Recent Blog Posts
Blogs ยป Archive for May 3rd, 2004
DB Transactions With ColdFusion
…posted by davidjmedlock:
Time flies all too quickly. I’ve been remiss in my posting here and I apologize. I did plan to write a quick note about the security of scheduled tasks, but I have yet to figure out a solid way of authenticating who ever is accessing them. At any rate, I did find this excellent article on Macromedia regarding database transactions.
For anyone who has ever developed serious applications, you may have encountered times when you performed many database alterations all in a row only to have one of them fail and ultimately ruin your afternoon (or weekend, even…) I strongly encourage the use of transactions as a means of error handling in your application. And in ColdFusion, they’re extremely easy to use.
With a framework such as .Net, you have to create a transaction object and attach it to a connection object and then begin the transaction and then when you’re finished with your queries, you have to commit the transaction. If you fail to do everything in just the right manner, you’re application will explode. With ColdFusion it’s really quite simple:
…
Sasser from a business development perspective
I hope most of you are treating Sasser as an opportunity to build relationships with clients/prospects by warning them about it, showing them how to protect themselves, and helping them avoid it.
Get the word out now via email and/or phone calls to your clients and prospects. Be sure to give them the information they need to know their risk and reduce it.
It will pay off down the road — and give you one more reason to stay on the top of their mind.
HTTP over SOAP?!?
Ever run into W3 drafts like SOAP Resource Representation Header and start wondering if this is the Next Big Thing because it makes no sense?
Relax – Tim Bray provides some reality here.
Further sanity can be found at MIME-RPC: Object Messaging via MIME.
How to Ask for Referrals (Part 1 of 2)
Thanks for the question on the previous blog about the right way to ask for referrals from clients. There are two parts to the answer, with part 2 coming on Wednesday.
Part 1 is important enough to stand on its own.
Most people think about referrals after the fact, as something to get after work is done. That’s backwards, and will cause you to miss out on many opportunities throughout an engagement and client relationship to get referrals.
The best way to get referrals from clients is to have them think about referrals right up front.
A powerful way to do that is to put a clause in your proposals/contracts that talks about referrals (and testimonials while you are at it):
“Upon successful completion of work, if not sooner, Client agrees to have a discussion with Consultant about possible referrals, and use best efforts to identify at least two potential business owners or executives that might benefit from Consultant’s services. Client also agrees to provide a testimonial and/or case study about the engagement that Consultant can use as part of marketing collateral.”
This clause does a couple of things for you.
First, it is a unique clause, and will get the prospect thinking that you are …
Sasser Worm
As users of Microsoft software, .NET types need to be aware of the latest security threats.
The newest entrant is Sasser, which delivers a similiar payload to that of the Blaster worm. It’s reportedly already brought down some of the Australian rail network, as well as restarting thousands of Microsoft machines worldwide.
Make sure you’re patched as soon as possible, as once you’re hit, your computer can restart at any time.
http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/sasser.asp
