ColdFusion Architecture
There are several components that make up the ColdFusion MX environment, from which you can develop ColdFusion applications. As I mentioned earlier, a ColdFusion MX application is simply a collection of templates (pages) that work together to allow a user to perform a task. By template, I mean a file that contains a combination of hard-coded HTML (or other structure/layout code) along with sections of ColdFusion code that replace otherwise static sections of content with “dynamic” content pulled from a database or other data source. These templates don’t exist in a vacuum, however. To get a better idea of how a ColdFusion application is constructed, you need to understand the components that make up the ColdFusion environment:
- ColdFusion MX Application Server
TheColdFusion Application Server processes all the CFML code in the templates passed to it by the web server. It then returns the dynamically generated results to the web server, so that the output can be sent to the user’s browser. The ColdFusion Application Server integrates with a number of popular web servers via native APIs and is also capable of running with ColdFusion MX’s standalone web server (recommended for development only). Once the ColdFusion Application Server is set up, it works silently in the background, so we won’t be talking much about it in this book.
- Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
DreamweaverMX is the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) designed for the ColdFusion ...