The launch of the Allaire DevCenter is a critical and important milestone for our company and our developer community. Allaire was at the cutting edge of online communities even back in early 1995, with the launch of Cold Fusion 1.0, and the parallel launch of the Cold Fusion Developer's Conference, one of the first applications built on Cold Fusion.

The launch of this site is a milestone for two major reasons. First, through this site Allaire is stepping up to become a major player in the Web arena, offering the developer community a set of content and services that span all aspects of Web development, from Web content and HTML templates, to design strategies, to advanced development of online commerce backends. Through this site, we hope to bring together the widest range of Web developers worldwide, expressing and extending our position as a leader for all Web developers.

Second, and possibly more important, is that we will be using the Allaire DevCenter to express our vision for the future of Web applications. Over the coming months you'll see a number of people, including myself, begin to outline an architectural and technological blueprint for Web applications. This will encompass the application categories that we see emerging and provide details about the framework Allaire is creating to support building these applications.

The outlines of this are already in place.

We're seeing emerge a coherent architecture for Web applications based on a tiering of complexity and a component architecture that is appropriate to the requirements of the new Web development team environment. This architecture is one that successful Cold Fusion development teams are adopting to support more rapid and productive development, and that Cold Fusion ISV's are adopting in order to create Application Frameworks (or AppFrameworks) that can be redistributed easily on the open market and reused by the Allaire developer base.

This work around AppFrameworks is incredibly exciting not only because it signals the emergence of a true methodology for building Web applications, but also because it provides a coherent approach for commercial ISV's and other developers in the community for building re-distributable software on a common ground. (I should also note that another major effort is underway to help define common standards for interoperability between Cold Fusion applications. The FuseBox Project is an effort by a large, worldwide base of Cold Fusion developers to create these standards).

What exactly do we mean when we discuss AppFrameworks?

At the core of an AppFramework are some application services for a given problem domain, such as threaded discussions, project management, shopping carts, etc. These application services are the foundation upon which developers will build custom applications, and typically include a collection of CFML code, database structures, and may include components created using COM or JavaBeans. In most cases, this subsystem itself is not enough for a completed application. What is required is some sort of API or Library that other developers can use to build on the core services.

This is where the next tier of a successful AppFramework comes into play. Other developers building on a sub-system will access it through a Tag Library, or a collection of CFX's (aka 'Custom Tags'). The Tag Library is the API into the core services, and should be the only interface that a developer needs to build a custom version of an application on top of the AppFramework. The Tag Library may even hide interaction with the underlying database from the developer, allowing them to use declarative tags to get their work done. Tag Libraries and their constituent framework subsystems will be distributed as encrypted Cold Fusion pages and CFX's, allowing for secure redistribution of this core intellectual property.

The idea is to support a broader range of developers, encompassing both data architects and professional programmers, as well as the HTML developers who are dipping into CFML to add dynamic features to their sites. The abstraction of a Tag Library is a critical component to the success of the range of development professionals involved in the Web application development team of today.

Furthermore, the best way to support these folks is by giving them access to these Tag Libraries and CFX's via the Studio environment. We introduced VTML as a means to create VTX's (Visual Tool Extensions) that extend HomeSite and Studio to support AppFrameworks. Developers can get Tag Editors, Tag Chooser support, inline Tag Help, extend the Help system and even add custom toolbars.

By adding support in Allaire's visual tools, and combining that with extensive online User Education (via the extensible help system in HomeSite and Studio, and the Tag Help available within Tag Editors), it's now possible to create a complete, top to bottom application architecture that supports broad corporate-wide adoption of common frameworks, and re-distributable commercial AppFrameworks as products.

Over the coming months we will continue outline this vision, especially as it extends into future technologies and architectures. I welcome your thoughts and comments on the subject.

Enjoy the DevCenter!

-Jeremy

Jeremy Allaire is Vice President of Technology Strategy at Allaire Corp. Please direct comments on this column to talkback@allaire.com.