Transcript Before ColdFusion

Enterprise Integration
with ColdFusion
Sean A Corfield
Director of Architecture
Macromedia, Inc.
Goals
 Explain some of the history behind
Macromedia's use of ColdFusion, both on the
web and behind it
 Show you how Macromedia is using
ColdFusion “behind the web” for integration
tasks
 Inspire you to think outside the “web box” and
look for new problems to solve with
ColdFusion MX 7
Who Am I?
 Senior Architect for Macromedia IT (since
mid-2000)
 A ColdFusion developer (since late-2001)
 ...and Java developer (since early-1997)
 An advocate of standards and best practices
(since birth?)
Agenda
 Setting the scene – a brief history of
macromedia.com
 A look at our Online Store architecture
 Introducing Oracle Applications (ERP)
 Additional systems join our Hub'n'Spoke world
 Evolving our Online Store architecture
 Upcoming changes and future plans
 Wrap-up
macromedia.com BC
 Before ColdFusion...
 macromedia.com was built with BroadVision
and Perl
 We created flat files full of CSV data and ran
batch jobs to move those files around and
load them into databases
macromedia.com BC
2001 A ColdFusion Odyssey
 Macromedia acquired Allaire
 I formed Web Technology Group to rewrite
macromedia.com using ColdFusion
 ColdFusion 5 was the (new) current release
 We learned ColdFusion on Neo using pre-alpha
builds and then alphas and betas – it was “fun”...
 We also picked JMS (Java Message Service)
and XML as core technologies for data transfer
between the website and the various back end
systems, using Java “adapters”
macromedia.com – CFMX 6.0 U3
 macromedia.com launched in early March 2003
on ColdFusion MX 6.0 Updater 3
 About a dozen ColdFusion applications
 BroadVision still powered our Online Stores
 Perl still powered many of the simple information
forms
 Later that year we launched the Flash /
ColdFusion Online Stores for Europe with
BroadVision for non-Flash users
macromedia.com – CFMX 6.0 U3
macromedia.com – CFMX 6.1
 We were running Red Sky just before launch
(August 2003)
 We adopted Mach II as the Web Team
standard (2004)
 We continued to write more applications
(currently around 50 applications, a quarter
are Mach II apps)
 We launched HTML versions of our Online
Stores and rolled them out worldwide (20032004)
macromedia.com – CFMX 6.1
Online Store Architecture I
 Tiered application architecture:
• Front end has both Flash & HTML versions
• Business logic implemented with ColdFusion
(using the same CFCs, and Mach II for HTML
version)
• Back end used Perl scripts to manage
fulfilment and settlement functionality
 CSV (tab-delimited) files moved by FTP to
ERP system
Online Store Architecture I
ERP – Oracle Applications
 Rolled out new ERP system (March 2004)
 Used OAGIS 7.2.1 standard XML for order
management file exchanges (instead of CSV)
 Still FTP based batch jobs (since everything is
file-based)
 Some vendors (including OLS) still provided CSV
 ColdFusion application written to manage all the
XML and CSV file exchanges and automate the
FTP processes
ERP – Oracle Applications
Breeze Live Online Sales
 2004 also saw Breeze Live become available for
purchase online as well as hosted solution
 Decided to leverage JMS rather than Online
Store method
 Sales orders transmitted as XML over JMS in
near real time
 Developed JMS event gateway for ColdFusion
MX 7
 Uses exactly the same order processing CFC as
batch files
Breeze Live Online Sales
salesforce.com (late 2004)
 Implemented sf.com for sales leads
 Web site captures leads, publishes them
using JMS
 Web Service adapters (.NET) exchange data
with sf.com
 JMS used to exchange data between
adapters and other systems: web site,
support, marketing, analytics
salesforce.com (spring 2005)
 We rewrote all of the .NET adapters in
ColdFusion (.NET libraries from the JMS vendor
were unreliable)
• Rough guesstimate: building adapters in CF is
between four and eight times easier than either
Java or .NET based on development times (Java
and .NET are about par)
 Leverage the CFMX 7 JMS event gateway
 Leverage improved web service support in
CFMX 7
Internal Order Management
 Several internal applications also capture
manual orders
 Already written in ColdFusion
 Generated orders as CSV files
 Rewrote file generation custom tag to
produce XML
 Could easily change to use JMS now!
Online Store Architecture II
 Replace Perl back end
• Use same engine as Breeze Live Online
Sales
• Send all orders as XML over JMS
 ERP ColdFusion application does not
change!
OLS Architecture II – Web Side
OLS Architecture II – ERP Side
New Order Management
 Real time communication between OLS and ERP
• Sales orders
• Order status
• Ship confirmation
 Inside Oracle we publish data in real time
• On triggers / workflow events, we publish
recordsets as XML to Oracle AQ queues
• Oracle AQ event gateway (Java) consumes and
republishes to JMS using JMS event gateway
New Order Management (cont)
 Large attachments processed in the background
• Sends URL to async CFML gateway
• Async task fetches document and stores in Oracle
 Real time communication between ERP & CRM
• Customer details & entitlements published to a
single Oracle queue as XML rowsets
• Oracle AQ event gateway consumes, reformats
and publishes to two separate JMS topics
• JMS event gateway consumes , parses and stores
customer details & entitlements in CRM
The Big Picture
Future Plans
 Over time, replace complex custom Java
adapters with CFMX 7 JMS event gateways
 Consider replacing scheduled tasks that scan
directories for files with the built-in CFMX 7
DirectoryWatcher
 Enhanced JMS event gateway – supports
authentication, per-topic cached publishers,
additional “initial context properties”
Conclusion
 XML provides a human-readable, self-validating,
structured format for complex data – and it's easy
to process in CF!
• XML beats CSV hands down (duh!)
 JMS has reduced latency in data processing and
improved the reliability of data transfers within
the enterprise
 A hub'n'spoke architecture makes it easier to add
and replace systems without re-engineering
everything else
Conclusion (continued)
 Building JMS-based applications can be a
complex, time-consuming process (and
unreliable on .NET!)
 ColdFusion MX 7's event gateways make it easy
to build maintainable, robust asynchronous
applications
•
•
•
•
JMS publish & subscribe
Oracle AQ receive
DirectoryWatcher
Asynchronous CFML
Questions & Answers?
Sean A Corfield
Director of Architecture
Macromedia, Inc.
[email protected]
[email protected]