Talk:Adobe ColdFusion/Archive 1

BlueDragon text should be moved?

The lengthy "Potentially Competing Products" section is 99% about BlueDragon, yet the "BlueDragon" Wiki page is virtually empty. I think that the BlueDragon text should be moved to a more complete Wiki page about that product and it should be linked from this one. After all, this wiki page is about ColdFusion, not BlueDragon.

I would make the edit myself but I don't want to ruffle any feathers. Perhaps the initial editor of that page section will see this and would be willing to move it?

I did it and put in proper links to the Blue Dragon page. ColdFusion is about ColdFusion and while it should reference Blue Dragon, it is not Blue Dragon. In addition, while Blue Dragon is an implimentation of the language used in ColdFusion, it's not ColdFusion.

New Atlanta's marketing keeps putting their information back into the ColdFusion listing rather than in their own Blue Dragon listing. This is standard of marketting where you leech onto the review or listing of someone else.

Agreed, while it certainly deserves a reference in the CF article, the substance should be in its own article. Looks fine the way you have done it. -- Blorg 17:01, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Recent edits

Just wanted to explain some of my recent edits: oh boy does this page need work :) I removed a lot of NPOV and tried to sort out the timeline a bit. I left a lot of things which I know are still misleading... Unfortunately I can't spend all day on Wikipedia :( ... Will try to edit it again and add a lot more info later on this month. Cheers. Adidas 10:42, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Spam links and advertisements

Obviously there still is a lot of work to do on that page... but not having 65.35.120.139 adding his spam links over and over again would make life a lot easier. Adidas 13:00, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Update: vandalism reported Adidas 13:22, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Following further vandalism, a request for protection was made. Adidas 07:52, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Much of this page reads like an advertisement! The criticisms all end with an amelioration.

Quality of Sample Code

My first impression of the sample CF code was "ugh!". Is that really a representative sample of ColdFusion's syntax and idiomatic style, or is it as ugly as it looks? I can't think of any faster way to drive potential users away from CF and toward PHP, Python or even Perl! Is there a CF guru who can tidy the code and make it less ugly, or is that just how CF code is? (Granted it's nowhere near as ugly as XSLT, which I quite like...) --Eric TF Bat 12:45, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Looks okay to me. Remember: CF is tag-based and is touted as easy to learn due to its similarity to HTML. Some CFGURUs also don't like the syntax and try to put all of their code in the context of CFSCRIPT tags, where they can use a syntax similar to JavaScript. Not all CF tags have CFSCRIPT counterparts, however. Al 12:54, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Oh, ok. Can't say I like it, but it takes all sorts to make a world, as evidenced by the fact that the three oldest surviving programming languages are LISP, Fortran and COBOL...--Eric TF Bat 13:04, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

If I hear the word 'guru' associated to a programming language (or scripting language in this instance), I'm going to shoot someone! Come on! I train CF and we have middle age mothers with no previous IT experience who can pick it up in a week... this is not a language you can be a 'guru' in. It would be like being the Guru of picking-your-nose or the eat-an-apple Guru. Makes no sense. Adidas 13:50, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

You say that like it's a bad thing. :-) In fairness, every language has a certain subset that's easy for anybody to pick up, but it's knowing the language as a whole and its idioms that makes a Guru. Christian Cantrell is a CF guru, as are Hal Helms, Pete Freitag, Ben Forta, Sean Corfield, and others. --Kgaughan 02:10, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I think the code can be made less ugly - by removing attributes which aren't essential (eg: username and password from query; these can be defined along with the datasource in CF Administrator) and with better indentation (4 spaces per level?). Also, perhaps a link to a simple but complete example script would be useful in giving a more complete picture? --BP 19:33, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I made that change as you suggested. Also removed the query. scoping within "cfoutput query=" as that is unnecessary. -- Blorg 23:14, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Compare / contrast with PHP?

One thing I find myself wondering when coming to this page was what the differences and similarities between PHP and ColdFusion are... this could be as easy as a link to an external page or as much as a few sentences, but it would be a good addition to the page. Joseph Lorenzo Hall 16:20, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps there is (or should be) a page for comparing various server-side scripting technologies. I don't think the Coldfusion page would be the right venue for comparing with PHP, as it would lend itself to comparisons with all other major languages like ASP, Lasso, etc. Scott Arbeitman 04:44, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

PHP is probably the market leader these days and as such would be an appropriate one for a comparison. -- Blorg 10:00, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Regular clean-out of undiscussed links

Wikipedia is WP:NOT a web directory, and, as per Wikipedia:External links guidelines, I'm starting a regular regular clean-out of undiscussed links. Please discuss here if you want a link to not be cleaned out regularly. -- Perfecto 07:31, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

House of Fusion

House of Fusion hosts the CF-Talk mailing list as well as a few dozen others of specific interest to the ColdFusion community (including the CF-Community list). I've added a link back to it in the entry as it is a major resource for ColdFusion developers across the world (literally).

Eclipse / ColdFusion on Wheels

Eclipse is a major open-source IDE and I certainly don't think the (free) CFEclipse plugin is spam (especially not under a list of development environments! I have tried it myself and I know of other CF developers that use it. Don't know about the significance of CF on wheels, will look into that (didn't add either link myself.) -- Blorg 09:58, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Blorg. CFEclipse is currently a major development platform in the CF community. Also, it's open source, not commercial, so doesn't fall under the WP:SPAM guidelines as I understand them. --Wrathchild ^(talk) 13:55, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

OK, I've put it back, linking Eclipse to its artcle on Wikipedia instead of the website. Still not sure about how popular "ColdFusion on Wheels" is though, certainly I had never heard of it (not that that means much :-). Have of course heard of Ruby on Rails which it is based on. Any opinions? -- Blorg 16:40, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Had a bit of a look around about "ColdFusion on Wheels" - it's still pre-v1.0 and appears to have been released only on 14 November 2005. A good number of blog entries commenting on it but few seem to be actively using it right now (hey, it's only been a few months!) So maybe we should give it a bit more time before including it? Looks promising for a future framework though (if CF can stick around :-) -- Blorg 17:00, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

CFLib & ColdFusion Cookbook

I would like to argue in favour of restoring the CFLib and CF Cookbook links, based on points 5 and 6 of WP:EL's What should be linked to. Anyone else agree? --BP 08:38, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

CFLib should unquestionably be there. CF Cookbook is a bit newer, but I certainly wouldn't object to it's inclusion (glad I read your comment to find out about it!) -- Blorg 14:55, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Ok, well no objections so I'll go restore them. --BP 17:18, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Along the same lines would be the removed link to cfxchange.com, which is primarily an open directory of ColdFusion custom tags.--Ggman 18:01, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Alternative servers

I put back DigitalLattice Orange but without the external link as it is notable as an alternative server environment. I think the information that it exists, in that paragraph, is useful. I have however removed mention of it from the BlueDragon and Railo articles where it is not really relevant and had been slipped in by the same contributor. -- Blorg 14:21, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Trailing slashes in code

This is totally useless and does nothing for the example code. Some people put them in due to a false sense of XHTML compliance but as ColdFusion does not need them nor is ColdFusion XHTML complient (or even XML complient in some ways), their use is a personal preference that has only cropped up in the last year or two. I've removed them to align the code to the most commonly used samples. Mdinowitz 07:14, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Maybe we can have a policy that whomever writes the code with or without traling slashes should not have to worry about it being changed by someone else for no good reason. We all have our preferences, and one way is no more right than another. My experience is Coldfusion developers are definitely moving to make their code look like xml and though we know that it isn't. I personally think it makes the code easier to follow, especially for someone looking at Coldfusion the first time with knowledge of XML or HTML.

The issue is standardization. When someone sees some code without slashes and some with (unneeded) slashed, it sows confusion. It also implies that ColdFusion is XML compliant which is far from the truth. The use of trailing slashes is a personal preference that is not reflected in either the past of ColdFusion or in its documentation. I'd prefer to keep the code clean and to documentation spec rather than adding personal formatting preferences. But that's just my take on it. Mdinowitz 15:46, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Critisms

I'm a big fan of ColdFusion. I added the critisism section to get the discussion going. I'm glad I did.

The argument that the language of Coldfusion is open-source is completely rediculous. I think the right word is 'documented', otherwise who would be able to use it? When we say open source, we don't mean that it's possible to pick up a book and learn the language. That's just not what it means in common usage.

The fact that Coldfusion misses features is not really negated by the fact that there might be extensions that provide this missing functionality. This is referenced in the preceding point about extentions. The fact is, these things don't work out of the box and that's a problem.

As for extensions, just because you can name 3 sites that offer coldfusion extensions doesn't mean the library of CF extensions come anywhere near that amount of extensions for PHP, JSP, or ASP.NET. Nor does it say anything about quality and maturity. The fact is (and I admit, I can't cite anyone here) that there exist less extensions for Coldfusion than for many (most?) other scripting languages. That's a legitimate critism.

As for speed, do we have any stats related to page execution speed? I would imagine that before CF was ported to Java, some pages would actually execute faster, especially the first time they were requested. I don't think its accurate to say that CF has been getting faster. Where's the proof? (OK. here too I admit: Where's the proof that it's slow?)

ColdFusion is expensive for the server vs. it's competition which is free. On the other hand it is well known for being easier and faster than those same competitors which easily makes up for the price difference. CFML syntax is different than most scripting language but is not unique with the advent of java tag libraries. ColdFusion is not slow. It compiles down to Java class files and those are Java. The first page run might be slower due to the compile time but once that's done it's the same as Java. Manipulating images as well as iMap and other features are easily accessed by using the Java libraries. Multiple inheritance isn't a feature, it's a curse. :)

A few extra thoughts from an alternate source... I've been using CF and Java solutions for some time now. CF has its limitations, speedwise, not really that much slower than java and the speed question is silly because you can always throw more servers at a speed problem, and that's cheap. Man hours aren't. I've found that the man hours to deployment on CF vs Java is about half for most solutions. CF is a great prototyping language or limited usage app development language, but heck, Myspace is mostly CF, so maybe its good for high volume as well. Whenever a client will permit CF development, I tend to do it as the man hours are so greatly reduced that profit margins on software development are MUCH higher and the client has a much lower overall bill. The effective result is that it saves a lot of money and allows you to get your product to market faster. Feel free to delete these comments, they are being posted in a vain attempt to make people wake up to the laws of dollars and cents. (Since when is 1000 USD for server software expensive anyway guys? We're charging 150 USD/hr and upward for software development. 6 hours of contract development makes up the cost of the server.)

Easier and Faster?

You say "...it is well known for being easier and faster than those same competitors...". "well known" by whom? That is certainly not my experience! Do you have any basis for your statement? In particular, you jump from the server cost to programming costs, as though those are related. You only reference Java, and are probably correct for that language, but that's hardly the most common competitor. .NET and PHP are both easier and faster to prototype than ColdFusion for our programmers. Our experience is that ColdFusion has a quirky syntax, poor debugging facilities, and creates "spaghetti code" by mixing application logic with presentation code. Especially since PHP is both open-source and at least as flexible than ColdFusion -- I would argue "more flexible", but that's just my experience -- I think it's a more appropriate tool in most environments. Generally (again, my experience only) folks that use ColdFusion do so because they're not familar with the alternatives, and don't want to take the time to learn them. No biggie, but it surely doesn't make ColdFusion "easier and faster". DHz 02:09, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I'll bite. First off, your initial critism is correct: "by whom?" is a fair critism of the article. And again, although not relevant to ther article per se, obviously ColdFusion would not be the easiest and faster tool for all jobs, nor for all people across the same job. Speaking for myself and everyone else I know that also knows ColdFusion (a small group, to be sure) and also knows another programming language well, CF is faster at most tasks; it requires less code and effort to achieve a similar outcome. I could not possibly achieve the same results with PHP or Java or Python or C or Visual Basic 6 that I could with ColdFusion, with some obvious exception.

Memory Hog?

I've not heard that one before, can we have some references to back it up? --BP 08:32, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Arrays and Structs

I removed this from the Criticisms section:

• ColdFusion does not have a specific syntax for creating arrays and structs with values. This feature is very common on other commonly used scripting languages such as Ruby and JavaScript.

Do you mean creating an array or structure with values already populated? Well, structs you're right. But not so with Arrays.

<cfset myArray = listToArray("A,B,C,D,E")>

Creates an array with five elements set to the values shown.

<cfset myArray = arrayNew(1)>
<cfset myArray = arraySet(myArray, 1, 10, "x")>

The array variable needs to exist, but you can change a range of values in bulk. The above sets all the elements from 1 to 10 to the value "x". —Wrathchild ^(talk) 14:12, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

My critism is still valid because none on this is syntax specifically for array population: these are simply functions which handle -- ineffeciently -- what native syntax otherwise could. Nevertheless, I supposed my comment was fairly ambiguous and is best omitted. scott a 11:50, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Your criticism has no place in this article. Only stuff published in multiple, non-trivial sources should be here. Your opinions can be posted on your website. —Wrathchild ^(talk) 14:19, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Need More History

This article has basically no mention of versions of CF prior to MX 6.0, a major oversight IMO. If I get a chance, I'll try to fill in what I know (I've been using it since version 3). Thalter 17:02, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Most of the early history was in the entry but removed over time. Much of the history backs up the mentions that ColdFusion was the first tag based language, that it was perceived as easier than other languages due to the tag based nature, and that the development time for a ColdFusion based application was quite faster than others due to the compactness of it's language.

1.ColdFusion was released in 1995 before any other tag based language existed. It was even seen as a 'fake' language because of it. It wasn't until years later that tag based languages like Java tag libraries and Asp.net followed suite.

2. When ColdFusion came out, the only way to do web applications was to write CGI programs by hand, usually using Perl. ColdFusion made the job of CGI programming quite faster and easier for people, especially those who were not into Perl. Even with Perl CGI libraries, ColdFusion was by far easier and faster to work with, even with it's 1.0 limitations.

3. There have been many examples posted to various sites showing a single CFQUERY tag getting data from a database vs. a much larger chunk of Asp, Perl or other languages. This compactness and readability lent itself to the speed of programming mentioned.

What else would be needed to remove the 'lack of cited sources'? Would specific sites or books work?

Needs References

This article makes a lot of unsubstantiated claims, both in favor of and against ColdFusion. I put this entire article under the {{Unreferenced}} template as a result. Thalter 16:25, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

First sentence

The first sentence tells us this: "ColdFusion is the original and most common implementation of a tag and ECMAScript-based programming language — ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML) and CFSCRIPT, respectively — which is typically used in web application development for the generation of dynamic web pages." This is a very good example of a first sentence which is fine as long as you already know what it means. I came here wanting to know what ColdFusion is, and this does not tell me. Could it not be rewritten so as to make it clear to the non-specialist reader - before you get into paranthetical bits about "CFML and CFSCRIPT, respectively" - what it actually is, and does? 138.37.199.206 08:17, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Does this sound better...

ColdFusion is the original and most common application server for CFML (ColdFusion Markup Language), a server-side scripting language (similar in function to ASP.NET, JSP and PHP, but with a tag-based syntax like XML), that can be used to power dynamic and database-driven websites.

--BP 13:51, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Well no objections so I'll go change it - can always be reverted if anyone hates it. --BP 12:30, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Going with theme, I've changed the opening section to better reflect the point raised by 138.37.199.206 -- scott a 00:44, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Total objection! ColdFusion is the original and most common example of a tag based scripting language. The ECMAScript came much later and is a sub-section of the language at best. Also, the better example of a tag based language is Java Tag Libraries, which came later. ColdFusion does not follow some of the rules of XML and comparing it only brings up the conflicts rather than the simularities.

What are you objecting to - nothing in your comment is in the current opening? I agree about CFScript which is why my re-write did not include it, and Coffeeflower obviously agreed about XML and used HTML instead. I can accept HTML over XML, but using JTL would be a bad comparison because far fewer people know what it is compared to HTML/XML. --BP 08:56, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Seeing as how ColdFusion can use JTL, I'm not seeing this as a valid comparison. It only furthers the point that ColdFusion is not a programming lanuguage per se. If you were comparing CFML to JSP, I can see the point, but this doesn't seem to be what you are suggesting. scott a

The XML/HTMl argument is trivial, as the similaries between those two standards is diminishing with XHTML. I was originally going to use XSLT instead of HTML since it supports if statments and the like, but I thought that reference could be lost on first-time readers. scott a

ECMA-compliance

One of the criticisms is that "CFScript is not ECMA-compliant". The article doesn't mention what ECMA compliance is or why it matters. The link to CFScript is not ECMA-compliant. The link goes to ECMAScript, but that article doesn't talk very much about compliance either. Koweja 19:30, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

ECMA compliant means it complies with the ECMA-262 specification. Simple as that. Would probably be clearer if it wasn't hyphenated. CFScript is not compliant because it uses different operators ("GT" instead of ">", and so on) and possibly a few other things. --BP 08:06, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

I have updated that section to hopefully be clearer. Any comments? --BP 08:14, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok, that makes sense. Thanks. Koweja 17:01, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

plagiarism

Was looking for information on CF. Looked here, and read through everything. Then I read http://www.nueva-design.com/nvd/Server-Side-Coding/Coldfusion-Tutorial/Coldfusion-Tutorial-5.html and I noticed the text was exactly the same as the wiki's text. Not sure which page plagiarized which. Can't look into it more because the other site went down minutes after I noticed this. Someone should investigate and replace the offending text if the wiki is plagiarized from this site. 129.21.215.247 15:35, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

It's not uncommon for other websites to copy Wikipedia's content. Usually they have a disclaimer stating that the content is from WP.

If it was exactly the same, then this is very likely to be the case here - since this article has been expanded gradually over time by various people, including myself, and the stuff I wrote was not plagiarised. --BP

Too many links

There are too many links and categories at the end of this entry and Wikipedia is not a link directory, DMOZ is. I've removed categories and links where a clear DMOZ section exists, such as frameworks. When a section is created for the other categories then their entries should be moved there rather than here. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 151.205.166.42 (talk) 14:10, 25 December 2006 (UTC).

there's such a thing as going waaaaay too far with trimming out links. a number of valuable references were removed.

This is wrong. This is so wrong that it's not funny. Look at the entry for Java. They have a ton of important, related links. There is NO reason at all to remove important resources from this entry. The excuse of "wikipedia is not a directory of links' is abused here as the resources listed are important references. CFeclipse isn't important? CF-Talk isn't relevant? Mach-II, Fusebox, Model Glue, etc. should be buried? Too far. Mdinowitz 16:05, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

So does this allow server side?

So if you bought one of these technologies could you simply script the web page how you liked? For example on habbo hotel, could you script yourself things if you purchased one of these programs?

[User:81.107.216.154|81.107.216.154]] 12:58, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Coldfusion15 floppies.jpg

Image:Coldfusion15 floppies.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in Wikipedia articles constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot 22:23, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Please Move CFML Content to Appropriate Article

The article is starting to get bogged down with content about the CFML language. If someone out there has time, please take that content and move it to the ColdFusion Markup Language article. This article should be about the server software and the history of ColdFusion.

Matt Riley 05:55, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Some OO theory

Minor change: I have introduced a modification related to object-orientation. Multiple inheritance is NOT a prerequisite for an object-oriented language, but should be considered more like a feature. Smalltalk (THE OO language, Java - as mentioned in the text - and others do not support multiple inheritance for classes). Was this the only reason that triggered the statement "and even today lacks some OO features" or are there other limitations, too? - In case it was the only reason, then this needs to be changed, too (I have left the statement in the document). ThD2007 15:05, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

CRITICISM OF COLD FUSION

Where is the Criticism of ColdFusion section in this article? Why did someone remove it? I should none that ColdFusion has many flaws and is very criticized for many reasons, including the lack of support for Servers and its too expensive. The PHP article in Wikipedia mentions all the features criticized in PHP, but why remove the ones about ColdFusion!? Please put it back, this is not a perfect sotware. Thank you for making Wikipedia truthful! ThD2007 12:26, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

The section was not removed, the section header was simply re-titled to better conform with both WP:NPOV and the actual content of the section itself. (See Adobe_ColdFusion#Technical_commentary). The topic of this article has gotten both favorable and unfavorable reviews, therefore, in order to appear less biased, the header of the article section was changed to reflect that, also for the sake of accuracy.

Also, the section was formatted to more neatly segment the various critiques into different sections. This makes it more readable for people who are in a hurry. (See also Wikipedia:Words_to_avoid#Article_structure for more details on this general issue). dr.ef.tymac 18:57, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

important links

There are a number of important resources that are not listed in dmoz for various reasons (their speed in adding for one). ColdFusion-Talk is the oldest and largest ColdFusion technical discussion forum around and it is something that should be listed here. It's not a superfluous link but an almost required resource.

Who do I have to talk to in order to keep the link here or have it added to dmoz? It not being here is a loss. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.205.179.153 (talk) 04:53, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

There isn't anyone to talk to get it kept here, because that will not happen. Forums are not allowed as External Links (see WP:EL) in Wikipedia articles. Even if it were not against EL policy by being a forum, it is not an "almost required resource" nor it is particularly unique. In short, it does not fit any of the EL requirements. This page isn't a catch all for every ColdFusion "resource" but an encyclopedic article about ColdFusion. As such, only a very limited set of External Links are allowed.

Getting it added to DMOZ would be a matter of submitting it to the appropriate category on the DMOZ site. However, it appears they already have it appropriately listed under the parent site House of Fusion, so they may not be willing to add a separate link to just that section of the site. AnmaFinotera 07:07, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

This is why I just don't bother with wikipedia anymore. Important links? taken down. Resource sites/pages? taken down. Any links other then the holy DMOZ? taken down. But not for all, just for some entries. I guess all those external links on RegEx or Perl just don't count. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.205.104.224 (talk) 22:43, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

If there are inappropriate links on those pages, they should also be removed. I don't happen to edit those two myself, else they already would be gone if there are any. The links removed from this article may be useful to some programmers, but they are not encyclopedic and they do not comply with the existing policies. I don't particularly agree that the DMOZ links belong, but those are covered allowed by the guide, which is the only reason it stayed. ~goes to clean up the aforementioned articles~ AnmaFinotera 23:59, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

It looks to me like your being just a bit over-zealous in your approach. There are important ColdFusion links that should be here and a host of links that have nothing to do with ColdFusion. That entire Adobe footer can easily be dropped for a single Adobe link. Just because Adobe owns ColdFusion does not mean that all of the Adobe links are relevant. Creative Suite and Premiere Express have nothing at all to do with ColdFusion while FAQU (the print magazine I publish), CFEclipse (ColdFusion extension for Eclipse) and other links are important to ColdFusion developers. I'd even argue that CF-Talk is important but you've already shot that one down above.

If I was new to ColdFusion and saw this page I'd believe the FUD that fools are spreading about ColdFusion dying. Limited news links, limited external links, no resources other than DMOZ and Adobe. Looks desolate to me. Mdinowitz (talk) 01:46, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Developer?

This was developed by Allair and not Adobe. Are we concerned with who developed or who currently owns and distributes? As of 5/20/08 Adobe has not continued development. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.17.34.72 (talk) 16:20, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm confused how you say "As of 5/20/08 Adobe has not continued development." Adobe released ColdFusion 8 in July of 2007 which they developed. If that isn't "continued development" I don't know what is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.166.248.253 (talk) 19:58, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Millions of webpages?

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."

Maybe a bit pedantic to ask, but are there major sources to substantiate this? It's certainly one of the easier to pick up, but this seems a bit specific to handwave.

Absolutely - This is market-ease, not fact. To be neutral you should then go to the PHP page, asp, etc.. and mention 'billions of pages'. Plus, what's a page when dealing with dynamic templates? One template could generate a million, a billion different output. As for being the easiest, it's really subjective. I've taught java and colfusion for years and I've seen people picking jsp in 10 minutes, while others took weeks to get to grasp with cf.

Comment: The absurd intro to this article is an advertisement for ColdFusion and makes me question a lot of what I've read on this wikipedia: "Struts, Spring, Hibernate, JavaServer Faces... all rolled together." Please. Struts? Really? Oh, and Hibernate too? So, basically ALL other frameworks. Ruby on Rails perhaps. I propose a rewrite: "ColdFusion is God." And then the whole "misconception" that it's a scripting language -- Do we really care? These days I'm paid more for JavaSCRIPT than C#. And, let's face it, it's all about money, isn't it? Which reminds me, ColdFusion isn't free.

I agree that this reads like an advertisement. Especially the Technical Commentary section, when it discusses the costs of ColdFusion deployment. It even references "the personal blog of Jason Delmore, the Product Manager for ColdFusion." Give me a break! 201.53.99.212 (talk) 19:36, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Coldfusion IS a Programming Language

The intro text to the article is wrong. Coldfusion is not a scripting or programming language, but is the server which dynmically interprets CFML and/or CFSCRIPT to generate content.

I think this article confuses these two concepts throughout and needs a thorough cleanup to make this distinction clearer. For example, Coldfusion Components are written in CFML, but it is Coldfusion that generates web services from these components. It is Codlfusion that offers support for event gateways, which are written using CFML (and configured with XML). And so on.

Thus Coldfusion and BlueDragon compete in the server space, but both offer CFML support. Because CFML is not standardized, one cannot say that nuances introduced in BlueDragon are NOT part of CFML or vice versa. They both claim to offer CFML interpretation, and generally they do. As server products they differ, such as BlueDragon support for .NET and Coldfusion support for Flash Remoting.

I think a good solution would be to split this article into two: one for Coldfusion and the other CFML. Scott Arbeitman

This is the business argument made by New Atlanta, makers of BlueDragon but it is basically a false one. Adobe (Macromedia, Allaire) is the owner of ColdFusion which is the server using the CFML language. They make the standard as they own the copyrights. Why they have not sued New Atlanta over their claims that CFML is 'open' and anyone can use it is a mystery to me. Lets try this all to gether. ColdFusion Markup Language. Not BlueDragon Markup Language. ColdFusion. This directly makes the relationship between the ColdFusion server that does nothing other than parsing the ColdFusion Markup Language and the language itself. If New Atlanta uses the ColdFusion Markup Language, then they are implying that they are ColdFusion, which they are not.

I don't agree with that at all. CFML is a programming language. It might be the intellectual property of Adobe (although I doubt it), but that doesn't make it more than a programming language. Where can I find the details of Coldfusion copyrights owned by Adobe? That would help us make a distinction.

ColdFusion can be used to refer to both the server and the script which it executes. Technically the language is CFML/ColdFusion Markup, but that doesn't preclude from calling it just ColdFusion (or CF), and generally it's clear from the context whether what's being referred to is the server or the code.

However I do agree it would probably be useful to split the article into [server product] and [language], specifically with the CFML/language page showing a the key differences between the various versions of CFML (CF5, CFMX, BD, etc). --BP

Having used ColdFusion for over 10 years now, I have to say that it IS a programming language as real as any other. But that's neither here nor there at the moment. The ColdFusion language is tied to the ColdFusion server. Yes, the Bluedragon server uses CFML, but it's not the ColdFusion server and the issue above of language name is important. I don't believe that Bluedragon markets itself as the Bluedragon ColdFusion server, so it's use of the CFML language has certain semantic issues. Seperating the server from the language is a problem because the server is nothing without the language and the language needs a server to run.

While it is possible to have an entry on the language and its evolution, the entry on the server will just be that it was written in C++ and then moved to Java. What else can really be said without making it a catch-all page including other servers that parse CFML, but are not ColdFusion.

It's all an issue of semantics and I vote to keep it together. As an aside, I'd be interested to know if there is any sort of formal ownership of the language by Adobe. I'll ask the Team list.

For what it's worth, Adobe has announced (June 18th 2008) that they will form a CFML Language advisory committee to define the rules and guidelines around the use and evolution of CFML. Hopefully that will help corral the alternative CFML engines out there. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.166.248.253 (talk) 19:52, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

History, early versions

I remember a version 4.5 running on linux. The article mentions a version 3.1 running Solaris, could we add the startversion of the linux edition? 212.35.119.66

I think 6.0 was the first first version to run on Linux. 4.5 was ported to Solaris though. --teacurran 10/7/2009 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Teacurran (talk • contribs) 16:32, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

lists of links

While looking over other sections of Wikipedia I saw Category links which are basically a list of related Wikipedia entries tied together. The example is Joe Simon who is given a category of Category:American_comics_artists. There are a number of ColdFusion people of note listed in Wikipedia that should be tied to the ColdFusion page such as Ben Forta and Jeremy Allaire. The same could/should be said for frameworks such as Fusebox, Mach-II, and Model Glue. There is a 'catch all' of Category:CFML_programming_language but this is just wrong on so many levels. Hal Helms isn't a CFML programming language nor is CFEclipse or Switch File. Why not clean up the ColdFusion related categories as well as the ColdFusion page? Mdinowitz (talk) 01:59, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Acronyms

DONE. A sentence might be added regarding *.cfm as apparent default extension for pages created or served by ColdFusion. I would add it myself if I were sure about this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.124.31.217 (talk) 15:01, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Adobe ColdFusion

Shouldn't this be called Adobe ColdFusion, instead of ColdFusion? Cheers, Face 11:41, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Seems like someone has now removed references to BlueDragon and Railo as well. Lennier1 (talk) 18:39, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Any ideas on how to better treat this topic? After all there's a difference between ColdFusion as a scripting language and the product Adobe ColdFusion as opposed to Railo, BlueDragon and the like. --Lennier1 (talk) 18:40, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

ColdFusion a Framework

If you think it is please cite. I would like to hear why and then if you consider PHP a framework also. Software_framework —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mhenke (talk • contribs) 19:55, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

NPOV? ColdFusion and .NET

This passage seems lacking of NPOV. Please fix it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.255.113.178 (talk) 23:14, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Inaccurate terminology

"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."

Just because it's written with a Microsoft IDE doesn't mean it's limited to Windows at all. This could probably use a bit of a reworking if anyone's interested. 24.2.4.28 (talk) 21:25, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

What is the programming language mentioned in the lead?

The lead contains: "ColdFusion is used to refer to both a commercial rapid application development platform ... , and the programming language used with that platform."

What is the programming language? Is it CFML or CFScript? Or both?

--Mortense (talk) 18:56, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

CFML is the language, and is a single language, with two syntax styles (tag-style and script-style).

cfscript is the tag used to embed the script-style syntax into a tag-style file. (Until recently, this tag was required to use the script syntax; both now pure script files are accepted.)

ColdFusion is the Adobe software product which implements CFML. (This article should really remain focused on ColdFusion the product, and leave discussion of CFML the language to the CFML article.)

It is common for people to refer to the language/code as ColdFusion, but this is inaccurate and rather like people calling their web browser "the internet".

I've made an attempt to clarify this in the article, though I'm not really happy with the wording used, so if anyone else wants to have a go at improving it further that'd be great.

Peter Boughton (talk) 15:25, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Criticism over transition to India

To be clear on my stance: I see this as irrelevant in general and not useful information for a Wikipedia page - being little more than nationalistic whingeing - but I'm not going to get into an edit war over it.

However, it definitely does not belong in the article overview, so I have created a "criticism" section and attempted to write a balanced WP:NPOV version. If other editors feel this information is worth having, they can update as appropriate, but I have no objections to the section being removed.

-- Peter Boughton (talk) 17:58, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

I think it's extremely relevant- I use ColdFusion every day and have been with it since version 7. It has nothing to do with nationalism, it has to do with a pronounced drop off in quality, communication, and support (both in Adobe responses to issues and in support documents). I agree that a criticism section is probably more appropriate, however I removed any references to "anger from Americans over American jobs", as that sentiment is not stated in the article.

--Luketheobscure (talk) 18:46, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

If there was a notable journalist article discussing it then it might be relevant, but one person's blog article is not necessarily enough to make it useful for a Wikipedia page. (WP is for encyclopaedic content, and I'm not sure this counts as that.)

My interpretation of both the blog entry and the original WP edit is "CF moved to India, because of which it's getting worse", as opposed to "there has been a reduction in quality, which seems to correlate with the change in development team" - i.e. the complaint appears to stem from the location change.

Currently the article doesn't reference communication/support - though I can see these might be valid concerns, so worth representing?

The title change to "Outsourcing" is incorrect, since that means "subcontracting to another company" whilst what has happened is a relocation within the same company. Should probably be "Relocation" or "Restructuring" or something.

-- Peter Boughton (talk) 19:26, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

I tried to find some more "notable journals" discussing it, but I wasn't able to find anything at the moment. I don't dispute that the blogs currently referenced are probably not the best way to support a statement. However I maintain that the move and subsequent decline are relevant pieces of information for the article.

I renamed the section to "Offshoring", as per your critique. I also added some supporting statements about the decline of CF, however they are focused more on the decline of use/popularity. Feel free to edit as you see fit. I feel that articles are usually made better with this kind of back-and-forth.

--Luketheobscure (talk) 21:35, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

For the most part, blogs are not considered reliable sources. Further, using search results as a source is, at best, original research. Neither belongs in an encyclopedia article. No doubt there's some criticism of Adobe's India move, but we need better sources than that. —Al E.^(talk) 16:11, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Offshoring link

The link to the offshoring article is broken.

http://www.adrocknaphobia.com/post.cfm/the-modern-age-of-coldfusion

Database error: : Datasource could not be found.

I vote that we keep the link to emphasise the dangers of offshoring :)

<rant> Of course, there are many better criticisms than offshoring. All the best criticisms are on websites/blogs.

Wiki is not concerned with the content of the criticisms but who voiced them and where. Maybe that works for politics but it should not matter when criticisms can be verified by looking at the actual subject. It seems like you cannot say a dog has 4 legs unless a preferred source says so. If a preferred source says 5 legs then that's what wiki will tell it's audience. </rant>

194.81.49.122 (talk) 10:13, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Suggested CFBuilder merge

Whilst I'm here, the suggested merge of CFBuilder into this article doesn't make sense.

ColdFusion is an application server. You can write code for it with any standard editor or IDE, (and there are multiple CFML oriented ones).

ColdFusion Builder is an IDE; the spiritual successor to ColdFusion Studio (HomeSite variant). It's geared up for and integrates with ColdFusion, but is an entirely separate product (with a separate price tag).

For comparison, Adobe Flash and Adobe Flash Builder arealso two distinct products/articles, with no talk of merging.

-- Peter Boughton (talk) 00:19, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Since there have been no comments/objections in the past week, I'll go ahead and remove the merge suggestion, for the reasons already given.

-- Peter Boughton (talk) 17:00, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

ColdFusion redirecting to Adobe ColdFusion

Should ColdFusion be a separate wiki entry? It seems odd ColdFusion directs to Adobe_ColdFusion when it could redirect to Railo or OpenBD, other ColdFusion servers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mhenke (talk • contribs) 17:28, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

At the top of the article is written: "This article is about the computer programming language. For other uses, see Cold Fusion (disambiguation).". So no need for any move or change! Regards, mabdul 19:25, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

ColdFusion is not a programming language, it's a software platform. There is only one ColdFusion server - Adobe ColdFusion.

I have corrected the disambig reference and added a pointer to CFML.

-- Peter Boughton (talk) 00:08, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

This move by a sockpuppet of User:Rolandhelper wasn't justified IMO. The common name appears to be ColdFusion.[1][2][3][4][5] -- Trevj (talk) 09:55, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

The product is called "Adobe ColdFusion" by its makers, in the same way as their graphics app is called "Adobe Photoshop" - both are commonly referred to as just ColdFusion and Photoshop respectively, but Wikipedia still has the article at Adobe Photoshop with Photoshop being a redirect. Same applies to LiveCycle, Flash Player and others.

Just because Roland was a bit of a plonker doesn't mean everything he did was bad, and I don't see any reason not to be consistent here.

-- Peter Boughton (talk) 12:10, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Copyright violation

I removed a blatant copyright violation in the section on Adobe ColdFusion 11. Unfortunately, that leaves that section rather sparse. Regular editors may want to verify that there are no other copyright violations in the article, though the person who placed it there didn't put content anywhere else on the page. --Yamla (talk) 13:30, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Companies using ColdFusion

While evaluating ColdFusion for a future, project, I fact checked the companies listed under "Companies using ColdFusion." While it is true that these companies did use ColdFusion in the past, they do not now. Many of these entries are extraordinarily dated, some as early as 2000. Further, contacting these companies, revealed that they do not use the technology any longer.

I would like to propose striking this section. It seems more marketing material than fact. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.26.154.207 (talk) 20:36, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I think it's a great idea - the source is dubious and it not verified. --CutOffTies (talk) 20:39, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree that this type of listing of individual users of ColdFusion is not valuable information. I would be careful about thinking that in reaching out to these companies, you would be able to know that they were not using ColdFusion. Most large companies are fragmented in the technologies that are being used with most groups not aware of what other groups are using. Agassiz830 (talk) 14:17, 24 September 2014 (UTC)