Adobe ColdFusion Server Professional Edition 5.0 (License Only) for Unix

I have been developing Web-database integration as well as e-commerce applications with ColdFusion for three years. Having formerly performed these tasks with Perl/CGI, or even C/CGI, I can appreciate the ease of creating new web applications from scratch with ColdFusion. ColdFusion is a web application server running on different platforms, offering web-database access and integration, allowing real-time dynamic applications.

ColdFusion 4.0 is definitely the way to go for E-commerce B2B and B2C solutions. It is a tag-based scripting language - allowing you to seamlessly access and process data within your HTML code. Not only can you use the existing CFML tags, you can also create new custom tags in Visual C++ or Java. ColdFusion also runs on many different servers, so that you won't have to necessarily change your development environment. Accessing ODBC datasources and native drivers, data access will not be an issue with ColdFusion. Perhaps most importantly, Allaire Corporation remains absolutely committed to ColdFusion as their flagship product, both adding to their product line around such as well as incorporating ColdFusion into all new products.

Because CFML is tag-based, it is easy to take an HTML developer and within a matter of days get him/her started writing ColdFusion applications. Not only is the learning curve short, it keeps going up after a small amount of time. Because of this - not only will your new developers get started quickly, but also they will quickly advance into the realm of powerful e-commerce applications.

Sometimes the product you are using, although powerful, does not yet have available the one short cut you really need as a developer. Enter ColdFusion custom tags. These tags are created in Visual C++ or Java and compiled as .dll's, to be stored in the custom tag directory. With these files, you are able to create tags which perform multiple operations and also take parameters! These tags are sometimes also available via the ColdFusion developer community for freeware or shareware download.

ColdFusion is server-based - this means that browser compatibility is not an issue. As of 4.0, ColdFusion server is running on Windows, HP-UX, and Solaris. Version 4.5 - released in January - offers its services via Linux as well. Allaire Corporation currently has a beta version of a Unix version in development, which will allow ColdFusion to run on most flavors of Unix (Sun OS, AT&T, etc.) This is definitely a cost-effective solution - you don't need to change your development environment just because you want to start using ColdFusion. Also, many hosting companies now offer ColdFusion-enabled hosting for as little as $40/month. For a small-budget company, or if you're not sold on the product at once, this offers a way to still develop ColdFusion applications without all of the software cost.

An obviously important question is to ask about data access via ColdFusion. Version 4.0 Enterprise offers native drivers for Oracle, Sybase, Informix, and MS SQL Server. Perhaps more importantly, CFML offers ODBC drivers for just about any other database - MS Excel and MS Access just to name a few. You can set up these drivers via the ColdFusion administrator - a web-based application written in ColdFusion - or you can set them up (on NT) through control panel/32 bit ODBC Datasources, and the administrator will read them for availability just fine.

Allaire Corporation has added several products to their line which compliment ColdFusion. ColdFusion Studio is the primary, and a great resource to use while developing web applications. Studio allows Remote Data Sources, keyword Highlighting and shortcuts, project planning, CFML documentation, as well as their award-winning HomeSite product built within as the HTML editor. Allaire recently bought JRun, which owns 80% of the Java Servlet Market. In future versions of Studio and JRun, there will be interconnectivity focusing on leveraging the power of Java with the ease of ColdFusion Tags.

In January, Allaire came out with Spectra, their web application and content management system. Spectra is a complete web solution, built with ColdFusion. It offers everything from e-commerce to online administration to security. Spectra is based on the Content Object Database Model, creating web content objects. It focuses on scalability and code reuse - both primary objectives of object-oriented programming. Spectra is definitely for the advanced ColdFusion developer, and definitely worthwhile.

There are many other advantages to ColdFusion. The developer community is growing rapidly, as is the number of web sites being created using ColdFusion. With the relative ease of learning, speed of development, inexpensive cost, I have not seen a better solution for custom development of web/database applications. As great as the last three years of been for me with ColdFusion, I see the future as even brighter.