Cold Fusion – The Mature Web Programming Language for Today’s Dynamic Website
The World Wide Web has come a long way since its inception in 1989. Website designers and developers are no longer limited to one or two programming languages with which to create dynamic websites. Today, there are over a dozen web programming languages developers can use to make their sites do all the things they imagined. Although PHP seems to be a popular among web developers around the globe, Cold Fusion is a worthy contender for building beautiful and dynamic websites.

Cold Fusion is a Rapid Application Development language that has been around for over a decade. It was invented in 1995 by Jeremy and JJ Allaire as a means of incorporating information from a database into HTML pages. In 2001, the brothers’ company Allaire was purchased by Macromedia who in turn was gulped down by a bigger fish, Adobe, in 2005. Cold Fusion’s most unique feature is, unlike other programming languages, it uses a tag based system similar to HTML which makes it a comfortable fit for those used to working with that type of coding style.

Cold Fusion is on its eighth incarnation otherwise known as Adobe Cold Fusion 9. This dynamic language has the capabilities to do anything other web programming languages can do such as client side validation of forms including those made with Flash, business graphing, file upload management, conversion of HTML to PDF, cache management on both client and server sides and full text searching among other things.

The main benefit to using Cold Fusion is the fact that it can handle the most demanding website with ease. First and foremost, Cold Fusion works with all the major databases on the market including SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, and Access. Since the web development language was built on a Java foundation, it easily supports Java and J2EE functionality such as Java servlets and JSP tags. Cold Fusion also works with sites that employ multiple servers and has the capacity to scale with the site as it grows.

A common complaint about Cold Fusion is that it is expensive. Currently, the Cold Fusion Standard Edition can be purchased from Adobe for about $1300 which seems like a pretty steep price when you put it against many of the free options available on the market. However Zend’s Performance Suite costs around $1800 and provides the same advanced tools, such as file compression, that you will find in Cold Fusion.

As a mature language, Cold Fusion has developed a loyal following of developers who are ready to lend a hand to folks who may be struggling with the program. In addition to that, Cold Fusion is backed by Adobe who has their own support structure in place where users can find help. This means that you will always find support for any problems you have with either the program itself or finding ways to make the code do what you want.

When it comes to choosing a web programming language to use for creating dynamic websites, you certainly have many options. Cold Fusion, however, should be on any top ten list you make.