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A Warm Team Mach-II Welcome to Brian FitzGerald
Lately, we've been disussing on adding a couple new members to Team Mach-II in order to spread the work load out to more people as our ambitions grow for better documentation, tutorials and a more frequent release schedule.
We're happy to announce the addition of Brian FitzGerald to Team Mach-II as our Wiki Manager (although you'll probably see him doing more than just managing the wiki). If you've been on the wiki lately, you've noticed that Brian has spent a lot of time working on improving and adding new material to the wiki. For those who don't know him, here is a short bio of Brian:
Before shifting gears to earn an Associates of Audio Engineering, Brian FitzGerald completed a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Then, after a two year stint as a Multimedia Developer for Goelst USA specializing in client side Web technologies, Adobe Flash and the Creative Suite, he decided to focus on CFML. Since then, he has concentrated on Object Oriented architecture and design, specifically in the field of Educational Technology, as he works toward the release of a Spanish language learning platform due out early next year.
He and his wife Cinthia are both travel enthusiasts, and currently live in Greensboro, North Carolina.
We hope to see Brian making some post on the blog in the near future. We're glad to have you aboard Brian!
Posted 9/22/08 @ 2:15 PM by Peter J. Farrell
New Documentation: Using the Threading Adapter Package and Utility Connector
Just wanted to point out some of the new documentation that has been released on the Mach-II wiki.
Multi-threading is useful is specific circumstances and Mach-II utilizes it for a couple features introduced in version 1.6. However, threading implementations have slight variations between the various CFML servers. This is problematic when trying to implement features that can be multi-threaded and requires the ability to be deployed on a wide array of CFML servers include server versions that do not offer multi-threading capabilities. Use the Mach-II threading adapter package to abstract all the differences between CFML enginee and be worry free on writing multi-thread code.
The MachII.util.UtilityConnector is a helper component allows you leverage your already configured caching and logging subsystems within your model layer. Both the caching and logging packages are cross-cutting subsystems in the MVC stack and have been designed to be utilized outside of Mach-II's MVC architecture. Since these packages are agnostic from the Mach-II MVC layer, using them in your model layer does not create any coupling to the Mach-II MVC layer because you could remove the the Mach-II MVC layer from your application and load your logging and/or caching in another manner. Mach-II is using Mach-II specific loaders (MachII.logging.LoggingProperty and MachII.caching.CachingProperty) to load these packages in the context of Mach-II. Loading these packages outside of the context of Mach-II would amount to trivial code.
New Documentation: Introduction to Logging and Introduction to Caching
We've been working on getting the Mach-II community involved in using the wiki at trac.mach-ii.com which is the official home all Mach-II documenation, how-to's, primers, guides and FAQs. The community has created a bunch of new content and revised a lot of other entries as well over the past month. I wanted to point out a couple of great introductions that were recently added by Matt Williams.
Matt did a great job on these introductions which cover the new logging and caching packages that comprise some the major additions coming in Mach-II 1.6 which should be coming soon if you've been watching the Roadmap on Trac.
And don't fear the wiki! It's a collaborative workspace for people who have interest in and knowledge about Mach-II at all levels. We're extremely appreciative of any and all contributions to the Mach-II project so I'd like to thank Matt Williams for donating his time to the project and making it just a little bit better for everybody!
Submitting Enhancement Requests for Mach-II
Another common question we get on the Mach-II Google Group or via email and IM is, "Can you add feature X to Mach-II?"
We absolutely love hearing your ideas for new features for Mach-II, so keep those coming! When you do have an idea for a feature or other enhancement, rather than letting it fall off our radar, it's extremely helpful to us if your ideas are submitted as official enhancement requests on our Trac site.
Just go to Trac, click on "new ticket" in the menu at the top, and make sure to select "enhancement" as the type. You can do this anonymously, so you don't need an account on Trac to request enhancements.
Requesting enhancements through our Trac site is just one more way you can help Mach-II. Thanks in advance for helping us ensure that Mach-II is meeting the needs of our ever-growing legion of users!
Don't Fear the Wiki! Or, How You Can Contribute to Mach-II
If you're a member of the Mach-II Google Group, you've probably noticed we've been asking for your help recently. Specifically, when someone asks a question and gets a solution to their problem, we're asking people who were invovled in the discussion to write an entry in the Mach-II Wiki if we think the question will serve as a good FAQ or How-To (which most do!).
We've had some fantastic contributions so far, but we can always use more, so the most important rule of thumb is "Don't Fear the Wiki!" Many people who are new to Mach-II or a bit unsure of their level of expertise with Mach-II are a bit trepidatious about contributing to the wiki, but you absolutely shouldn't be. If you asked a question and you got a response that you understand, or you're the person who provided the response, you have more than enough knowledge to create an FAQ or How-To on the wiki. And if you're still heistant, realize that Team Mach-II gets email and RSS notifications when changes are made to the wiki, so we're always reviewing things and making small changes here and there for clarity.
That's the whole point of the wiki--it's meant to be a collaborative workspace for people who have interest in and knowledge about Mach-II at all levels. If you've learned a neat trick or just want to record the solution to a problem you've been having, share it with the Mach-II community via the official Mach-II wiki!
We're going to have a lot more to say about the Mach-II project's open source philosophy soon, but if even a small number of members of the Mach-II Google Group each contributed a few minutes here and there writing FAQs and How-Tos, that all adds up to a LOT of great documentation, and lets Team Mach-II focus on development, official documentation, and training.
So to reiterate, don't fear the wiki! We're tremendously appreciative of any and all contributions to the Mach-II project.
