Brian Meloche's Blog I'll blog about ColdFusion, weight loss, podcasting and life with too many pets! :-)

Remember the other day when I said I was working this weekend? That's actually not an isolated event. I have to work almost every weekend, some weekends more than others. I have to do promotions to production environments on the weekend. This past weekend, I worked more than normal. Among other things, I was working on this...

Although I announced that the BIG project went live way back in November, some business issues prevented the full release of that project. It was pushed back several times, but finally went live as of this weekend. As of yesterday morning, a pilot program started for approximately 25 of our retail customers.

Just to review, we released a new version of our extranet that turns our ordering system to also take on drop shippers, and allows new types of content. It's nearly a complete rewrite. Is it a big system? Our existing system processed approximately 80% externally, and, with our inside sales team, accounts for almost 100% of our sales last year (sorry, can't tell you how much), and the new version will take over as our retail customers are slowly converted over the next two years. The primary technology, for both systems, is ColdFusion.

I can only describe the old system as spaghetti, whereas the new system is harmony. Back in May, I was skeptical about developing in OO, but I wouldn't develop any other way today. And, although skeptical in the beginning, I have grown to love Mach-ii.

I am long overdue discussing some of the many techniques I used in this project, many design based, and I will try to talk about them here.

For now... I am off to work!