@neilmiddleton

I thought I would write this article for two reasons, firstly as an effort to stomp on a couple of myths that are surrounding ColdFusion, and also to provide a neat little one stop round up to those who are interested in ColdFusion and what it can offer.

To give you a little in the way of background, ColdFusion harks back from the mid nineties and since then has gone through many different guises since then, ranging from the original Allaire product based on a C codebase, to the current range of options coming in both Java and .NET flavours.

Now, a quick jaunt back to the original ColdFusion if you will.  Allaire produced ColdFusion from July 1995 up until they merged with Macromedia in 2001.  In this time the product moved up to version 4.5 and it had a range of cool features, but it was somewhat hampered by the platform it was built on, a 100% C codebase.  This caused ColdFusion to get a little bit of a reputation (that you, dear reader, might still see as truth).  These versions weren’t overly performant, couldn’t scale that well, and suffered from a lack of any real component functionality other than the custom tag paradigm.  For some reason, this old version of ColdFusion appears to have shaped the reputation of the platform for the last seven years.  I’m not overly sure why this is so, but stuff happens.

Since the arrival of Macromedia’s CFMX 6.0 in May 2002, ColdFusion has been a whole separate beast to that that has come before.  For a start, it’s written in Java – it’s essentially a blooming great lump of servlets – so the scalability issues have definitely been addressed.  There are plenty of massive sites out there running CFML at their core, Adobe.com being one, MySpace, 192.com, parts of eBay and AOL amongst the many many others. Plus, CFML platforms are available from at least four seperate vendors, and comes in a variety of flavours.  

So, as you can see the current reputation of ColdFusion is pretty much now 100% unfounded, and there is plenty of press out there that will tell you the same thing if you care to look. But now we get to the crux of this article.  What’s out there for CFML and how much will it cost you (if anything)?

In a nutshell, there are four vendors out there that I am aware of: Adobe, New Atlanta, Railo and the Smith Project.

Adobe

This is considered as many as the primary (and for some, only) vendor of a platform for CFML – i.e they develop the product ColdFusion.  This is now in it’s eighth version with a ninth planned soon.  This is a Java based application that can be run on a variety of J2EE platforms such as Adobes JRun 4, Tomcat, JBoss et al.  This comes in two closed source versions, Standard and Enterprise ranging from around $1299 to $7499.  This is quite a significant wedge of money, but at the end of the day it is widely proven that the productivity of ColdFusion makes up for this.  However, paying for closed source software isn’t everyone’s bag hence there is some options also available from…

New Atlanta

These guys have been producing their BlueDragon CFML server for around six years now, and follows roughly the same development path as Adobe.  Bluedragon is definitely the major competitor to the market.  New Atlanta kick out several versions of Bluedragon:  for .NET (deployed onto .net instead of Java), J2EE, JX (a standalone Java version), BEA Weblogic Edition, Server (a free limited use version), and most significantly, a newly announced Open Source edition released under the GPL.

This brings forward several new things for CFML.  It’s now available for absolutely no outlay, and the code is open, which brings it into line with other options such as PHP or Ruby on Rails.  People should definitely consider CFML now that this option is there as it makes CFML so accessible.  Chances are that once you’ve given it a go, you’ll be hooked and wanting to try out some of the other editions out there.

Railo

Railo is a swiss company that produces it’s own CFML engine which comes in four different editions : Express (running on Jetty) – a version that requires no install, Server – similar to Bluedragon JX, and WAR for J2EE servers.  Railo is typically regarded as one of the quickest implementations of a CFML engine, and is well favoured amongst those in the know.  Railo is available for free, but only their limited functionality Community Edition. For more information on Railo, please visit their website.

Smith Project

Personally I don’t know a lot about Smith.  It’s open source, and developed in Java, but from what I have heard mentioned on the subject it’s currently very much under development and fairly immature.

So, as you can see there are plenty of options available, plenty of ways of getting powerful, scalable (and free if that floats your boat) CFML.  If you look at PHP, Ruby on Rail, ASP.NET or others without considering CFML you are definitely missing out.  Additionally, if you are already a CFML developer and moan about the cost and closed source nature of ColdFusion, you need to open your eyes a little and look at the other CFML options.

Nothing is as easy to write, easy to debug and easy to integrate with as CFML, period.

* By ColdFusion, I of course mean CFML, but a lot of people don’t know there is a difference.  ColdFusion is the product marketed by Adobe, whereas CFML is the ColdFusion Markup Language – the syntax.  As far as I am aware, Adobe hold no rights over CFML itself.

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