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.

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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.