ColdFusion 9

[PAlexC]

Sick, this thing is sick.

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/coldfusion9/

Bolt: New IDE built in Eclipse. Debug in the IDE. Integrates with Flash Builder 4, can access infrastructure elements through CF enterprise like Microsoft Sharepoint, Exchange, Office, .NET, Java Objects, IMAP.

Server:

• Office file interoperability to easily read, write and update spreadsheets
  Server Manager to centrally manage multiple ColdFusion servers, simplifying administration of your environment across clusters
• ColdFusion as a Service to access ColdFusion services through AMF and SOAP without writing CFCs
• Built in Adobe AIR Local/Remote Database Synchronization
• Object Relational Mapping to build database independent applications without writing SQL
• New AJAX controls including multimedia, mapping and more
• Enhanced Caching to improve performance of your ColdFusion applications

Supposedly there's a new cfmap tag to simplify adding Google maps to your applications as well.

Daddy wants. Daddy wants NOW!

[MyFriendIsATaco]

People use ColdFusion?

And no, I'm not really trying to be a smart ass, I just have never come across people that actually used it. What are the benefits of ColdFusion over any other server side language? Is it really quick? I couldn't imagine so since it's running on top of J2EE. I'm really just curious.

[Genesis F5]

Even after going to Adobe's site for it, I still don't understand what Coldfusion is useful for. I see buzzwords like "AJAX" and ".NET," but what does Coldfusion do for those?

edit: that part doesn't make sense now that I know it's more a full language than a management system.

[PAlexC]

People use ColdFusion?

Ha ha ha, yes. If I had a nickel... CF adoption is actually growing, has been for quite some time.

What are the benefits of ColdFusion over any other server side language? Is it really quick? I couldn't imagine so since it's running on top of J2EE.

Yeah, it runs on J2EE, CFC's and CFML templates get compiled to bytecode on first run, so it's quick. You can also run JSP on it, but I don't think anyone does.

Even after going to Adobe's site for it, I still don't understand what Coldfusion is useful for. I see buzzwords like "AJAX" and ".NET," but what does Coldfusion do for those?

It's a server-side scripting language, plain and simple. Needs a ColdFusion server to run, just like PHP. (There are open-source alternatives such as Blue Dragon.) Been around quite some time actually.

Adobe pitches CF as developer friendly, it takes a lot of mundane tasks and features, and builds them into the platform. A lot of functionality is encapsulated inside one tag (CFQuery, CFMap, CFMail, etc.) PHP and ASP usually require you to create connections and objects for databases, CF streamlines that. A lot of things handled by 3rd party extensions and frameworks are also native to CF. Real solid integration with Flex as well. Had server-side objects (CFC's) before the other languages as well, and they could automatically be exposed as web services.

The pitch is that it's faster to learn and develop for, which I find to be pretty accurate. The argument most people have against it, is that it isn't free.

I learned to build web apps for the first time using it. Adobe provided a great development environment and tutorials for noobs like myself, whereas PHP and ASP didn't have an organization supporting them the same way.

[Genesis F5]

Thanks, PAlexC. . After some more research, I found that it uses a tag-based markup like Flex, but haven't really been a fan of that type of language / format. If you've worked with it on a large scale, how does readability hold up?

[gerbick]

lord... it's been years since I used CF. I mean, since the 4.1 days... back in '99 or so. I was able to walk into CF, prototype an intranet project in mere days. Then in 4.5, they removed CFRegistry and I've never looked back...

But I can't say that CFML looked much like MXML.

[PAlexC]

Thanks, PAlexC. . After some more research, I found that it uses a tag-based markup like Flex, but haven't really been a fan of that type of language / format. If you've worked with it on a large scale, how does readability hold up?

No, it's not really like Flex at all.

I like the tag approach b/c when you have to set properties of something, they're simply attributes of the tag. Much easier to read, and cleaner. The CFMap demo video on Adobe labs is a really good example of why it's cleaner. Nested tags are easier to keep track of than child objects.

There's also CFScript, if you don't like the tag approach, and you can use both as you see fit.

Of course, the cleanest way, is to use CFC's and just invoke them, to keep your business logic out of the way.

CFQuery is also a revelation, that alone makes coding so much better. They're introducing application-level datasources in CF9, so you don't even need to provide a datasource name for each query anymore, provided you're working in an application scope.

[PAlexC]

Honestly, learning ColdFusion first...I find PHP to be a bit obtuse.

[EVPohovich]

Honestly, learning ColdFusion first...I find PHP to be a bit obtuse.

And from a PHP standpoint, I find CF to be rather chaotic...

True. I've only HAD to use it once in the last year, so it's just my narrow minded opinion.

[PAlexC]

The truth is, anything different than what you're used to seems odd or chaotic. I started on CF, so that's 'normal' to me.

But as I've gone over to PHP and ASP a bit, I appreciate the things that CF does automatically, or has built in. You can tell it's designed with the developer in mind, and I do really think it's easier to learn, and much faster to develop on, after doing a fair comparison.

But, again, it costs. Which is why people give it sh*t. And I can't exactly blame them when IIS/PHP are free.

Anyway, one of the neat new things is that all the CF functions can be invoked as a webservice. So you PHP application can use CFMail or CFChart or CFMap. Which is kinda neat.

They're also exposing CF functionality directly to Flex. So instead of calling a method in a cfc or cfm, you can just send the command directly to the server.

[MyFriendIsATaco]

I think you're trying to compare CF, which in my understanding, is more like a web framework for another language, but they base the entire language around this fact.

I think you could easily compare the ease of using ColdFusion with a framework like Django for Python. Not that it's really marketed the same, but it feels like it'd be in the same ballpark to me in features and exactly what it's geared towards. It's almost like a fancy shmancy markup language written on top of Java.

[PAlexC]

Eh, not really. It was originally conceived as its own language. The original parser was written in C. They switched to Java to make it cross-platform.

What they've done over the years is add elements to the language, that tackle common tasks you might use frameworks (or parts of) for, so some of that functionality was built-in.

[MyFriendIsATaco]

That's what I meant. It has the capabilities the most actual web frameworks provide, but in turn it is it's own language. So it still doesn't seem like anything special to me. Just one language geared towards the web.

Any benchmarks for CF?

[PAlexC]

Adobe publishes some info, but it's regarded as very fast. CF8 had a lot of performance tweaks, 9 is supposed to have more. If it doesn't beat ASP .NET, it keeps up. Definitely faster than PHP. Like .NET, templates get compiled to bytecode on their first run.

Just as I was searching for info, I saw that one of the new features in 9 is the ability to read/write cfm's and cfc's to a RAM disk. Though I'm sure that'll be disabled if you're on a shared hosting plan.

It's RAM hungry though, because of JRun sitting underneath it. I have CF8 Developer running on top of IIS on XP, sitting idle, haven't even hit my localhost today, and JRun is sucking down 268 MB of RAM.

Like I said, it's really designed around the developer. Working in CF is much quicker and straightforward, if you're not a VB Script programmer. I think, anyway, the learning curve is much shallower than PHP as well. The question is whether the features are worth the cost for you. Given the situations I find myself in, that's a clear yes.

Give it a whirl. Download the developer edition. It's got an installer that will automatically install and configure Apache if you don't have a webserver running locally.

[1stbite]

Angled bracket based tags are client side not server side.. that's like wearing your pants on the outside. Just wrong..

:-p

[MyFriendIsATaco]

I wonder how it fares up with Python. :P Everyone knows PHP is slow. How does it handle on *nix type environments? I've always through it was a Microsoft based thing like .NET. We stay away from any and all Windows environments when it comes to web servers. Mostly running home brewed Debian configs, and in our new office, we'll be setting up an Xserve for internal dev work.

[PAlexC]

It's as fast as the JRE is running in the host OS.

Again, the real benefit is the shortened development time. I evangelize it a bit, because its saved my ass a bunch of times, but by no means am I slamming ASP and PHP. Each has their pros and cons...but based on experience, I think CF has a lot of pros feature-wise.

We don't do a ton of web application stuff where I am, so it's good in that it's easy to pick up and leave off, with a shallow learning curve.

Wish I had an XServe to develop against.

[MyFriendIsATaco]

If you want short hand code, and powerful results, take a look into Django. For performance and flexibility, it's nowhere near in comparison to PHP or ASP. So all your pros for CF are built into Django, plus some. Oh, and it's free.

[PAlexC]

Django just seems like more of the same FOSS nonsense I don't have time to deal with. Install Python...OOPS, make sure it's the correct version? Oh, you're running IIS? Um...well we need to do a bit of dirty work, and the drivers for such and such database don't really work.

Lots of mix and match parts and configuring. Fine if you're choosing a platform for a single site / application you're got the resources to maintain and grow over time, but too much effort if you've got a billion other things going on and no IT staff. I spend enough time Googling 'how-to's".

When you're creating the concepts, writing the specs, doing the development AND responsible for the environment, along with doing BS projects in Captivate to pay the bills, and having to reign your incompetent SME's into writing learning objectives when they don't want to...the last thing I need is to make sure I've got 4-5 parts installed correctly and configured.

Writing server-side code is about 1/5th what I need to do on a weekly basis.

[MyFriendIsATaco]

You can have a Django app up and running in < 5 minutes on any system.

I will admit, I know nothing about deploying it from IIS. I've only ever used it with Apache + mod_python, but I'd imagine you need to do the same for Coldfusion as well. (A similar mod, I mean).

I've never had any issues with any drivers. You can use SQLite right out of the box, and the others just depend on what you want to use.

But again, this is just all because I can't stand the look of the CF syntax. Is it possible to write actual web applications with CF? Can you even do your typical "for" loops, manipulate string data, etc. Would you be able to write an ecommerce website? A blog? I've done some googling around, and I cannot find anything more advanced than pulling a query and spitting out the data into an HTML page. I can see the convenience by keeping the same tag syntax in everything, but beyond that, I can see it being a real mess. Maybe I'm just not seeing the right examples here.