Adobe Coldfusion is a programming platform released by JJ Allaire way back in 1995. Ever since its release, Coldfusion has continuously grown in popularity for various reasons. Coldfusion has changed hands since it was released, from Allaire to Macromedia, and now Adobe. According to statistics Coldfusion is extensively deployed among different organizations. In fact, Coldfusion is deployed to over 75% of the present Fortune 100 companies. If you want to know more about Adobe Coldfusion, then you have come to the right place as this article is going to serve as a Adobe Coldfusion overview.
As an introduction, Coldfusion is considered as a Rapid Application Development application. It is mainly used to create compelling and strong web-based applications. Also, Coldfusion acts like a language and an application server at the same time, and it’s great at doing it. Since it’s built on a Java J2EE platform, it is able to offer portability, scalability and fast rendering, which is one of the reasons why it is very popular with a deployment that spans across the globe.
As of now, Coldfusion is available in two editions. There are the Enterprise and Standard. The Enterprise Edition is the perfect solution for web application development as it is able to deliver multiple web applications. Standard Edition is more or less the same with the Enterprise, except the Standard edition does not have the feature for managing multi-application environments.
Why Coldfusion?
This brings us to the next subject, why would you choose to deploy keyword? This section of the article is going to discuss a few of the many benefits of keyword.
Some of the most popular sites using Adobe Coldfusion:
As a start, Coldfusion is one of the easiest and fastest way of building complex web applications. Furthermore, application development with Coldfusion offers fast development times and lower cost when compared to other technologies that is available in the market right now.
Another great advantage of Coldfusion is its ability to integrate with a wide range of web platforms and applications. There are only a handful of platforms out there that are able to match or surpass the level of language-level integration offered by Codlfusion. With Coldfusion, you are able to send an http request, file operations, fetch data, generate PDF’s, send an email or LDAP “talking”; and we are barely scratching the surface of what it can do.
Let’s talk more about the integration capabilities of Coldfusion. As a start, Coldfusion is able to “talk” with a Java portlet server, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Exchange and LDAP. If you need to integrate .NET or Java projects into your applications, Coldfusion can do it. You need you talk to cell phones or printers through SMS? Then Coldfusion is able to do it. Most importantly, with Coldfusion, you do not have to spend a dime on third-party tools or waste time searching, installing and integrating third-party tools.
A Few Disadvantages
Like most things, Coldfusion has its downsides. Below are a few of them:
Comes With A Price Tag – since Coldfusion is largely a commercial product, this means that you will have to spend money to use it. It’s relatively expensive in a way that its competitors are open source or free. However, most open source or free applications are built separately. Meaning you have to integrate different applications and platform if you want the same kind of capabilities brought by Coldfusion.
Unusual Syntax – Coldfusion is known to use syntax that is considered as “unusual” for most programmers. For the most part, it can be tricky for programmers to get used to. However, once they get the hang of it, Coldfusion syntax confusion-related problems are a thing of the past.
Not A Flagship Product – as of now, Coldfusion is branded by Adobe. Adobe has a lot of different products such as Macromedia Flash and Adobe Photoshop. When it comes to their list of products, Coldufion is not considered as one of the their flagship products. For some, this could mean that Coldfusion does not have the kind of priority or importance. In reality, Coldfusion is already a great product by itself and the amount of attention given to it by Adobe is fitting.
Coldfusion is an application platform primarily used for creating web-based applications. It offers easy usability, relatively economical and highly integratable. On the downsides, it comes with a price tag and may have unusual syntax. All in all, Coldfusion is still worth getting. As most would say, 75% of the Fortune 100 companies couldn’t be wrong for deploying Coldfusion.
Links: http://coldfusion-development.blogspot.com/2009/03/advantages-and-disadvantages-of.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_ColdFusion