| ColdFusion is easy-to-learn, easy-to-use, yet full-featured server-based infrastructure for data-enabling Web sites.  For an introduction to data-enabling Web sites, see "Dynamic Content," page 20 , in Chapter 2, "Studio MX: A Bird's-Eye View").
The developer version of ColdFusion, included with Studio MX, allows you to develop ColdFusion applications and run them on your development machine. Other than that, it can be accessed by only one additional IP address ”just enough for testing. You need a production ColdFusion server to make your applications available on the Web. You can either buy and manage your own production ColdFusion server or pay a monthly fee for a hosting service ”the same options you have for an ordinary Web site. You may also be able to find free ColdFusion hosting, which may be appropriate for testing or for non-critical uses that don't put much stress on the server or demand a lot of bandwidth. Dreamweaver is an excellent tool for developing ColdFusion applications. For more on developing ColdFusion applications with Dreamweaver, see Chapter 13, "Developing ColdFusion Applications in Dreamweaver," page 287 .
In addition, the developer version of ColdFusion can be used as a versatile personal automation tool. Three examples: -
For repetitive find-and-replace tasks , ColdFusion offers powerful find and replace functions that use regular expressions . NOTE Regular expressions use special placeholder characters such as * and ? to represent unknown characters . The Windows Explorer supports regular expressions that use * and ? in searching for file names .
-
If you regularly gather the same information from the same Web page, or from a number of Web pages, you may find that ColdFusion's screen scraping capabilities can automate the whole process. -
You can automate sending email with ColdFusion. You can use a database to store and retrieve names, email addresses, and perhaps other information to personalize the messages. For more on screen-scraping with ColdFusion, see "The cf_scrape Custom Tag," page 899 in Chapter 33, "ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML)."
After ColdFusion is installed, there are a few of things you need to do before you can start working with it: -
Configure a Web server to work with ColdFusion. There is a built-in Web server that requires no configuration. -
Create or obtain a database file, created by a program such as Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL Server, or MySQL. (On the CD accompanying this book, there is a Microsoft Access database, greendept.mdb , that you can use for testing.) Typically, you install the database on the ColdFusion server. -
Create a System DSN (Data Source Name ), so that Windows applications can access the database. You can create the System DSN with the ColdFusion Administrator. -
If you are not developing (for example, running Dreamweaver) on the same machine that ColdFusion is running on, you may also need an RDS (Remote Development Services) password to log on to the ColdFusion server. -
A final, optional step is to configure debugging options by using the ColdFusion Administrator, so that you get more information when an error occurs. |
