recently came across a great article you wrote called "Write efficient code with the Composition object pattern and CFCs".

It will probably make the rounds in the CF blogosphere today, but Mark just released version 1.0 of the Transfer ORM framework. Great job, Mark! If anyone has been waiting to kick the tires on Transfer until an official 1.0 release, your waiting is over. Go grab it and give it a whirl.

The more I dig into how ColdSpring works the more impressed I am with it (and I was already hella impressed). I'm realizing that a lot of the utility and helper CFCs I've created and released on RIAForge can actually be implemented directly within ColdSpring by extending it.

OK, I used that entry title to get your attention. What it really should say is "Before you add a comment to your code, stop and ask yourself why you think you need a comment here." Clint Willard has an interesting blog entry today on code comments, and I wanted to expand a bit on what he had to say. I agree with Clint that comments are mostly unnecessary in a clearly coded application. In the vast majority of cases, a comment indicates that something is wrong.

Before I jumped across the pond to London and Paris last week, I had posted a blog entry about ColdSpring Remote Proxies. In response to some of the comments and IM messages, I wanted to expand on my mention of extending ColdSpring with your own Factory Beans. The ability to create your own extensions to ColdSpring is an extremely powerful technique. Unfortunately, it's also an extremely unexplained technique! I hope to change that a bit, so let's get to it.

Andy Jarrett posted a very nice overview of using ColdSpring to create Remote Proxies for your CFCs. I wanted to add a bit more to what he was saying and see if anyone has an interest in more details. The first bit is just a small change that makes life easier. In Andy's example, he defines the remote proxy in his ColdSpring XML file and then manually calls getBean() to create that remote proxy.

Well the conference has ended and I'm back in Raleigh trying to get back into the groove of work again. ;-) Overall the whole event was excellent, as expected.I learned a lot at the conference sessions, but also as usual, I think I learned even more sitting at the bar talking for hours with heavy hitters like Chris Scott, Max Porges, Joe Rinehart, Peter Bell, Sean Corfield, Mark Mandel and many others. Some of these guys are just way too smart, but I wouldn't want it any other way.

As promised, here are the slides and code from my cf.Objective() 2008 presentation, "Leveraging Code Generation to Jumpstart Your Development". Check the bottom of this entry for the enclosure. So far the conference has been great. I've learned a lot at several sessions, including Andrew Powell's integration presentation on using Spring and Hibernate as the Java model for an app using CF for Controller and View.

In case anyone wants to meet up in MN, here's my schedule showing where I'll be and when. Hopefully I'll see you there, in the sessions, or at the bar! Or both.