Amazon.co.uk Review
Professional ColdFusion 5.0 is a chunky and comprehensive guide to Macromedia's Web application server. This book is suitable both for existing ColdFusion professionals and for those evaluating this technology against rivals such as Active Server Pages, JavaServer Pages and PHP.
ColdFusion is cross-platform, and integrates well with both COM on Windows and Java on any supported operating system. It has strong development tools, including ColdFusion Studio and Dreamweaver Ultradev, and following its acquisition by Macromedia these are likely to get better still.
The authors kick off with a Getting Started section, which explains installation, basic features and key tools such as the Application Manager and ColdFusion Studio. There is also a thorough explanation of CFML (ColdFusion Markup Language), the core tagging system. A section on database essentials covers a wide variety of database servers. The third section has chapters on state management, templates, error handling, scripting and drawing charts. XML and Web services gets a section of its own, followed by coverage of ColdFusion extensions using COM, Corba, Java and custom tags. The later parts of the book go into the detail of administration, such as scheduling tasks, logs and archives, clustering and load balancing, security, troubleshooting and optimisation. There is a brief case-study based on an auction site.
Packed with tips and example code, this is an excellent ColdFusion resource. It is disappointing to find nothing on Dreamweaver Ultradev, whereas the general material here on Cascading Stylesheets and Dynamic HTML can easily be found elsewhere. On the plus side, the chapters on administration are particularly valuable, and the authors do a good job of explaining ColdFusion from the ground up... but at a professional level. --Tim Anderson
Book Description
Macromedia ColdFusion is probably the most complete package of tools ever created for developing dynamic web applications. It runs on a number of operating systems, works with almost any web server, and integrates seamlessly with COM, CORBA and Java. The Enterprise edition comes with all the tools you need to create a robust, secure, and scalable web application, including full-text indexing, and clustering and load-balancing software. ColdFusion also has its own complete Integrated Development Environment, ColdFusion Studio, which provides just about all the features you can think of for creating, editing, and debugging ColdFusion templates. Perhaps most importantly, it's extremely easy to use.
This book covers: The new features of ColdFusion 5.0
Extending ColdFusion with Java, COM, and CORBA
Integrating ColdFusion with XML and WDDX
ColdFusion as a web service client and server
Creating mobile applications with WAP and WML
Optimizing the architecture and coding of your site for performance and security
Integrating ColdFusion with client-side technologies such as the DOM and JavaScript
Building CFX tags in Java and C++
Administrating your ColdFusion server
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