MXDU 2004 – Day 2: Macromedia Keynote

"Blackstone" (Tim Buntel, Product Manager):

The upcoming incarnation of ColdFusion, codenamed "Blackstone", will be more focused on production and adaptation to the new trends on Internet services consumption.

Focusing on developers, Blackstone will save time to developers, automating the most common, day-to-day tasks, like accessing and modifying database records, processing forms and working more closely with Flash for end and middle presentation layers.

Macromedia Flex (Tim Buntel / Benjamin Elmore):

Running on Java and ColdFusion (support on .NET is expected in the future), Flex is Macromedia's Presentation server product, currently in beta and expected to ship some time during the first half of 2004.

Flex consists on two big components:
Flex Application Framework: MXML, server-side ActionScript.
Flex Runtime Services: Events-based behaviors, including libraries of form fields validators, in the form of components.

Flex nature promotes modular development. Benjamin is doing a session on Flex this afternoon, when will go into more details, so I'll be attending and posting some more information on the subject later.