| This book is designed to teach you how to develop sophisticated, dynamic, and interactive websites by using ColdFusion.
ColdFusion, launched in 1995 by Allaire Corporation (now owned by Macromedia), was the first web application server available for Windows NT–based web servers. ColdFusion is now in a new version named MX, which is the version covered in this book.
Today, ColdFusion is used by more than half of all Fortune 500 companies by some counts. It has grown from its modest beginnings to this wide level of industry acceptance because it offers a powerful, yet easy-to-use, environment in which web-based applications can be rapidly designed, prototyped, and deployed. ColdFusion is available for Windows NT, 2000, and XP as well as Linux, Solaris, and HPUX.
Compared to some other web application server products, ColdFusion offers a simplicity that often belies its powerful capabilities. These capabilities include working with data in databases, interacting with the Internet through e-mail and HTTP, creating and consuming web services, providing the logic for interactive data applications in Flash, and much more.
The goal of this book is to teach web developers how to turn their knowledge of HTML into a strong command of ColdFusion so that they can begin to develop the dynamic web applications and interactive websites that are becoming common on the Internet and intranets worldwide. |