A small wave of changes for OpenBD 1.4a

This morning we are releasing a small wave of changes to the underlying core engine of OpenBD. This is for the upcoming 1.4 release in October 2010, but available for playing with now under the nightly build.

• Core Function Named Parameter Support
  We're very excited to announce named-parameter support for the core CFML functions that we all know and love. So just like you can call UDF (User Defined Functions) by naming the parameters, you can do this to the core functions as well, with no performance penalty. This lets us fix one of the biggest inconsistancy issues that has plaged CFML for years. We haven't adjusted all our functions yet, but have started on this journey, and the official manual will let you know which functions support this feature. Expect them all by the 1.4 release. More details
• Amazon DataSource Management
  We've made working with Amazon's Web Services much easier by standardizing on a single Amazon datasource that can now be shared amongst S3, SimpleDB and SQS operations. This allows you to register your AmzID and SecretyKey once and reuse them using the AmazonRegisterDataSource function. We've also updated the official manual for working with Amazon.
  • Amazon S3
  • Amazon SimpleDB
  • Amazon SQS
• httponly cookie support
  We've added support for the httponly cookie. This advises the browser that Javascript processes should not be allowed to inspect this cookie value. We've updated the CFCOOKIE tag. Core cookies such as CFID and CFTOKEN have this flag automatically set from now on.
• New Function: SetCookie()
  To facilitate the setting of cookies within CFSCRIPT blocks, we've added the SetCookie() function to the core language.
• New Function: WriteLog()
  We've added the WriteLog() function to the core language. This is similiar to the CFLOG function that lets you quickly and easily maintain log files both at the tag and script level.
• Updated: CFDUMP
  The tag CFDUMP has now got ABORT and OUTPUT support. This lets you quickly output the contents of the tag straight to a file for later viewing.
• New Function: WriteDump()
  We've added the WriteDump() function to the core language. This is similiar to the CFDUMP function that lets you quickly and easily inspect variables.
• New Function: DataSourceInfo()
  We've added the DataSourceInfo() function to the core language allowing you to inspect all the properties of a datasource.
• Function Rename: CsvRead() / CsvWrite()
  To be more consistant and on the recommendation of the CFML Conventional Wisdom, we've renamed our CSV handling functions to: CsvRead() and CsvWrite().
• Function Rename: AmazonXXXX()
  Following on, we've renamed all the Amazon functions by prefixing the 'Amazon' to them all. Amazon functions.

We've got a lot of exciting things still to be release under this 1.4 banner, so please keep the suggestions and feedback coming. But you can play with these now by downloading the nightly build.