LiveCycle Data Services used to be separate from CF. Now they are together, so you don’t have to configure the RMI to have them talk to each other.

With it, using AS3 and Flash Remoting, you can do stuff like invoke CFC methods from within ActionScript!  No Flex server is involved.

Messaging. Publish and subscribe. I say hello and everyone will listen to me. Someone says goodbye and I hear, and know not to talk to them anymore. ColdFusion can be both a Producer and a Consumer. Publish with sendGatewayMessage() and subscribe with an event gateway CFC.

New in CF8? Faster. Now uses Java API instead of that RMI.  Starting with CF8, it is included right in the CF installer. An express version comes right with CF8.

Not many notes on this, I wasn’t following too closely since we won’t be getting LCDS, at least not until I’m more heavy into Flex.