Category Archives: ColdFusion

ColdFusion is a product that belongs to Macromedia. Macro media has over the years been able to come up with products that suit the current needs of developers. However, it has not been an easy ride in the market due to the presence of other developer tools in the market which have almost the same architecture and capabilities as ColdFusion. Products such as Microsoft Visual Studio among others have been some of the sources of competition to Macromedia’s ColdFusion. The biggest war has however been the ColdFusion vs. Ruby On Rails. Ruby on Rail, which is commonly refer to as Rail is an opens system source web application that is written on Ruby. Ruby is therefore the programming language upon which Rail is written. Rails is a full search framework that emphasizes on the use of well known softwares engineering patterns as well as paradigms. These may include Coc, DRY, MVC and active record period. ColdFusion vs. Ruby on Rails is a battle which might have to continue as both product developers continue coming up with improved features to be able to handle the current developers needs which for sure are quite different from the needs that were there some times back.

It has now been sometimes since Macromedia released what can be termed as the most important and ambitious ColdFusion ever. This came in the form of the ColdFusion MX. When you consider the scope of undertaking, ColdFusion MX has for sure had incredible success. This product has given developers new capabilities. The move that was made to the java based architecture has greatly helped developers increase their performance and also given the developers numerous deployment options. The Cold Fusion MX was then followed by an upgraded model in the form of ColdFusion MX 6.1 which is even faster, simpler and more powerful if you compare it to other developer tools. ColdFusion has several advantages as well as disadvantages.

Some of the most popular sites using Ruby On Rails.

Twitter.com
Shopify.com
Groupon.com

Advantages of Cold Fusion

With ColdFusion, you can build and deploy powerful web applications and web services. This is possible with less training time and fewer line codes than other tools. It also delivers simplified installations and migrations as well as streamlined product family. With this features the developer can be able to deliver very fast due to the simplicity. In addition to that the ColdFusion product is known to have high run time that is needed in development. This makes the process not only fast and easy but also simple. This has been one of the major reasons why many developers prefer it especially the ColdFusion MX 6.1 over other tools. In additions to this Cold Fusion allows you to program in either tag or script based syntax. Both are very easy to learn meaning that you won’t spend a lot of time learning how to do it. The other advantage is that it is a cross platform which supports a variety of platforms. Anything that runs Java can run ColdFusion. Windows, Unix Macs and Linux are all capable of running ColdFusion. Below are some of the main advantages of ColdFusion over Ruby and Rails.

• High Runtime Performance
• Reliable
• Simpler
• Cross platform
• Easy coding

Disadvantages of ColdFusion

Despite the known pros, ColdFusion has some disadvantages. The first one is cost. ColdFusion is expensive to purchase if you intend to run the product on your own server. Enterprise is the most expensive with the Professional Version being the cheapest. However you can also get a Developer version for free if you want to try it out or set it up on your own development machine. If you intend to use hosting provider then the cost will be very high. The other disadvantage of ColdFusion is that it is a commercial product. If open source is important to you then know that with ColdFusion you will not have the ability to tinker with engine they same way you could do it with PNP or Ruby on Rails. The main disadvantages of ColdFusion are listed below;

• Expensive
• Commercial product
• Does not allow tinkering

Cold Fusion provides the developer with a fantastic architecture that can be used for various applications across various platforms. In addition to that, the coding is easy and the time required to learn to use it is also shortened. Despite the cons that are associated with this product it is still a tool that you as a developer should try out.

Any type of migration starts with getting a better understanding of how each capability of the source system map towards every capability of the target system. Does there happen to be any missing functionality within the target system that could possibly require added purchase of an entire set of third party components? Are there any substantial capabilities the target system may give off? The purpose of this paper is to give a comparative of the capabilities of ColdFusion MX by Macromedia to ASP.NET of Microsoft on the note of a solid application development framework. As such, we will examine how certain common tasks are done through each and get a clearer view on the similarities and differences on these two contending platforms.

Architectural Framework Comparison

The most rudimentary of all architectural niceties between ColdFusion MX and ASP.NET would be its underlying framework to which each is based on. ColdFusion MX is based on Java that runs on top of the JRun server by Macromedia. It also benefits several other industry standard J2EE app servers. All CFML pages undergo parsing and conversion into Java-based source code at runtime. It then gets compiled as Java bytecode before its execution. Once the initial compilation is completed, the cached bytecode designated for a page will be re-executed even without further compilation or parsing.

On the other hand, ASP.NET stands by the .NET Framework of Microsoft. The same thing applies at runtime; all ASP.NET pages created undergo parsing and source code conversion for a compatible language — oftentimes C# Microsoft Visual Basic .NET. Compilation into Microsoft Intermediate Language or MSIL, a bytecode independent from a processor and akin to Java bytecode, follows. This MSIL will be compiled for native machine coding as preparation for execution. The cached NMC for every page will be re-executed even without further compilation or parsing.

Basically, we can see a common pattern between the two platforms with its methodologies and procedural movements in terms of source coding and data parsing.

The Pros

For all we know, ColdFusion has a lot in its arsenal that makes it worth migrating to from your current ASP.NET platform. First to note would be it custom tag features of ColdFusion that greatly resemble the user controls that of ASP.NET’s. Unlike the user control, custom tags allow the user to mark up HTML and send its output into the browser. They can also give full-fledged control over objects with their own unique methods and properties. In a strong sense do these custom tags outrun the capacities of ASP.NET’s user controls.

Newly introduced for ColdFusion MX would be the ColdFusion Components or CFCs in short represent the very first real step designed for the platform to revolutionary functionalities such as encapsulation and other maintenance and flexibility advantages of a real object-edged system. CFCs are able to run multiple instances altogether on one page, with every instance having its exclusive data contained therein the same way it can easily maneuver its own contents.

Also, the omnipresent acceptance of ColdFusion doesn’t just come out of blind faith of the users. It is backed by other evident advantages of the platform, which would include its system being fairly easy to learn and adapt, allowing developers to get up to speed on CFScript and CFML in a matter of days or weeks should they be oriented to the basics of Java.

The Cons

While the ColdFusion platform does seem to be promising, you can’t really have it all. Just as ASP.NET has its own basket of erratum, ColdFusion has a few noticeable drawbacks. One of which would be its stringent demand for system memory, particularly on CFML engine integration. It does have a memory quantum compared to the typical C++ and on the usual, it would take around 2GB of permgen memory for its operational efficiency to manifest. Also, it lacks support sources from the open source community itself, which from time to time may require the user to work things around on his own. Empirical attempts to accurately put it.

The Verdict

Overall, migrating from ColdFusion to ASP.NET is considerably a simple task to undertake. It can be pretty straightforward throughout the process, especially if you first settle with the basic features and functionality of it. After all, there’s plenty of time to learn and it takes a meager of time to actually take in the gist of other boons and essential elements in ColdFusion’s reservation.

Sources:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa479305.aspx

http://vschart.com/compare/coldfusion/vs/asp-net-mvc-framework

https://www.farbeyondcode.com/Pros-and-Cons-of-CFML-vs-PHP-and-other-languages-5-2878.html