The August 2005 issue of a prominent ColdFusion magazine wastes several pages on OO with ColdFusion.  Let's face it, CFC's are about as object oriented as PHP4: neither are enterprise-ready.  For one, they both lack the "Interface" construct, an absolute must for genuinely robust object oriented architectures.  There are other shortcomings as well, but interfaces provide an acid test as to developers' understanding of objects: if you don't grok interfaces, you shouldn't be leading an enterprise OO project.  All is not lost for ColdFusion however, it's advantage over PHP4 being it's foundation: Java.  Let Java do the OO "heavy lifting", and then leverage the servlet API's getServletContext().getRequestDispatcher() functionality to subsequently forward both request and response to ColdFusion templates.  OO with ColdFusion itself is not necessary to its continued thriving, rather it can provide the view component of MVC under Java.

How to start developing servlets under ColdFusionMX7 (in 150 words or less ;)

To augment your choice of free ColdFusion components, look no further  than  cfopen.org.  It describes itself as a "a collaborative software  development  environment designed to facilitate the development of open source  software  for ColdFusion."  Here you will find not just components, but even  full-fledged frameworks (not unlike FuseBox) that can provide the  foundation  for an entire site.  More and more of these ColdFusion projects are  supporting freely available databases as well, e.g. MySQL.  Besides  downloading existing software, you can establish your own project, or  apply  to join an existing one, for instance if you want to contribute some  customizations you've made.  And don't forget to google "ColdFusion  Open  Source" while you're at it.  This will return results ranging from  custom  tags all the way to content management systems.

First some corrections to last month's column regarding NewAtlanta's free  ColdFusion implementation, "BlueDragon", specifically the Linux version.  As of version 6.2, distributions more current than RedHat 9, including Fedora  Core 1/2/3, are indeed supported.  Furthermore, configuration issues,  particularly integrating BlueDragon with Apache, can be overcome through a  thorough reading of the installation guide. 

Since BlueDragon comes in a free version, let's consider another free tool  for ColdFusion, the Eclipse plugin "cfeclipse".   Eclipse is now the de  facto Java IDE (60% now use it, according to onjava.com's 2004 survey), and  is becoming more popular for other languages because of it's plug-in  architecture.  CFEclipse does not provide WYSIWYG editing, but if you also  develop in Java, perhaps even custom ColdFusion tags, then Eclipse with  CFEclipse really makes sense.
 
All the software you will need to get up and running with CFEclipse is  available at the following sites:

http://java.sun.com
http://eclipse.org
http://cfeclipse.tigris.org

If you are looking for a FREE ColdFusion engine that, unlike ColdFusion Express, continues to be actively developed, look no further than New Atlanta Communication's "Blue Dragon Server" (http://www.newatlanta.com/products/bluedragon/index.cfm). Your best bet is to install version 6.2 alongside IIS on Windows XP Pro or Windows Server 2003, enabling ColdFusion on the default port 80, as well as its own port, 8080.  

Linux however is more problematic. New Atlanta 's documentation recommends RedHat 9 for free BlueDragon, but RedHat no longer supports that distribution. The good news is that it will install on Fedora Core 3, though in my experience with this configuration, it won't integrate with Apache. Regardless, you can develop and test your ColdFusion apps on port 8080, making BlueDragon definitely worth a try on either Windows or Linux.