What Is ColdFusion?

ColdFusion is an application server and software language used for Internet application development. Such as ASP, JSP and PHP. The Scripting Language is called ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML).

The main advantage of ColdFusion is it’s simplicity, wich has also has been it’s main target for criticism. The CFML looks like HTML syntaxes, wich is a main advantage for newbies who just learnt HTML.But it main advantage comes with all it’s features. Well, let’s take a look at it’s Release History to give you an idea of what i’m talking about.

1995 : Allaire Cold Fusion version 1.0
1996 : Allaire Cold Fusion version 1.5
1996 : Allaire Cold Fusion version 2.0
1997-Jun : Allaire Cold Fusion version 3.0
1998-Jan : Allaire Cold Fusion version 3.1
1998-Nov : Allaire ColdFusion version 4.0 (space eliminated between Cold and Fusion to make it ColdFusion)
1999-Nov : Allaire ColdFusion version 4.5
2001-Jun : Macromedia ColdFusion version 5.0
2002-May : Macromedia ColdFusion MX version 6.0 (build 6,0,0,48097), Updater 1 (build 6,0,0,52311), Updater 2 (build 6,0,0,55693), Updater 3 (build 6,0,0,58500)
2003-Oct : Macromedia ColdFusion MX version 6.1 (build 6,1,0,63958), Updater 1 (build 6,1,0,83762)
2005 : Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7 (build 7,0,0,91690), 7.0.1 (build 7,0,1,116466), 7.0.2 (build 7,0,2,142559)
2007-Jul-30 : Adobe ColdFusion 8 (build 8,0,0,176276)
2008-Apr-04 : Adobe ColdFusion 8.0.1 (build 8,0,1,195765)

(taken from Wikipedia)

The interesting thing is that Allaire became Macromedia became Adobe, something ironic considering that Macromedia and Adobe were competiting agains each other (as ironic as seeing Autodesk Maya on Shelves). A good thing for ColdFusion, wich now has many of Macromedia ‘s trademarks like Flash Forms and Flash Charts integrated into it as well as Adobe’s Image processing. Besides that, ColdFusion runs on Java, meaning that it can work on different Platforms. As for Database integration, ColdFusion is able o communicate with Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, Microsoft Access and many others, but if that isn’t enough ColdFusion also supports ODBC. The only thing that bothers me about ColdFusion is the Price, it’s quite Expensive.

Let me show you a Hello World Script below :

[sourcecode language=’coldfusion’]

Hello World

[/sourcecode]

Having used ColdFusion for 2.5 years by myself, i have to say that the abilities of ColdFusion still suprise me. Hopefully i can share more of my knowledge of using ColdFusion in my next Posts, in the How To Category.