Sebastopol, CA--"Looking back, it is almost funny to imagine I fell in love with a language that had just over 30 language elements in its 1.5 release," says Rob Brooks-Bilson, author of the just-released Programming ColdFusion (O'Reilly $49.95). "At the time, though, ColdFusion had enough power to handle any web programming task thrown my way. And as the tasks have become more complex, ColdFusion has kept pace. Today ColdFusion has over 80 tags and 255 functions for handling almost any task imaginable. Add to that scalability features to handle high-traffic sites such as load balancing and failover, and it's easy to see why ColdFusion is so popular among developers and administrators."
ColdFusion is a powerful platform for creating and deploying dynamic web applications. Developers like ColdFusion because its simple, tag-based language makes it easy to handle simple tasks, like processing form data and querying databases. ColdFusion is easy to learn, yet powerful enough to deliver highly scalable, robust applications.
"With the release of ColdFusion 5.0, developers are going to be looking for a comprehensive source of information on ColdFusion beyond the standard documentation," adds Brooks-Bilson. "Programming ColdFusion fills that need by providing the tips, tricks, techniques, and practical advice developers are looking for."
Programming ColdFusion covers everything you need to know to create effective web applications with ColdFusion and includes numerous examples that you can use for your own applications. The book starts with ColdFusion basics and quickly progresses to topics like sharing application data, accessing databases, and maintaining state information. It also provides chapters on advanced database techniques, working with the Verity search engine, and interacting with other data sources, including LDAP directories, email servers, and other web servers. Finally, the book explores more advanced topics, such as creating custom tags, sharing data with WDDX, and calling external objects.
"You don't have to be a hard-core programmer to get started with ColdFusion," says Brooks-Bilson. "This doesn't, however, mean that ColdFusion isn't powerful. Quite the contrary. ColdFusion makes it simple to do common tasks--such as processing form data or querying a database. But when you need to perform more complex operations--such as transaction processing or personalization--ColdFusion makes that possible, too."
Online Resources:
Rob Brooks-Bilson's Top Ten Programming ColdFusion Tips.
Chapter 11, "Advanced Database Techniques," is available free online.
More information about the book, including Table of Contents, index, author bio, and samples.
A cover graphic in jpeg format.
Programming
ColdFusion
By Rob Brooks-Bilson
1-56592-698-6, 990 pages, $49.95
order@oreilly.com
1-800-998-9938
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