Ben Forta on Enterprise Gateways

I just returned from hearing Ben Forta speak in Dallas. My friend, Will Spurgeon, and I took the short drive from Tulsa to Dallas to hear him speak (about 4 1/2 hours).

It was well worth the drive.

I have been intending to look into enterprise gateways, but I have always felt like it was too much and I didn't have the time. After Ben Forta's presentation, enterprise gateways seem much more approachable. Still plenty to learn, of course, but I feel that I have a good place to start.

Enterpise gateways allow ColdFusion to respond to a variety of non-HTTP requests. Including file actions, sockets, SMS, IM, and asynchronous ColdFusion requests. While all of these are interesting, it is IM interaction that has the potential to meet a somewhat immediate client need (the ability for users of a site to interact directly with him without his needing to be on the site himself).

Ben has also written some blog entries about interacting with IM via ColdFusion.

Building an IM Bot

• Part I
• Part II
• Part III

He also has a CF Live Docs Bot, which allows you to send the name of a ColdFusion tag or function to the bot and get back a link docs on that tag or function. Pretty handy!

I didn't see a version that worked with MSN IM, so I downloaded Google Talk - which I was planning to download to use with an IM Bot (as above) anyway. I'm not sure it is actually any easier than using cfdocs.org, but still very nifty.

Hopefully I will get to play with an IM gateway soon and blog my findings (assuming I have anything interesting to say on the topic).

Ben Forta was a great presenter and very patient with questions both during and after the presentation.

Thanks Ben for such a great presentation! Thanks also to the DFW CFUG for hosting such a great presentation.

Now I just have to get a production install of ColdFusion MX 7 Enterprise...