Cold Fusion Availabilty

[alexfusion]

Hi friends!
I am Alejandro from Argentina.I must to thank you for the answer I posted about CFMAIL.Thanks!!!!!!!
My new question is:
Because the meger between Macromedia and Allaire,will ColdFusion entire product line (servers and editors) be being available in the future?
I sent mails to Macromedia and Allaire and they said ColdFusion line will be available.
What do you think? I am using ColdFusio and I think that it is the easier and most powerful server-side language.
Will ASP be the standard?
I am tired of following the ideas from MIcrosoft.
If anyone has more information please give me a clue.
Thank you again!

Alejandro

mixale@hotmail.com

 

[iqof188]

Alejandro, gringo , the latest buzz about ColdFusion is that the beta version of CF 5.0 has been released this week. Check out Allaire's site to obtain a copy. I've heard the engine is entirely written in Java (now it is written in C), and I suppose the CF line will be available for at least the next couple of years. Especially since Spectra (another Allaire toolkit) is based on CF Server.
Regarding ASP: I have experience in both ASP and ColdFusion, both can do a lot of things, and I don't think lengthy discussions about which tool is better are a good thing to do. I believe ASP has a US market share of 40%, while CF has a US market share of 30%. I am really curious how version 5.0 of CF is (I might download it this weekend to check it out), but I have to say the whole idea of Microsoft.net (tight integration of MS stuff like ASP, VB, C++ and C# and SQL Server) looks pretty good. But then again, I don't prefer MS over Allaire / Macromedia or anything. The important thing is that each company or developer picks a toolkit that suits him best. Happy programming!




<webguru>iqof188</webguru>

 

[tleish]

I just met with an Allaire Sales Rep last night and talked with him about the merger and the future of ColdFusion. Macromedia had every intention of keeping CF going. CF has been around since 1995 (FYI, that's before ASP and PHP started). They have over 500,000 users of CF, over 100,000 products sold, and over 10,000 sites running in CF. You would be crazy not to continue to support a product that has such a huge clientel base. Before the merger, both Macromedia and Allaire were cash flow companies, so it's not not either of them were hurting either. So as far as the future of CF, it's lookes VERY good.

ColdFusion 5.0 is scheduled to be released sometime the first half of this year with some great features. Some of which (suprise, suprise) uses CF tags to dynamically create FLASH elements. He told me a list of the new 'planned' features for CF5.0, and I can list some of them if you want me to, but I think they're listed on Macromedia's site. CF 5.0 is not written in Java, but is still written in C++ like their previous version. The release after CF5.0 (right now they are calling it ColdFusion &quot;Neo&quot is written entirely in Java, but they have so many users in C++ that they still plan to support the C++ versions for quite some time (like bug fixes, patches, etc).

ColdFusion &quot;Neo&quot; is like doing a jsp/servlet site only in Java. Basically, it's ColdFusion running on top of JRun (Their JavaServlet engine). He showed me a beta version running on his machine, and it runs current CF code just fine, there will be no need to change your code when it comes about. The great thing is you'll be able to run JSP and CF on the same page.

The CF Java server is also MUCH faster that the C++ CF server, so that'll be another advantage.

Another advantage of this is Java supports double byte.unicode, which mean Internationalization of coding -- he said CF currently doesn't suppport it. They've done a Japanese hack job of this in CF, but that's it. I meantion this because someone was asking about it earlier in one if the forums.

They plan to release ColdFusion Neo 1.0 around 6 months after CF5.0 is released. He said they're not quite sure how the pricing structure will work with Neo, since it is JRun and CF combined, he said they are struggling with that.

So basically, I'd say the future of CF looks great.