Cold Fusion Support

What is Cold Fusion?

Cold Fusion is a Web application development tool for people who want to use the Web to create dynamic-page applications and interactive Web sites on corporate intranets and the Internet. Cold Fusion gives developers a way to quickly build powerful Web applications which integrate with key server technologies such as relational databases and SMTP e-mail. 

Cold Fusion is designed to meet the particular needs of Web application developers. It offers a
straightforward server-side markup language, a powerful application server, and a complete framework for Web applications.

           What are dynamic-page Web applications?
In a traditional Web site, the Web pages are simple text documents marked with HTML. These pages are sent out to the user’s browser by the Web server as they are requested.

A Cold Fusion Web application begins with dynamic-page templates instead of static HTML documents. A template is simply a text file that contains both HTML and the Cold Fusion Markup Language (CFML). Instead of being sent directly to the user’s browser, templates are pre-processed by the Cold Fusion application server which generates an HTML page that is then sent to the user’s browser. CFML is to the Web server what HTML is to the browser.

Dynamic-page applications are now used for a wide variety of computing needs including online commerce, communication, collaboration, interactive Web sites and intranet systems.

How is Cold Fusion different than other Web application tools?
Cold Fusion takes a unique approach to Web application development which reflects our belief that creating sophisticated Web applications should not require advanced programming skills. Instead of requiring that developers become experts in complicated programming languages like Visual Basic, Java, or C++, Cold Fusion encapsulates the functionality provided by these languages into easy-to-understand server-side tags which look like HTML tags.

When you develop with Cold Fusion you design your application in the same way that your users will use it -- as pages. This approach makes the applications easier to develop, understand, and maintain.

Cold Fusion takes care of client state management, security, application deployment, database connections, and other low-level tasks. The ease-of-use achieved through the tag/page approach to programming does not diminish its power and flexibility. Cold Fusion’s server-side markup language offers all of the functionality you need to create sophisticated applications. For advanced developers with specific needs, Cold Fusion provides an open API to create your own tags.