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Welcome to Merrimack: An Even Better ColdFusion MX 7

This month, Macromedia released Merrimack—the code name for the latest ColdFusion MX 7 Updater—which extends platform support and refines several of the new features in ColdFusion MX 7. This update builds upon the success of ColdFusion MX 7 and polishes what has already proven to be an incredible release.

We are excited to announce that this update includes support for Mac OS X as a new supported production platform for ColdFusion MX 7. For Mac OS X support, we included a new set of turnkey installers, similar to the Windows installers. As the OS X platform continues to gain traction in the industry, we are excited to see ColdFusion applications take advantage of the power on the OS X platform. In addition to full OS X support, we also updated platform support for Windows, Linux, Solaris, and AIX. We also added new J2EE deployment support for Oracle AS 10g. I include a complete list of platform additions later in this article.

Equally important in this release, we refined and polished a number of ColdFusion MX 7 features. For instance, the cfreport, cfform, and cfdocument tags all have new attributes that provide additional flexibility and simplicity. In addition, we rolled all hot fixes, security fixes, customer-requested fixes, and bug fixes to date into the update.

Some of the Merrimack refinements include:

• New RTF output format for the cfreport tag
• Support for ActionScript functions in the cfform tag
• ActionScript Event support in Flash Forms (onload, onfocus, and onblur)
• Java CFC Proxy support (for calling CFC's directly from Java in Enterprise Edition)
• Tag attribute additions and enhancements for the cfdocument tag and other ColdFusion tags
• New ColdFusion functions, including EncryptBinary(), DecryptBinary(), GetLocalHostIP(), and IsLocalHost() (for preliminary IPv6 (Internet Protocol Version 6) support)
• SMS Gateway character set and data encoding enhancements
• Image attachment enhancements for the cfpop tag
• Updated web services support using Axis version 1.2.1 or higher
• Update to JRun Updater 5 + hot fixes
• Update to Verity 5.5 Patch Level 21

The following is a detailed list of the updated platform support:

• Windows 2003 Service Pack 1
• Red Hat Linux AS 3.0 and 4.0
• SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 and 9
• AIX 5L v5.1, v5.2, and v5.3
• IBM WebSphere Application Server (WAS) Network Deploy (ND)
• Oracle Application Server 10g
• Some basic support for IPv6 (Internet Protocol Version 6)
• A full Mac OS X installer, with an install experience similar to that on Windows, and production Mac OS X support
• Oracle 10g RDBMS support (note that 10g Real Application Clusters (RAC) are not supported with the update)

Yet again, we believe this release to be the absolute best ColdFusion release ever! Macromedia encourages you to download and install the free ColdFusion MX 7 Updater to take advantage of the many additions that it includes, and the polish it adds to the already great ColdFusion MX 7 features!

Of course, if you’re not using ColdFusion MX 7 yet, and have been waiting to upgrade, now is the time to get it and put its power to full use. Check out ColdFusion MX 7 release details here: www.adobe.com/software/coldfusion/

Merrimack is available as an Updater (for customers who are already running ColdFusion MX 7) and also as "full" install kits that include the 7.0.1 update (for new ColdFusion MX 7 installations).

As always, the ColdFusion Product Team welcomes your feedback and ideas over the coming months, as we begin work on the next great ColdFusion release, code-named "Scorpio," and would like to offer sincere "Thank You!" for the overwhelming reception and adoption of ColdFusion MX 7. We’re determined to continue to raise the bar of innovation and product excellence, and we’re confident that with your help, we will deliver another groundbreaking release. Stay tuned!

Check out the following details for more information on the ColdFusion MX 7 Updater:

• Read the ColdFusion MX 7 Updater Release Notes.
• Read the Frequently Asked Questions about ColdFusion MX 7 Updater.
• Download the appropriate ColdFusion MX 7 Updater for your platform.

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