Introduction to ColdFusion Yu Fu 2003 MEC Candidate

2 Agenda What is ColdFusion Core Components & Features Some Statistics Limitations Latest Development Conclusion

3 What Is ColdFusion A commercial Web application development environment Created by Allaire Corp., owned by Macromedia Inc. since 2001 Available on Windows, Unix and Linux Three editions Developer, Standard, Enterprise Not cheap $1000 plus for standard edition $4000 plus for enterprise edition

4 Competitors CGI ASP PHP J2EE.NET

5 Core Components ColdFusion Application Server ColdFusion Administrator ColdFusion Studio ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML)

6 ColdFusion Application Server A middleware between Web server and other servers like database, , LDAP, FTP, etc. The engine/processor of CFML Parse ColdFusion application pages, which contain CFML and HTML tags and saved with file extension.cfm, to generate dynamic HTML documents

7 How It Works (Source: Macromedia® ColdFusion® MX Development By Eric Ladd ) Macromedia® ColdFusion® MX Development

8 Features page cashing for short response time Load balancing for scalable performance and high throughput Automatic failover for reliability and availability Full-text indexing and searching Extensive support for third-party servers

9 ColdFusion Administrator It is a Web application written in CFML! A administration tool to configure and maintain ColdFusion Application Server Set up database source (DSN) Schedule ColdFusion application page execution Manage debug, session, security settings Checking server logs

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11 ColdFusion Studio An IDE (Integrated Development Environment) tool Make ColdFusion application development much easier for developers The part I like best Tons of CFML code examples Detailed documentation on CFML, HTML, CSS, etc. Global search and change

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13 CFML: ColdFusion Markup Language A server-side scripting language to create ColdFusion application pages (.cfm) It is a language created from XML Tag based All tags start with CF Intuitive and easy to learn if you know HTML

14 Some CFML tags CFSETDefines a variable. CFOUTPUTDisplays a variable. CFIF CFELSEIF CFELSEUsed to create IF-THEN-ELSE constructs. CFLOOPRepeats a set of instructions based on a set of conditions. CFMAILAssembles and posts an message. CFQUERYPasses SQL to a database. CFCOOKIEDefines and sets cookie variables. (Source: ColdFusion Documentation)

15 A Basic CFML Example Hi Message Hello, #Name#! Hi Message Hello, Fu Yu! Original CFML ScriptResult HTML document

16 CFML Cont’ Extensive features to build powerful Web applications FTP HTTP LDAP Full-text indexing/searching Encryption etc.

17 An Example Sending a simple <CFMAIL TO="#URL. #" SUBJECT="Sample " > This is a sample to show basic capability. Sample The was sent. (Source: ColdFusion Documentation)

18 CFML Cont’ Strongest point is database integration The least code amongst peers Dirty works are handled by ColdFusion Application Server

19 A Database Query Example Employee List Employee List SELECT FirstName, LastName, Salary, Contract FROM Employees #FirstName#, #LastName#, #Salary#, #Contract# (Source: ColdFusion Documentation)

20 CFML Cont’ Extensible through custom tags Java C++ Delphi CFML etc.

21 Some Statistics More than 125,000 ColdFusion servers deployed An estimated base of over 300,000 developers Purchased by more than 10,000 organizations, including 75 of the Fortune 100 companies Used to develop more than 19.7 million ColdFusion pages (Google) Global network of more than 360 user groups (Source: MacroMedia Inc.)

22 Limitations It is not free Business logic mixed with presentation markup So do CGI, PHP, ASP Not a issue for small and medium sized Web applications hard to maintain and enhance when logic becomes too complex J2EE and.NET do a better job here

23 Latest Development ColdFusion Application Server For J2EE A Java application which can be deployed on J2EE platform such as WebLogic, WebSpere, JRun, Sun ONE, JBoss, etc Compile ColdFusion application pages into Java byte codes Enhanced CFML to support JSP, Servlet and Web Services Latest version: MX 6.1

24 Conclusion ColdFusion is a easy-to-use and powerful platform to build small to medium sized Web applications with probably the shortest time to market ColdFusion is still evolving, ColdFusion + J2EE maybe a good bet

25 References ColdFusion Documentation inside ColdFusion Studio Macromedia® ColdFusion® MX Development by Eric Ladd ColdFusion MX and the J2EE Architecture White Paper. pdf/6_1/cfmx61_j2ee_arch_wp.pdf.

26 Q&A