Flex ColdFusion Extension Wizard Gotcha

This entry will hopefully be brief and to the point in regard to the title. I want to start off by stating how much I like the ColdFusion extension support in Flex 2 and hope to see Adobe add extenstions that support other languages/middle tier solutions as well hint: (java, php, c#).

There is nothing like beginning your application architecture and development with an out of the box mvc approach utilizing well known approaches to server side development utilizing delegates, services, daos, gateways, and value objects.

Where I see a major problem with the extension is how it is implemented. I have been involved with several projects that have utilized Flex and ColdFusion and upon initially beginning my trek into Flex 2 I saw this issue right away only because I have been working with ColdFusion for 10 years, have consulted on its benefits, scaled servers, architected highly successful and efficient enterprise solutions with it, and know the do's and don'ts...

The problem I am speaking of with the CF extension implementation is the iterating over read functions in the data access object cfcs.

To be more clear, in the templated or skeleton dao cfcs there are db calls made, mostly crud calls. The read function I am discussing here is "r" in crud. The problem is that in many cases I've seen engineers design a composite or aggregate VO. This is a VO cfc that contains other VO cfcs.

This is a perfectly efficient and best practice OOP approach that ColdFusion handles very well. The problem arises when a child resultset of ids (usually a query or array) is used to iterate over and call the read function in the dao to get the vo properties from the db to return via remoting to the Flex application.

The main issue here is performance, specifically with the possible 100s of calls that can be made to the database in one ColdFusion request from the application. Imagine a dump truck going 200 times to the gravel pit taking one pebble, with today's gas prices I don't think you'd last long on the job if you took that approach 8-)... This is what you are doing when you loop over queries. Not only could these calls prove to be slow and taxing on the database but it can also lock up threads in ColdFusion and create cpu and memory spiking out of the shoot. You also have to deal with any kind of network latency that may exist between your CF server and the database as well. AAAACKKKKK!

But there is a solution: First a band-aid needs to be applied. For these complex objects an investigation must be made to locate where these iterating processes could be going on. Second, there is a function in ColdFusion that automagically converts a query field to a comma-delimited value list(or delimiter of your choosing). The function is called "valueList(query.column, ',')" there is also a quotedValueList for strings. With this list you could then use the SQL IN clause on the hopefully indexed id field used to pull back the child VO data. Add another function in the dao or better yet the data gateway that specifies readMultiple or getMulipleObjectName...

Once this is done the code should truly be refactored to call the database only once for all its data (think one cf call/one db call). If you did not know ColdFusion is one of the most robust languages when integrating with the more popular dbms on the market (Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, DB2, Informix). The cfstoredproc tag allows you to call into a stored procedure to get procedure resultsets.

cfstoredproc also allows a developer to return multiple resultsets from a stored procedure to ColdFusion. So, one call to a stored procedure in Oracle that returns 2,3,4,or more ref cursors to ColdFusion. These could be all your objects' data which only requires you to loop once over all of them (maybe some nesting and brief logic to create them, but still 1000s of times faster than separate db calls for each loop).

This may be one of the drier entries I've had (no code, pictures, jokes). But I hope it helps you when using and not abusing the ColdFusion extension wizards in Flex 8-).