“ColdFusion is Alive and Well” – Interview with Matt Gifford, Fuzzy Orange Ltd

“ColdFusion is alive and well and is the best development language out there” says Matt Gifford, Web Developer from the U.K.

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Chances are if you’ve been in the Web space for awhile, then you’re familiar with ColdFusion from the early 1990’s. With the goal of providing you with an overview of the various development options available to Web developers and to update you with the latest resources available, I reached out to Matt Gifford, aka coldfumonkeh, Lead Developer with Fuzzy Orange Ltd. Matt specializes in ColdFusion, Flex and AIR development.

In this five minute interview, Matt shares is views on the benefits of developing in Cold Fusion and the size and scope of the “800,000 developer” community.

“Cold Fusion is the best development language out there and the Cold Fusion community is the friendliest and the most helpful” says Matt.

A special shout out to Matt for his support for the Web professional community and for being the great guy that he is.

More about Matt

Matt is the author of “Object-Oriented Programming in ColdFusion”, published by PackT publishing. He presents regularly at national and international conferences, user groups and online meetings, and has written tutorials and articles for online resources and leading UK industry magazines.

As an Adobe Community Professional for ColdFusion, Matt is a keen proponent for community resources and sharing knowledge. He regularly writes and releases open source ColdFusion applications and code samples, and loves a fresh Starbucks latte.

Find out more about Matt through his blog

More about ColdFusion

According to Wikipedia, in computing, ColdFusion is used to refer to both a commercial rapid application development platform invented by Jeremy and JJ Allaire in 1995, and the programming language used with that platform. Originally designed to make it easier to connect simple HTML pages to a database, by version 2 (1996) it had become a full platform that included an IDE in addition to a “full” scripting language. As of 2010, versions of ColdFusion (purchased by Adobe Systems in 2005) include advanced features for enterprise integration and development of rich Internet applications.
Overview

One of the distinguishing features of ColdFusion is its associated scripting language, ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML), which compares to the scripting components of ASP, JSP, and PHP in purpose and features, but its tag syntax more closely resembles HTML while its script syntax resembles JavaScript. “ColdFusion” is often used synonymously with “CFML” or “CFM”, but there are additional CFML application servers besides ColdFusion, and ColdFusion supports programming languages other than CFML, such as server-side Actionscript and embedded scripts that can be written in a JavaScript-like language known as CFScript.

Originally a product of Allaire and released in July 1995, ColdFusion was developed by brothers Joseph J. “JJ” and Jeremy Allaire. In 2001 Allaire was acquired by Macromedia, who in turn were acquired by Adobe Systems Inc in 2005.

ColdFusion is most often used for data-driven websites or intranets, but can also be used to generate remote services such as SOAP web services or Flash remoting. It is especially well-suited as the server-side technology to the client-side Flex.

ColdFusion can also handle asynchronous events such as SMS and instant messaging via its gateway interface, available in ColdFusion MX 7 Enterprise Edition.

Main features

ColdFusion provides a number of additional features out of the box. Among them:

Simplified database access
Client and server cache management
Client-side code generation, especially for form widgets and validation
Conversion from HTML to PDF and FlashPaper
Data retrieval from common enterprise systems such as Active Directory, LDAP, SMTP, POP, HTTP, FTP, Microsoft Exchange Server and common data formats such as RSS and Atom
File indexing and searching service based on Verity K2
GUI administration
Server, application, client, session, and request scopes
XML parsing, querying (XPath), validation and transformation (XSLT)
Server clustering
Task scheduling
Graphing and reporting
Simplified file manipulation including raster graphics (and CAPTCHA) and zip archives (introduction of video manipulation is planned in a future release)
Simplified web service implementation (with automated WSDL generation / transparent SOAP handling for both creating and consuming services – as an example, ASP.NET[1] has no native equivalent for [2])

Other implementations of CFML offer similar or enhanced functionality, such as running in a .NET environment or image manipulation.

The engine was written in C and featured, among other things, a built-in scripting language (CFScript), plugin modules written in Java, and a syntax very similar to HTML. The equivalent to an HTML element, a ColdFusion tag begins with the letters “CF” followed by a name that is indicative of what the tag is interpreted to, in HTML. E.g. to begin the output of variables or other content.

In addition to CFScript and plugins (as described), CFStudio provided a design platform with a WYSIWYG display. In addition to ColdFusion, CFStudio also supports syntax in other languages popular for backend programming, such as Perl. In addition to making backend functionality easily available to the non-programmer, (version 4.0 and forward in particular) integrated easily with the Apache Web Server and with Internet Information Services.
[edit] Other features

The first version of ColdFusion (then called Cold Fusion) was released on July 10, 1995. This first version was written almost entirely by one person, Joseph JJ Allaire. Primitive by modern standards, early versions of ColdFusion did little more than database access.[1]

All versions of ColdFusion prior to 6.0 were written using Microsoft Visual C++. This meant that ColdFusion was largely limited to running on Microsoft Windows, although Allaire did successfully port ColdFusion to Sun Solaris starting with version 3.1.

The Allaire company was sold to Macromedia, then to Adobe. Earlier versions were not as robust as the versions available from version 4.0 forward.

With the release of ColdFusion MX 6.0, the engine had been re-written in Java and supported its own runtime environment, which was easily replaced through its configuration options with the runtime environment from Sun. Version 6.1 included the ability to code and debug Shockwave Flash.
[edit] Release history

1995: Allaire Cold Fusion version 1.0
1996: Allaire Cold Fusion version 1.5
1996: Allaire Cold Fusion version 2.0
1997-June: Allaire Cold Fusion version 3.0
1998-January: Allaire Cold Fusion version 3.1
1998-November: Allaire ColdFusion version 4.0 (space eliminated between Cold and Fusion to make it ColdFusion)
1999-November: Allaire ColdFusion version 4.5
2001-June: Macromedia ColdFusion version 5.0
2002-May: Macromedia ColdFusion MX version 6.0 (build 6,0,0,48097), Updater 1 (build 6,0,0,52311), Updater 2 (build 6,0,0,55693), Updater 3 (build 6,0,0,58500)
2003-July: Macromedia ColdFusion MX version 6.1 (build 6,1,0,63958), hot fix (6,1,0,xxxxx), Updater 1 (build 6,1,0,83762)
2005-February-07: Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7 (build 7,0,0,91690)
2005-September-27: Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7.0.1 (build 7,0,1,116466)
2006-June-28: Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7.0.2 (build 7,0,2,142559)
2007-July-30: Adobe ColdFusion 8 (build 8,0,0,176276)
2008-April-03: Adobe ColdFusion 8.0.1 (build 8,0,1,195765)
2009-October-05: Adobe ColdFusion 9 (build 9,0,0,251028)
2010-July-13: Adobe ColdFusion 9.0.1 (build 9,0,1,274733)

Versions
[edit] Cold Fusion 3.1

Version 3.1 brought about a port to the Sun Solaris operating system. Cold Fusion studio gained a live page preview and HTML syntax checker.
[edit] ColdFusion 4

“Cold Fusion” moniker renamed simply as “ColdFusion” – possibly to distinguish it from Cold fusion theory.
[edit] ColdFusion 4.5

Version 4.5 brought the ability to natively invoke Java objects, execute system commands, and talk directly to a Java EE server.
[edit] ColdFusion 5

First release from Macromedia after the Allaire Corporation acquisition. The last to be legacy coded for a specific platform.

On January 16, 2001, Allaire announced a pending merger with Macromedia. Macromedia continued its development and released the product under the name ColdFusion 5.0. It retained the name “ColdFusion” through the remainder of version 5 releases.
[edit] ColdFusion MX 6

Prior to 2000, Allaire began a project codenamed “Neo”. This project was later revealed as a ColdFusion Server re-written completely using Java. This made portability easier and provided a layer of security on the server, because it ran inside a Java Runtime Environment. Senior software engineer Damon Cooper, still with Adobe on the LiveCycle team, was the major initiator of the Java move.

In June 2002 Macromedia released the version 6.0 product under a slightly different name, ColdFusion MX, allowing the product to be associated with both the Macromedia brand and its original branding. ColdFusion MX was completely rebuilt from the ground up and was based on the Java EE platform. ColdFusion MX was also designed to integrate well with Macromedia Flash using Flash Remoting.

With the release of ColdFusion MX, the CFML language API was released with an OOP interface.
[edit] ColdFusion MX 7

With the release of ColdFusion 7.0 on February 7, 2005, the naming convention was amended, rendering the product name “Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7”. CFMX 7 added Flash-based, and XForms-based, web forms and a report builder that output in Adobe PDF as well as FlashPaper, RTF and Excel. The Adobe PDF output is also available as a wrapper to any HTML page, converting that page to a quality printable document. The enterprise edition also added Gateways. These provide interaction with non-HTTP request services such as IM Services, SMS, Directory Watchers, and an asynchronous execution. XML support was boosted in this version to include native schema checking.

ColdFusion MX 7.0.2, codenamed “Mystic” includes advanced features for working with Adobe Flex 2.
[edit] Adobe ColdFusion 8

On July 30, 2007, Adobe Systems released ColdFusion 8, dropping “MX” from its name. During beta testing the codename used was “Scorpio” (the eighth sign of the zodiac and the eighth iteration of ColdFusion as a commercial product). More than 14,000 developers worldwide were active in the beta process – many more testers than the 5,000 Adobe Systems originally expected. The ColdFusion development team consisted of developers based in Newton/Boston, Massachusetts and offshore in Bangalore, India.

Some of the new features are the CFPDFFORM tag, which enables integration with Adobe Acrobat forms, some image manipulation functions, Microsoft .NET integration, and the CFPRESENTATION tag, which allows the creation of dynamic presentations using Adobe Acrobat Connect, the Web-based collaboration solution formerly known as Macromedia Breeze. In addition, the ColdFusion Administrator for the Enterprise version ships with built-in server monitoring. ColdFusion 8 is available on several operating systems including Linux, Mac OS X and Windows Server 2003.

Other additions to ColdFusion 8 are built-in Ajax widgets, file archive manipulation (CFZIP), Microsoft Exchange server integration (CFEXCHANGE), image manipulation including automatic captcha generation (CFIMAGE), multi-threading, per-application settings, Atom and RSS feeds, reporting enhancements, stronger encryption libraries, array and structure improvements, improved database interaction, extensive performance improvements, PDF manipulation and merging capabilities (CFPDF), interactive debugging, embedded database support with Apache Derby, and a more ECMAScript compliant CFSCRIPT.

For development of ColdFusion applications, several tools are available: primarily Adobe Dreamweaver CS4, Macromedia HomeSite 5.x, CFEclipse, Eclipse and others. “Tag updaters” are available for these applications to update their support for the new ColdFusion 8 features.
[edit] Adobe ColdFusion 9

ColdFusion 9 (Codenamed: Centaur) was released on October 5, 2009. New features for CF9 include:

Ability to code ColdFusion Components (CFCs) entirely in CFScript.
An explicit “local” scope that does not require local variables to be declared at the top of the function.
Implicit getters/setters for CFC.
Implicit constructors via method called “init” or method with same name as CFC.
New CFFinally tag for Exception handling syntax and CFContinue tag for Control flow.
Object-relational mapping (ORM) Database integration through Hibernate (Java).
Server.cfc file with onServerStart and onServerEnd methods.
Tighter integration with Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR.
Integration with key Microsoft products including Word, Excel, Sharepoint, Exchange and Powerpoint.
In Memory Management – or Virtual File System – an ability to treat content in memory as opposed to using the HDD.
Exposed as Services – an ability to access, securely, functions of the server externally.

[edit] Adobe ColdFusion 10

ColdFusion version 10 was confirmed to be in-work by Adobe at Adobe MAX 2010. The internal codename for the next release of ColdFusion is “Zeus”, but it is commonly referred to as ColdFusion X in blogs, on Twitter, etc.
[edit] Adobe ColdFusion Builder
Main article: Adobe ColdFusion Builder

Adobe ColdFusion Builder is the name for Adobe’s Eclipse based development IDE that can be used to build applications for ColdFusion. The product’s original codename, “Bolt,” is a reference to the original lightning icon for the product from the Allaire days.
[edit] Adobe ColdFusion Builder 1.0

ColdFusion Builder became available on 22 March 2010 along with Flash Builder 4.[2]

Features include:

Object Relational Mapping auto-configuration
Application Code Generation
Server management
Easily extensible through the Eclipse framework
CFML, HTML, Javascript, and CSS Syntax Highlighting
Code assist for tags, functions, variables, and components
Code folding
Snippet creation and management
Outline viewing
RDS Explorer for files and databases
Line-level Debugging
Refactoring

[edit] Adobe ColdFusion Builder 2.0

ColdFusion Builder 2.0 (codename “Storm”) was confirmed and previewed at Adobe MAX 2010 by Adobe. Major features include improved code navigation, searching improvements, code formatting and automatic method stub creation.
[edit] Features
[edit] Rich forms

ColdFusion Server includes a subset of its Macromedia Flex 1.5 technology. Its stated purpose is to allow for rich forms in HTML pages using CFML to generate Flash movies. These Flash forms can be used to implement rich internet applications, but with limited efficiency due to the ActionScript restrictions in place on Flash forms by Macromedia.

Flash forms also provide additional widgets for data input, such as date pickers and data grids.

In previous versions of ColdFusion, some form validation and additional widgets were available using a combination of Java applets and JavaScript. This option persists for those who do not wish to use Flash, however not all features are supported.

An example:

ColdFusion also includes some XForms capability, and the ability to “skin” forms using XSLT.
[edit] PDF and FlashPaper generation

ColdFusion can generate PDF or FlashPaper documents using standard HTML (i.e. no additional coding is needed to generate documents for print). CFML authors simply place HTML and CSS within a pair of cfdocument tags and specify the desired format (FlashPaper or PDF). The generated document can then either be saved to disk or sent to the client’s browser. ColdFusion 8 has now introduced the cfpdf tag which allows for unprecedented control over PDF documents including PDF forms, and merging of PDFs. These tags however do not use Adobe’s PDF engine but a combination of the commercial JPedal Java PDF library and the free and open source Java library iText.
[edit] ColdFusion Components (Objects)

ColdFusion was originally not an object-oriented programming language similar to PHP prior to PHP 3. ColdFusion falls into the category of OO languages that do not support multiple inheritance (along with Java, Smalltalk, etc.).[3] With the MX release (6+), ColdFusion introduced basic oo functionality with the component language construct which resembles classes in OO languages. Each component may contain any number of properties and methods. One component may also extend another (Inheritance). Components only support single inheritance. Object handling feature set and performance enhancing has occurred with subsequent releases. With the release of ColdFusion 8, Java-style interfaces are supported. ColdFusion components use the file extension cfc to differentiate them from ColdFusion templates (.cfm).
[edit] Remoting

Component methods may be made available as web services with no additional coding and configuration. All that is required is for a method’s access to be declared ‘remote’. ColdFusion automatically generates a WSDL at the URL for the component in this manner: http://path/to/components/Component.cfc?wsdl. Aside from SOAP, the services are offered in Flash Remoting binary format.

Methods which are declared remote may also be invoked via an HTTP GET or POST request. Consider the GET request as shown.

http://path/to/components/Component.cfc?method=search&query=your+query&mode=strict

This will invoke the component’s search function, passing “your query” and “strict” as arguments.

This type of invocation is well-suited for Ajax-enabled applications. ColdFusion 8 introduced the ability to serialize ColdFusion data structures to JSON for consumption on the client.

The ColdFusion server will automatically generate documentation for a component if you navigate to its URL and insert the appropriate code within the component’s declarations. This is an application of component introspection, available to developers of ColdFusion components. Access to a component’s documentation requires a password. A developer can view the documentation for all components known to the ColdFusion server by navigating to the ColdFusion URL. This interface resembles the Javadoc HTML documentation for Java classes.
[edit] Custom tags

ColdFusion provides several ways to implement custom markup language tags, i.e. those not included in the core ColdFusion language. These are especially useful for providing a familiar interface for web designers and content authors familiar with HTML but not imperative programming.

The traditional and most common way is using CFML. A standard CFML page can be interpreted as a tag, with the tag name corresponding to the file name prefixed with “cf_”. For example, the file IMAP.cfm can be used as the tag “cf_imap”. Attributes used within the tag are available in the ATTRIBUTES scope of the tag implementation page. CFML pages are accessible in the same directory as the calling page, via a special directory in the ColdFusion web application, or via a CFIMPORT tag in the calling page. The latter method does not necessarily require the “cf_” prefix for the tag name.

A second way is the development of CFX tags using Java or C++. CFX tags are prefixed with “cfx_”, for example “cfx_imap”. Tags are added to the ColdFusion runtime environment using the ColdFusion administrator, where JAR or DLL files are registered as custom tags.

Finally, ColdFusion supports JSP tag libraries from the JSP 2.0 language specification. JSP tags are included in CFML pages using the CFIMPORT tag.

Currently, alternative server platforms generally support ColdFusion 8 functionality, with minor changes or feature enhancements.
[edit] Interactions with other programming languages
[edit] ColdFusion and Java

The standard ColdFusion installation allows the deployment of ColdFusion as a WAR file or EAR file for deployment to standalone application servers, such as Macromedia JRun, and IBM WebSphere. ColdFusion can also be deployed to servlet containers such as Apache Tomcat and Mortbay Jetty but, because these platforms do not officially support ColdFusion, they leave many of its features inaccessible.

Because ColdFusion is a Java EE application, ColdFusion code can be mixed with Java classes to create a variety of applications and use existing Java libraries. ColdFusion has access to all underlying Java classes, supports JSP custom tag libraries, and can access JSP functions after retrieving the JSP page context (GetPageContext()).

Prior to ColdFusion 7.0.1, ColdFusion components could only be used by Java or .NET by declaring them as web services. However, beginning in ColdFusion MX 7.0.1, ColdFusion components can now be used directly within Java classes using the CFCProxy class.[4]

Recently, there has been much interest in Java development using alternate languages such as Jython, Groovy and JRuby. ColdFusion was one of the first scripting platforms to allow this style of Java development.
[edit] ColdFusion and .NET

ColdFusion 8 natively supports .NET within the CFML syntax. ColdFusion developers can simply call any .NET assembly without needing to recompile or alter the assemblies in any way. Data types are automatically translated between ColdFusion and .NET (example: .NET DataTable ? ColdFusion Query).

A unique feature for a Java EE vendor, ColdFusion 8 offers the ability to access .NET Assemblies remotely through proxy (without the use of .NET Remoting). This allows ColdFusion users to leverage .NET without having to be installed on a Windows operating system.

The move to include .NET support in addition to the existing support for Java, CORBA and COM is a continuation of Adobe ColdFusion’s agnostic approach to the technology stack. ColdFusion can not only bring together disparate technologies within the enterprise, but can make those technologies available to a number of clients beyond the web browser including, but not limited to, the Flash Player, Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), Mobile devices (SMS), Acrobat Reader (PDF) and IM gateways.
[edit] Acronyms

The acronym for the ColdFusion Markup Language is CFML. When ColdFusion templates are saved to disk, they are traditionally given the extension .cfm or .cfml. The .cfc extension is used for ColdFusion Components. The original extension was DBM or DBML, which stood for Database Markup Language. When talking about ColdFusion, most users use the acronym CF and this is used for numerous ColdFusion resources such as user groups (CFUGs) and sites.

CFMX is the common abbreviation for ColdFusion versions 6 and 7 (aka ColdFusion MX).
[edit] Alternative server environments

ColdFusion originated as proprietary technology based on Web technology industry standards. However, it is becoming a less closed technology through the availability of competing products. Products include Railo, BlueDragon, IgniteFusion, SmithProject and Coral Web Builder.

The argument can be made that ColdFusion is even less platform-bound than raw Java EE or .NET, simply because ColdFusion will run on top of a .NET app server (New Atlanta), or on top of any servlet container or Java EE application server (JRun, WebSphere, JBoss, Geronimo, Tomcat, Resin Server, Jetty (web server), etc.). In theory, a ColdFusion application could be moved unchanged from a Java EE application server to a .NET application server.