Access & Cold Fusion - responses

[Julie Castelluzzo]

Thanks very much to everyone who responded to my query last week.  The
request was for comments from people who have used Microsoft Access with
Cold Fusion to allow searching a database from web browsers on an
Intranet. The overall reaction was very positive. A few people mentioned
potential problems with doing database input via the Web, and
high-traffic situations.  Below are the responses.

Julie

Julie Castelluzzo          juliec at cooper.edu
Electronic Services Librarian
The Cooper Union Library   www.cooper.edu/facilities/library/library.html
_____________________________________

The combination worked out very well for me.
http://www.virtuallibrarian.com/gangs
and
http://www.virtuallibrarian.com/legal ->search

I used this combo to create searchable databases on URLS I've accumulated.
Cold Fusion is rather straight forward and easy to learn, and works well
with Homesite web page creator.
___________________________

I have used Cold Fusion to mount a Microsoft Access database on a Web
platform and found it to be a very useful product. The best way to check
if
it is what you want is to try it out, particularly in terms of the amount
of
work you expect it to do. Allaire has a fully functional 30 day trial
version
that you can download from their Web site (www.allaire.com).

My experience with Cold Fusion has been positive and this has been
confirmed
by most, if not all of the reviews I have seen for this product. You can
use
the wizards or tweak the code through a text editor. Its markup language
(cfml)  uses a combination of HTML and SQL-like queries and is relatively
easy to manipulate.

The online help is not as good as it could be, but the manuals shipped
with
the CD-ROM are very good. There also are a number of books available on
the
market, an example is Cold Fusion Intranet Development Kit by John R.
Desborough.  I have seen others as well.
__________________

I am using Cold Fusion Professional under NT 4.0, with Access for Windows
95, and I love it!  I have four or five databases connected to our web
page, as well as several intranet applications that I have developed.
Cold
Fusion is easy to use, fast, and quite powerful.  You don't need to really
be a programmer to use it - it is all tag based, just like HTML.  I've
also
found that the support forums at Allaire's homepage are an excellent means
to get questions answered fast (and free).

I have heard that Access does not handle high traffic very well, but I
have
never had any problems with it.
___________________

We've used a Cold Fusion/Access combination to make a number of databases,
including bibliographic data, available on the Web (though not yet in
high-use areas). The best feature, from my point of view, has been the
highly customizable .cfm files or templates to deliver the data in web
pages; the weakest aspect is the lack of access control, ironically, with
Access. If you're looking to implement distributed database maintenance
(though it doesn't sound like you are) then this may not be the best
combination -- currently we're looking at moving to another database
backend. I would say overall, though, that we've been impressed.
____________________

I've been using Cold Fusion extensively for the last year. I am very VERY
happy with the product. Access data sources should be adequate to the task
as long as you are not expecting high, concurrent traffic, in which case
you
need to use SQL server (regardless of whether you choose Cold Fusion, ASP,
etc).

My top three reasons are: great support-- you are buying a community of
developers when you buy CF (I've never had to pay for support), very rapid
development with easy syntax, efficient code with error messages that
actually tell you something (as compared to ASP). Oh, and the price is
good.

No, I don't work for 'em.
__________________

At the University of Kansas Libraries, we designed a document
delivery/interlibrary request system using Cold Fusion and Access.
Basically, it allows students and faculty  of a KU satellite campus
library to electronically submit requests for books and other items owned
by the KU main campus library. The Cold Fusion forms allow the user to
submit their personal address information along with their bibliographic
citation for the item they are requesting. The address data is stored in
Access tables, where it can be retrieved by Cold Fusion the next time the
user wants to submit a request (it eliminates a lot of extra data entry
for the user).  It was initially a large programming project, but it works
well for a satellite campus of about 2,500 students and faculty.
_________________

We are evaluating Cold Fusion as well.  I'm sure it will be fine for
searching, especially if it is not a heavily used database.  Our concern
is for adding and updating records using Access.  If you get private
responses that address this question (especially if someone talks about
data corruption), could you please let me know.  We are concerned if 2
people update at the same time, since through ODBC, the server knows
only 1 user.  Access is not a multiuser system in this case.
________________

We have been using Cold Fusion for about a year now.  Personally I think =
it
is great.  It is easy to use (especially if your have an IT backgound) an=
d
price is OK.  We have been hosting the local community library's director=
y
<http://library.macarthur.uws.edu.au/community/campbelltown/> with not
problems.
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