[WEB4LIB] Re: Cold Fusion question

[Brian Westra]

I'd like to echo Chris's points. I've used it for several applications,
including a newspaper index with approximately 200,000 records. Some of
the criticisms of ColdFusion seem rather weak, though I do realize there
are benefits to an open-source approach.

I also wanted to mention that ColdFusion Express is a free version of
ColdFusion that Allaire has made available. 

http://www2.allaire.com/products/coldfusion/cfexpress/

It does not support the full set of tags and functionality of ColdFusion,
but it's a great way to experiment with it without the time limitations
imposed by their 30-day evaluation version for the full application. Those
that use Homesite as their HTML editors may already know that it will work
quite well for ColdFusion Express.

Brian Westra
Assistant Professor/Reference Librarian            westra at montana.edu
Montana State University Libraries                 (406)994-5298
P.O. Box 173320
Bozeman, MT 59717-3320


On Fri, 21 Jan 2000, Chris Poterala wrote:

> There's a lot to CF beyond simply running a query and spitting those
> results back to the client.  CF works splendidly with COM objects, has no
> problem with Java or Javascript, integrates just fine with ASP, heck, it
> does a bunch of stuff, and does it well.
> 
> You're right about CF's attractiveness to "non-programmers."  I like the
> tag methodology for programming in CF; it's similar to HTML in that
> respect and that similarity provides a great deal of comfort to those
> learning it.  That being said, sharing a tag-based methodology gets
> confused with "it's like HTML" and that sometimes hurts CF when discussing
> it with folks who have never heard of it but assume it can't be robust.
> HTML is a mark-up language, CF is a programming language that's written as
> if it were a mark-up language.  
> 
> CF does EXACTLY what you mention; generate HTML on the fly from result
> sets generated from data returned by a query.  It IS an application
> server.
> 
> I've been fighting the "It's lightweight, it doesn't scale well" arguments
> for too long.  CF will work with any ODBC compliant datasource, be that
> Access, Oracle, SQL Server, etc.
> 
> Detractors of CF that I've met seem to normally come from the
> Perl/Unix/C++/ASP side of the fence, poo-pooing CF as some sort of sickly
> cousin.  An application server shouldn't have to be difficult to program
> in and CF's "ease of use" almost seems to clouds its strengths.  
> 
> If you want to check out case studies on CF, visit Allaire's site at
> http://www.allaire.com.
> 
> Cheers,
> Chris
> 
> Chris Poterala, web developer/project manager
> cpoteral at ford.com          -  Ford Motor Company
> potsie at alumni.si.umich.edu -  Public Affairs New Media
> Voice: (313) 594-0850
> 
>