Adobe ColdFusion

This article is about the computer programming language. For the nuclear reaction, see Cold fusion.

In computing, ColdFusion is a tag-based, middleware programming language used chiefly for writing web-based applications. The language was created by JJ Allaire and his brother Jeremy Allaire, but the product is currently owned by Macromedia.

Cold Fusion 1.0 was released in June of 1995 by Allaire. The tag-based programming language used was called DBML (DataBase Markup Language) and was later renamed to CFML (ColdFusion Markup Language). Beginning with version 1.5, ColdFusion contained compatibility with C++, allowing users to develop extensions to the language. Years later, this would be the basis for ColdFusion Extension (CFX) Tags, the a method of extending the ColdFusion language. Later versions of the language allowed extending the language by writing custom tags in Java and CFML itself. Starting in version 5.0, users could also define functions to extend the language (UDF = User Defined Functions).

Meanwhile, Allaire began work on rewriting the basis of ColdFusion with Java (codenamed "Neo"), which would allow for greater portability among different platforms.

On January 16, 2001, Allaire announced that it would be merging with Macromedia. Shortly after the merger, Macromedia continued with the incremental release of ColdFusion 5.0 and in June 2002, Macromedia released Macromedia ColdFusion MX, extending the naming convention of Macromedia's line of products. ColdFusion MX was completely rebuilt from the ground up and was based on the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) platform. ColdFusion MX was also designed to work well with Macromedia Flash using Macromedia Flash Remoting MX.

ColdFusion has been used to write millions of webpages and is generally recognized to be the easiest rapid development language for people coming from straight HTML to learn. This is partly because it is tag based like HTML, and also because of the strong user community around ColdFusion. This includes user groups, listservs, conferences and the Fusebox and Mach-II methodologies for organizing ColdFusion code.

Code example

<cfquery name="nameofquery" datasource="odbc_connection" username="simple" password="enough">
  SELECT * FROM table
  WHERE field = 'whateveryouaresearchingfor'
</cfquery>

<cfoutput query="nameofquery">
#nameofquery.field_from_query#   
<!---Above is called a variable, this text here is just comments --->
</cfoutput>

Acronym

The acronym for the ColdFusion Markup Language is CFML. When ColdFusion templates are saved to disk, they are traditionally given the extension .cfm or .cfc 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), sites (CFTips.com), and applications (CFWiki).

External links

• Macromedia's ColdFusion site
• CFFaq
• A brief history of ColdFusion
• ColdFusion conference listings
• ColdFusion bug lists
• ColdFusion User Groups
• Free ColdFusion Hosting at CFMXDeveloper
• ColdFusion Mailing Lists
• ColdFusion Magazine
• CFGIGOLO weblog (in Portuguese)