Development Tools

Over the past few years, the World Wide Web has become one of the most accepted mediums for publishing information to the masses. Web pages that combine text, images, animation, and even multimedia, have become commonplace.

Cold Fusion is a complete development environment that provides the tools you need to take your Web pages to a whole new dimension. With Cold Fusion, you can create dynamic data driven Web sites instead of creating static pages of fixed text and images. You can collect data, read and write information in other applications, and even create full blown applications of your own.

In this chapter, you learn why your Web site should be powered by Cold Fusion.

Introducing Cold Fusion

The fact that you are reading this book suggests that you are interested in publishing information on the World Wide Web and that you are part of a growing number of developers interested in expanding the capabilities of their Web sites beyond simple publishing.

What kind of capabilities?

There are now over 1/4 million Web sites that attract millions of visitors daily. Most Web sites are being used as electronic replacements for newspapers, magazines, brochures, and bulletin boards. The Web offers ways to enhance these publications using audio, images, animation, multimedia, and even virtual reality.

No one will dispute that these sites add value to the Net because information is knowledge, and knowledge is power. All this information is available at your fingertips (literally). Web sites, however, are capable of being much more than electronic versions of paper publications because of the underlying technology that makes the Web tick. Users can interact with you and your company, collect and process mission critical information in real time, provide new levels of user support, and much more.

The Web is not merely the electronic equivalent of a newspaper or magazine--it is a communication medium that is only limited by the lack of innovation and creativity of Web site designers.

To help illustrate what Cold Fusion is and where it fits into your Web site strategy, let's look at a few of the more impressive and innovative sites on the World Wide Web:

• Dell Computer Corporation ( http://www.dell.com )
• Dell is a leading vendor of mail order computers. Their Web site, like many others, enables you to shop for a new computer online. The big difference is that you may customize the computer online. You are presented with a typical configuration with a price tag attached. You may click on any of the components or peripherals to add or change them. Click on the hard drive line item, for example, and you'll be presented with other hard drive options and how they will effect the price. As soon as any changes are made to the configuration, the price tag is updated automatically.
• Federal Express ( http://www.fedex.com )
• The FedEx site hosts a whole array of impressive and innovative features. The most impressive is the online package tracking system. To test the system, I deposited a package (containing chapters that are now part of this book) in a drop box at 9:55am. At 10:05am I checked the status of the package on the FedEx Web site. In less time than it took to click the search button, I was informed that my package was picked up at 10:02am from the Southfield, MI drop box. FedEx did not design a complete package tracking system for the Web but cleverly linked their Web site to an already existing application. In doing so, they provide superior customer support and lowered their real time phone support costs.
• Ticketmaster ( http://www.ticketmaster.com )
• The Ticketmaster Web site is built around a massive database of every entertainment event in every city at every venue in the United States. The database can be searched by date, artist, event type, state, city, venue, category, and more. The site even contains seating maps of venues hosting events.

These selected sites are truly taking advantage of the World Wide Web.

What is Cold Fusion?

Until recently, developing sites (like the ones mentioned earlier) was a difficult process. Writing custom Web-based applications was a job for experienced programmers only. A good working knowledge of UNIX was a prerequisite, and experience with traditional development or scripting languages was a must.

But all that has changed. Allaire's Cold Fusion enables you to create sites every bit as powerful and as capable as the ones listed earlier, without a long and painful learning curve.

So, what is Cold Fusion? Simply put, Cold Fusion is a Web application development tool that enables the rapid creation of interactive, dynamic, and information-rich Web sites.

Cold Fusion does not require coding in traditional programming languages. Instead, you create applications by extending your standard HTML files with high level formatting functions, conditional operators, and database commands. These commands are instructions to the Cold Fusion processor and form the building blocks on which to build industrial strength applications.

This method of creating Web applications has significant advantages over conventional application development.

• Cold Fusion applications can be developed rapidly because no coding is required other than use of simple HTML style tags.
• Cold Fusion applications are easy to test and roll out.
• The Cold Fusion language contains all the processing and formatting functions you'll need (and the ability to create your own functions if you really run into a dead end).
• Cold Fusion applications are easy to maintain because there is no compilation or linking step, so the files you create are the files used by Cold Fusion.
• Cold Fusion provides all the tools you need to be able to troubleshoot and debug applications.
• Cold Fusion comes with all the hooks needed to link to almost any database application.
• Cold Fusion is fast, thanks to its service-based architecture.

Cold Fusion and Your Intranet

Although all the examples mentioned so far have been Internet sites, the benefits of Cold Fusion apply to Intranets, too.

Most companies have masses of information stored in different systems. Users often don't know what information is available or how to access it even if they do.

Cold Fusion bridges the gap between existing and legacy applications and your employees and empowers them with the tools to work more efficiently.

Chapter 2, "Introduction to Cold Fusion," discusses Intranets in detail.

The Dynamic Page Advantage

Linking your Web site to live data is a tremendous advantage, but the benefits of database interaction go beyond extending the capabilities of your Web site.

With Cold Fusion you can create dynamic, data-driven Web pages. Dynamic Web pages are becoming the norm, and for a good reason. Consider the following:

• Static Web pages
• Static Web pages are made up of text and images, and HTML formatting tags. These pages are manually created and maintained so when information changes, so must the page. This usually involves loading the page into an editor, making the changes, reformatting text if needed, and then saving the file. Of course, not everyone in the organization can make these changes. The Webmaster, or Web design team, is responsible for maintaining the site and implementing all changes and enhancements. This often means that by the time information finally makes it onto the Web site, it is out of date.
• Dynamic Web pages
• Dynamic Web pages contain very little actual text. Instead, they pull needed information from other applications. Dynamic Web pages communicate with databases to extract employee directory information, spreadsheets to display accounting figures, client-server database management systems to interact with order processing applications, and more. Because a database already exists, why re-create it for Web page publication?

Cold Fusion provides you with a full range of database interaction functions to create complete dynamic, data-driven Web pages. The features include:

• The ability to query existing database applications for data.
• The ability to create dynamic queries facilitating more flexible data retrieval.
• The ability to execute stored procedures in databases that support them.
• The ability to execute conditional code on-the-fly, to customize responses for specific situations.
• The ability to enhance the standard HTML form capabilities with data validation functions.
• The ability to dynamically populate form elements.
• The ability to customize the display of dates, times, and currency values with formatting functions.
• The ability to ease the creation of data entry and data drill-down applications with "Wizards."

Powered by Cold Fusion

You were probably planning to use Cold Fusion to solve a particular problem or to fill a specific need. While this book helps you solve that problem, I hope that your mind is now racing and beginning to envision just what else Cold Fusion can do for your Web site.

Cold Fusion is a remarkable tool that is easy to learn, fun to use, and powerful enough to create real-world Web based applications.

With a minimal investment of your time, your Web site can be powered by Cold Fusion.