Coldfusion integrates with most web standards and models
What is it?
Coldfusion is a development environment for building and deploying
web applications and web services. Now owned by Macromedia, it has
been integrated into Macromedia MX Studio, which includes
Dreamweaver and Flash.
Depending on your point of view, Macromedia's products either
vastly enrich your online experience, or hold everything up while
little fussy bits download.
Where did it originate?
Coldfusion is one of the oldest, best-established and most widely
used web application development tools. It was first released in
1995 by Allaire Corporation, whose founder Jeremy Allaire became
chief technology officer at Macromedia. It has now been fully
rewritten and re-engineered to become Coldfusion MX and has moved
to a Java-based architecture.
What is it for?
Coldfusion includes its own scripting language, a tag-based
language that handles low-level programming tasks automatically. It
has a suite of built-in application services and supports XML and
web services, along with built-in connectivity for most data
sources and a full-text search engine based on Verity.
Macromedia's JRun J2EE server is included, which offers support for
Java Server Pages and Enterprise Java Beans. Applications developed
using Coldfusion can also be deployed on IBM Websphere, Sun One,
and BEA Weblogic Java application servers.
What makes it special?
Coldfusion application components are self-documenting and
reusable. The latest version, MX 6.1, compiles from Coldfusion
Markup Language to Java byte code, which increases performance at
runtime without tying up the developer's time by going through an
intermediate step when Java code is generated and compiled, as in
previous versions.
How difficult is it to master?
Dreamweaver developers can pick up Coldfusion very quickly.
Although it contains many automated features, such as an
installation wizard, Macromedia promises to further simplify use
with every new release.
Where is it used?
According to Macromedia, Coldfusion is used by 10,000 companies and
300,000 developers. Users include DHL, Boeing, Pepsi and Michelin.
What systems does it run on?
Most flavours of Windows, Linux and Unix, Mac OS X and IBM z/Series
mainframes. Web server support includes Microsoft IIS, Sun
One/iPlanet, and Apache. JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) drivers
provide connectivity to Access, SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, and other
data sources.
Coldfusion integrates with all the major internet standards and
component models, including XML, Soap web services, Java, .net/Com
and Corba.
What is coming up?
Macromedia said the latest release of Coldfusion, MX 6.1, had
remedied the "dozens of areas where we had inadvertently broken
backward compatibility", making upgrades of Coldfusion 5 and 4.5
applications less problematic. Upgrading to 6.1 is free for those
already using MX.
Training
Coldfusion training is available from Macromedia and its training
partners and many independent training companies. However, the web
is full of Coldfusion news group and community sites sharing tips
and software components, including free tutorials. You can download
the developer's version of Coldfusion for nothing.
www.macromedia.comRates of pay
Coldfusion developers can expect to be paid between £25,000 and
£35,000. Jobs usually require HTML, XML and other web skills,
Dreamweaver and other Macromedia products, and sometimes databases.
Contractors can earn £200 a day and upwards. Sadly these rates are
much lower than in the dotcom boom, when in addition to paying
silly money, many employers were prepared to cross-train suitable
candidates in Coldfusion.