Cold Fusion Development

Reading about ColdFusion (CF) development may get into some deep water, if the beginner is not already familiar with programming languages. Most developers, however, know at least one programming language before coming to ColdFusion, and with prior knowledge of HTML, XML or other tagging systems, will look forward to getting a handle on ColdFusion as well. A good set of guidelines from those who have gone before will set the ColdFusion developer on the right path.

Many people approach ColdFusion with the attitude that they can learn to create or write web templates. Indeed, ColdFusion is one of the best languages for doing so. Compared to other server-side technologies, ColdFusion allows complex applications to be up and running in a minimal amount of time.

All CF web templates will be commented at the top. That is, the following information will appear as comments: template name, author's name, date created, date last modified (and possibly, by whom), use (what the user will have done to call this particular page), and purpose (what the page does).

In programming and development, there's always a right way to do something, and a sloppy way that creates headaches. Writing code that is reliable will make a friend of the developer striving to get several applications to work together, as well as those who have to use the end product. Learning good programming form, such as including defined variables in application.cfm, will serve the developer well.

Since relational databases are central to the CF developer's work, another good habit is learning to use the various CF calls to speed up reading and performance. A memory saver for the web server is to use only absolutely needed resources. Finally, requests that take too long to process in testing (and that's measured in milliseconds) will probably have to be rewritten.