I'm writing this editorial on the exact day that ColdFusion 1.0 was released back in 1995. Looking back over the server's evolution, it's really come a long way from its start as a CGI application (anyone remember DBML?). Though the server has really grown substantially, the things that made it popular back then are still its strongest features: a rapid development environment for creating dynamic, database driven web applications. ColdFusion MX 7 reminds me a lot of the first release of CF 10 years ago - so many powerful new features that make tasks which are difficult in other environments, trivial. I don't doubt that 10 years from now, we will be looking back at CFMX 7 as one of the more pivotal releases in the server's history. Still, it's hard to believe that ColdFusion is already 10 years old. For many of us, the fact that CF is 10 years old is made more difficult to believe because of its implication that we have been doing this for a decade now!

This month marks some other milestones. It's been one year since I assumed my role as Editor in Chief here at CFDJ. I rely heavily on feedback from our readers in order to determine what I'm doing right and wrong, so please keep the emails coming. The feedback so far has indicated that everyone really likes the "focus issue" format, so we'll continue with that until people tell me otherwise. Also, the largest annual conference devoted exclusively to ColdFusion, CFUnited (formerly CFUN) is being held in Rockville, MD at the end of the month. I look forward to meeting many of our readers at the conference. You can expect full coverage of the conference in next month's issue of CFDJ.

Lastly, Macromedia had many Flash and RIA announcements this month. They unveiled the Flash Platform - which in a nutshell is the next generation player along with its accompanying tools and specs. The press release about the flash platform is available online at www.macromedia.com/macromedia/proom/pr/2005/unveiling_flashplatform.html. For more about the technical aspects of the Flash Platform, visit the Flash Platform homepage at www.macromedia.com/platform/. Macromedia also announced that they've joined the Eclipse Foundation as an add-in provider and will be releasing a plug-in (code named Zorn) that allows Flex developers to use eclipse to develop their applications. More on this initiative can be found at www.macromedia.com/macromedia/proom/pr/2005/eclipse_flashplatform.html. This is an exciting month indeed... and in that spirit we've got an exciting issue to accompany it!

To commemorate ColdFusion's birthday, I sat down with Jeremy Allaire for a one-on-one interview about the past, present, and future of ColdFusion. Jeremy is one of the founding fathers of ColdFusion and is one of the true pioneers of the web. It was a great experience discussing his views on ColdFusion and current technology trends. Also in this issue we have many articles focussing on our "deep focus" topic for the month: gathering and presenting data. The majority of our articles are to do with creating forms, reports, and other output using Flash, FlashPaper, and/or PDF as the client-side content format. Flash and PDF generation and the new reporting engine are without a doubt some of the key new features in CFMX 7, and this month's issue is an excellent introduction to the various ways to use all of these new features in your applications. I hope you enjoy reading this month's issue as much as I enjoyed putting it together for you...