Professional ColdFusion 5.0 review

In the wonderful world of Web application servers, there can be only one - well only one that manages to attract such a devoted following in the developer community - and that's ColdFusion. Since the merger with Allaire, Macromedia has brought together the most complete package of tools for developing dynamic Web applications you could imagine. It runs on multiple operating system platforms, is happy to work with virtually any Web server, and it integrates seamlessly with COM, CORBA and Java.

The Enterprise edition, as you would expect, has everything to create robust, scaleable and, increasingly important in the light of recent events, secure applications to include clustering, load balancing and an integrated development environment.

What Wrox brings to the party is an in-depth guide to the latest version, ColdFusion 5 (see enterprise, issue 84, p228), revealing all that's new in this major upgrade and showing how to implement it in the real-world enterprise environment. This means there's plenty of coverage on WDDX, XML, SOAP and the .NET framework, and for extending ColdFusion with COM, CORBA, and Java, the CFX API, WAP and WML.

You can find something useful in almost every chapter, be it the overview and introductory stuff for ColdFusion newbies or the more advanced features available through the CFAM. The 'best practices' section is a goldmine of information, including the architectural design of applications and using ClusterCATS software. Indeed, it's towards the back of the title, like many reference books, that you'll find some of the best bits - common ColdFusion development mistakes, performance optimisation and securing ColdFusion and its applications to name but a few.

However, as good as it is, Professional ColdFusion 5.0 isn't as good as the undisputed heavyweight champion of ColdFusion bibles - the series penned by Ben Forta and published by Que. His latest, ColdFusion 5 Web Application Construction Kit, remains the essential reference in this field. Nevertheless, this Wrox title is a worthy addition to read alongside, with the wise developer investing in both to cover all bases. If money is tight, however, I'd have to favour Forta's work, though.

Author: Davey Winder