Macromedia ColdFusion MX review

If, like me, you've been watching and experimenting with .NET for several years and been frustrated with the tools available, you now have a range of products that will work together and allow you to leverage the XML/.NET vision at last. ColdFusion MX's support for talking to XML data sources and delivering them via a variety of mechanisms to Flash applications means you can now develop real user interfaces for your Web applications. DHTML and CSS promised lots, but browser incompatibilities rendered most of it useless. The increasing use of PDAs and phones for Internet access presents even more browser problems. Macromedia's solution, which uses a small plug-in to talk to the back-end processes on a server, could well be what we've all been waiting for. Perhaps it's time to say 'the browser is dead - long live XML and Flash'.

PRICE - Pro Server: £829 with subscriptions (£589 without), upgrade from 4.5 £639 with subscriptions (£409 without); Enterprise: £5,159 with subscriptions (£3,689 without), upgrade from 4.5 Enterprise £3,319 with subscriptions (£1,839 without), upgrade from 4.5 Pro £3,499 with subscriptions (£2,029 without); J2EE: £2,509 per processor (all prices exc VAT)

Author: Mark Newton