Coldfusion MX Developer's Handbook

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 940 pages
• Published by: Sybex January 17, 2003
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0782140297
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0782140293
• Book Dimensions: 9 x 7.6 x 2.3 inches
• Weighs: 3.5 pounds

Product Description
ColdFusion is an extremely powerful web-development tool. Despite its short initial learning curve, attributed to its accessible HTML-like, tag-based syntax, it provides sophisticated content-management solutions for large-scale enterprises. This has never been truer than it is now, since the release of ColdFusion MX. To take advantage of this power, you must step outside the box to learn skills as diverse as application design and Web Services development--topics addressed only briefly, if at all, in standard ColdFusion tutorials and reference books.

ColdFusion MX Developer's Handbook teaches you what you need to broaden your ColdFusion skills and become a fully capable enterprise developer. Inside, 13 ColdFusion experts provide highly detailed, advanced instruction that will save you countless headaches and let you squeeze every last drop of functionality from the newest release. You'll master database integration techniques involving advanced SQL queries, stored procedures, and database upsizing. You'll take advantage of MX's improved integration with other technologies, incorporating Flash using Flash Remoting, and capitalizing on full XML support to create Web Services. In your custom coding, you'll build and deploy Java and C++ extensions and wirelessly extend ColdFusion's reach with components that talk to WAP and WML clients.

All this comes wrapped in practical, hard-to-find advice for managing your content and applications and optimizing performance. Large applications with heavy traffic need speed and efficiency, and you get that with performance turning, load balancing, and caching. If you're working in a clustered environment, you need to understand state management. No matter what your situation, you'll benefit from in-depth coverage of application security, debugging, and coding methodology using Fusebox.

Every chapter is packed with the technical knowledge to give you what you need to create serious solutions. You might find that one particular chapter alone is worth the cost of the book because of the time and frustration it will save you. Most readers, however, will use various parts of this book at different times, depending on the constantly changing challenges faced by enterprise programmers. The mission of this book is to provide the extra skills you need to be a successful ColdFusion developer in today's demanding and expanding environment.

Back Cover Copy
ColdFusion is an extremely powerful web-development tool. Despite its short initial learning curve, attributed to its accessible HTML-like, tag-based syntax, it provides sophisticated content-management solutions for large-scale enterprises. This has never been truer than it is now, since the release of ColdFusion MX. To take advantage of this power, you must step outside the box to learn skills as diverse as application design and Web Services development—topics addressed only briefly, if at all, in standard ColdFusion tutorials and reference books.

ColdFusion MX Developer’s Handbook teaches you what you need to broaden your ColdFusion skills and become a fully capable enterprise developer. Inside, 13 ColdFusion experts provide highly detailed, advanced instruction that will save you countless headaches and let you squeeze every last drop of functionality from the newest release. You’ll master database integration techniques involving advanced SQL queries, stored procedures, and database upsizing. You’ll take advantage of MX’s improved integration with other technologies, incorporating Flash using Flash Remoting, and capitalizing on full XML support to create Web Services. In your custom coding, you’ll build and deploy Java and C++ extensions and wirelessly extend ColdFusion’s reach with components that talk to WAP and WML clients.

All this comes wrapped in practical, hard-to-find advice for managing your content and applications and optimizing performance. Large applications with heavy traffic need speed and efficiency, and you get that with performance turning, load balancing, and caching. If you’re working in a clustered environment, you need to understand state management. No matter what your situation, you’ll benefit from in-depth coverage of application security, debugging, and coding methodology using Fusebox.

Every chapter is packed with the technical knowledge to give you what you need to create serious solutions. You might find that one particular chapter alone is worth the cost of the book because of the time and frustration it will save you. Most readers, however, will use various parts of this book at different times, depending on the constantly changing challenges faced by enterprise programmers. The mission of this book is to provide the extra skills you need to be a successful ColdFusion developer in today’s demanding and expanding environment.

Reader Reviews
Five years ago I was called upon to learn Cold Fusion over a weekend before starting a new assignment. I picked up Ben Forta's original Cold Fusion book and read three or four chapters on the way home on the train, picking up the bulk of what I needed to know to do my work in a few short hours. I've done a lot of work with Cold Fusion since then, and used that book to pick up many of the finer points of the craft, including the CFPOP and CFMAIL tags which I used to build a web-based e-mail service. The web has changed a lot since 1998, and so has Cold Fusion. That book served me well, but with all the technological advances since its publication, I needed a new book that offered coverage of all the new features in Cold Fusion, from support for Flash and XML to invocation of web services and next-generation Cold Fusion components. Cold Fusion MX Developer's Handbook fits the bill. It provides robust coverage of Cold Fusion's basic long-standing features, but also goes into more detail about maturing technologies like WDDX and Flash Remoting and their place in Cold Fusion applications. Many of the original tags had evolved significantly since I last made use of them, and this book offers thorough explanations of their new features. When it comes to new technologies like WML and Web Services, the book includes explanations not only of Cold Fusion's support for these technologies but also overviews describing their capabilities in general terms. (WAP/WML, for example, doesn't have specialized Cold Fusion support, but the chapter on "Working with WAP and WML Clients" not only explains the intricacies of a WML application but also how to use standard Cold Fusion tags to determine whether a client is WML-capable based on request headers and set the Content-Type appropriately for the response.) I've definitely found the right book to help me "catch-up" on Cold Fusion, but the book would still be great for neophytes seeking to learn Cold Fusion from the ground up, as well as experienced Cold Fusion developers who need a reference to the product's many new features.