ColdFusion: With ColdFusion, you can build and deploy powerful web applications and services with far less training time and fewer lines of code than ASP, PHP, and JSP. Version 7.0 introduces powerful new application services including rich Flash forms generation, structured reports, and dynamic generation of printable documents. Coupled with version 6.1’s simplified installation and migration, updated key features, and increased in runtime performance, these features open up a new world of applications beyond the browser.
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What is ColdFusion?
ColdFusion is a program based on the CFMX programming language that builds and deploys powerful web applications and services. With proven tag-based methodology, ColdFusion’s features allow web developers to easily harness the power of the Java Platform to deliver powerful Internet applications to millions of people worldwide. ColdFusion is a server side language, which is executed by a ColdFusion application server. It works by executing CFM templates (which is a mixture of HTML and ColdFusion instructions) to return normal HTML to the requesting browser. The ColdFusion MX Enterprise software suite provides all the necessary software to create large-scale websites, applications, and hosting environments, and is available for either a stand-alone installation for web developers or for industry-level deployment on J2EE application servers.
The true power of ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML)
The core functionality of ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML) is centered on the use of tags. These server scripting tags give ColdFusion its speedy development applications for the web. CFML is quite simple to learn, but is powerful enough to handle even the most complex and demanding web applications. Processed entirely on the server, CFML uses syntax closely resembling that of HTML and XML. CFML consists of two primary language elements: tags and functions. Tags let you perform operations such as accessing a database. Functions can return data and do other operations like retrieving the system date. Tags, functions and operators make up expressions. Building expressions in ColdFusion is easy and can include simple as well as complex elements. The ways in which these expressions and elements are used determine how ColdFusion processes your program.
Is ColdFusion easy to learn?
Out of the many different methods used to develop and build web applications, pages, and services, ColdFusion is by far the easiest to learn and use. For ColdFusion 7.0, Macromedia has created a helpful ‘Getting Started Experience’ interface that gives the new user access to tutorials, whitepapers, topic index, and even two sample applications to play with.
There is no other language or product as well suited to web developers as ColdFusion. Easy-to-use visual tools and an intuitive server scripting environment allow new users to easily pick up the CFML language.
Windows, UNIX, or Linux…which Should I Use To Run My Website?
Macromedia ColdFusion MX supports most operating systems including Windows, Unix, Linux, IBM AIX and HP-UX. Below is a list of operating system versions and system requirements for the latest ColdFusion version:
Windows OS Intel Pentium processor or higher 256 MB RAM but 512 MB is highly recommended 400 MB of hard disk space available Works on MS Windows 98 / ME / NT 4 / SP6A / 2000 /SP3 / XP/ 2003
Linux OS Intel Pentium processor or higher 256 MB RAM but 512 MB is highly recommended 400 MB of hard disk space available Red Hat Linux 7.2 / 7.3 / 8.0 / 9 / AS & ES 2.1 / AS & ES 3.0 SuSE Linux 7.2 / 7.3 / or 8X Turbo Linux 8 Server ( Japanese Only)
Unix SPARC, PA-RISC 1.1 / 2.0 / Power 3 processor Sun Solaris 7 / 8 / 9 256 MB RAM but 512 MB is highly recommended 400 MB of hard disk space available HP-UX 11i IBM AIX 5L 4.3 / 3 / 5.1 / 5.2 Apple Mac OS X
What Databases and Web Servers are supported with ColdFusion?
ColdFusion MX supports most major databases including Microsoft SQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, IBM DB2, Sybase and IBM Informix. In addition, CFMX can run on most major web servers including IIS, Apache and Sun One.
What are the differences between the ColdFusion 7.0 editions?
Standard Edition: This edition is for single web application or small workgroup environments. It builds accessible, high-quality rich forms, transforms existing HTML content into PDF or FlashPaper 2 formats, creates structured business reports for workgroup applications, delivers charts and graphs, and increases text searching capabilities.
Enterprise Edition: This edition is ideal for the quickly growing business. It includes all the features of the Standard Edition as well as scalability, performance, and enterprise management capabilities for larger web and business applications. The Enterprise Edition has multi-instance deployment and management, clustering, high-speed enterprise database drivers, server security J2EE packaging and deployment, and high-performance e-mail delivery. Yet the most anticipated feature of this edition is the event gateway, which enables ColdFusion applications to connect to mobile phones and instant messaging.
How does ColdFusion run on application servers?
The ColdFusion MX runtime environment is actually a Java application that takes advantage of the many powerful services in the J2EE platform. What this J2EE platform does is connects the various databases, manages its own security, as well as processes the requests sent in by the application itself. When ColdFusion MX is installed in the J2EE configuration, the compiled infrastructure will be on top of the application server in order to execute the language’s applications. This configuration will allow developers to cultivate and set out pages, as well as manage the MX server settings using the ColdFusion Administrator.
What are the advantages & disadvantages of using custom tags in ColdFusion?
Using custom tags within ColdFusion has its advantages and disadvantages. Custom tags written in CFML primarily try to achieve a simple balance between three aspects; taking argument statements, having body tags begin and end with the appropriate tag, and ensuring proper processing when a beginning tag is encountered by the ColdFusion program. If designed properly, these custom tags will also be able to be called recursively (meaning that it will have the functionality to call itself within the body tag). Although a custom tag in ColdFusion will call a page included the CFinclude tag, the disadvantage is that the code must be recursive, have developed complex functionality, and must be convenient for others (although often times code is not convenient). If creating either a User Defined Function (UDF) or a custom CFML tag, weigh the options carefully, since invoking a UDF requires less system overhead than using a custom tag.
What are the new features for ColdFusion 7.0?
ColdFusion 7.0 brings a whole new level of features to developers. With better web application creation, new server management and deployment options, and a new class of applications, users are able to quickly create powerful Internet applications without spending a lot of time or money.
Macromedia developed the new features to help web developers be more efficient in performing routine tasks such as structured business reporting, Flash-rich forms, and PDF and FlashPaper 2 document generation. ColdFusion Report Builder, a tool that helps users develop detailed business reports, will create sub reports, charts and graphs, automatically generate subtotals, and much more. ColdFusion 7.0 simplifies the form building process with the new Rich Flash and XML Forms capabilities. The new CFDOCUMENT feature eliminates chopping page printing with a single tag that transforms web pages into PDF or FlashPaper 2 formats.
How do I purchase my own copy of ColdFusion?
The ColdFusion MX suite is available directly from Macromedia, local computer software resellers, licensing programs and some web hosts.
Microsoft FrontPage – An Introduction
Microsoft's FrontPage editing tool is one of the most commonly used web site editing tools today. It is easy to learn and offers the flexibility to manage your website as it grows. Novice users are able to create attractive and functional websites, while more advanced users can accomplish more robust tasks such as working with CGI scripts and modifying the actual HTML of the web pages.
FrontPage is designed as a WYSIWYG application. WYSIWYG is an acronym for "What You See Is What You Get". This means you basically draw your web pages as you want them to look and FrontPage generates the appropriate HTML to accomplish the task. It is a well-designed Web page editor loaded with easy-to-use options and page elements that allow users to create a decent Web site quickly. The application is designed to mimic Microsoft Office in look and feel, while allowing users to easily build Web pages with drag-and-drop functionality. With the software installed on a user's computer, they can quick develop Web documents with elements drawn from other Office documents.
As your website grows the content contained within the site can become difficult to keep updated. Keeping your sites content current is a time consuming task, often considerably larger than the initial development of the site. The use of FrontPage provides users with the power to easily manage content on a site-wide basis instead of on a page-by-page basis. This eases the normally daunting task of website management.
What makes FrontPage different from other Web design software is the inclusion of unique server extensions that support special features that are not available with other Web design utilities. For example:
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'Publish' your website directly to your account, without any need for FTP.
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FrontPage's 'Web-Bots' make it easy to place things such as forms and guest books on a site without having to learn complex scripting.
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Edit your site 'on the fly', meaning that FrontPage can log you directly into your site on the server to edit the pages in real time, rather than having to make changes locally and then re-upload all the changed files.
FrontPage Server Extensions are server-side components that let FrontPage interact directly with the Web server. Most web-hosting providers offer FrontPage Server Extensions to their customers as an integrated part of their hosting packages. Server extensions are native to the Windows hosting platform, but are also widely available on various Unix hosting platforms as well. Through the server extensions, users can upload and maintain their Web site directly through the FrontPage application, without the need for a separate FTP application. Web authors can also utilize other innovative features, such as traffic reports that can be generated daily, weekly or month. These reports can track hits, referred domains, and search strings. The software also allows Web authors to develop database-driven Web sites. The Database Interface Wizard simplifies the creation of dynamic databases that can interact with the Web site.
This is just a touch of what FrontPage can do. By using the features of FrontPage to your advantage, you can easily make the creation and maintenance of your website a much simpler task.
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