Programming ColdFusion

Retrieving and Displaying Data

When you query records from a database, the results (known as a record set) are returned in a special ColdFusion data type called a query object. A query object stores the records within it in rows and columns—just like a spreadsheet. Throughout this book, I’ll use the terms record and row interchangeably. Column name and field are also used interchangeably. Before we get into the specifics of querying databases and working with query objects, we need to create a database with some sample data to work with.

Creating the Example Database

The majority of examples in this chapter (and throughout the book) use a data source called ProgrammingCF that contains several database tables including one called EmployeeDirectory. The schema and sample data for this database are listed in Appendix C. For simplicity, I’ve chosen to use a Microsoft Access database for all the examples; you can download the sample Access database from O’Reilly’s catalog page for this book (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coldfusion/). Of course, you can use any database you choose. To get started, you need to create a new database and save it as ProgrammingCF. Next, create a new table and add the fields shown in Table 4-2.

Table 4-2. Employee Directory Table Within the ProgrammingCF Database

Field Name	Field Type	Max Length
ID (primary key)	AutoNumber	N/A
Name	Text	255
Title	Text	255
Department	Text	255
Email	Text	255
PhoneExt	Number (long int)	N/A
Salary	Number ...