Chapter 1: Introducing Coldfusion Mx; About Coldfusion Mx - MACROMEDIA COLFUSION MX 7-GETTING STARTED BUILDING COLDFUSION MX Getting Started

This chapter introduces the core technologies that are the foundation for Macromedia
ColdFusion MX. In addition, it introduces the basic concepts about ColdFusion MX, how it
works, and the various components that comprise it.
Contents

About ColdFusion MX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

How ColdFusion processes pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Building applications with CFML . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
About ColdFusion MX
ColdFusion MX is a powerful web application server that lets you create robust sites and
applications without a long learning curve. ColdFusion MX does not require coding in traditional
programming languages (for example, C, C++, Java, XML), although it supports these traditional
programming languages.
ColdFusion MX consists of the following core components:
•
ColdFusion application server
•
ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML)
•
ColdFusion MX Administrator
The following sections describe these core components in more detail. In addition, the Getting
Started Experience, which you can view by opening the Macromedia ColdFusion MX
Administrator and clicking Getting Started, provides introductory information about ColdFusion
and code snippets that highlight the new features of ColdFusion MX 7.
The ColdFusion application server
The ColdFusion application server is itself a web application that typically resides on the same
computer as your web server software. It is the program that parses (reads and interprets) and
processes supplied instructions. These instructions are passed to ColdFusion through ColdFusion
pages, which use a .cfm or .cfc filename extension. A ColdFusion page looks like an HTML page,
but contains special tags that instruct the ColdFusion server to perform specific operations.
Introducing ColdFusion MX
CHAPTER 1
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