Choosing A Server Technology - MACROMEDIA DREAMWEAVER 8-GETTING STARTED WITH DREAMWEAVER Getting Started

Choosing a server technology

You can use Dreamweaver to build web applications using any of five server
technologies: ColdFusion, ASP.NET, ASP, JSP, or PHP. Each of these
technologies corresponds to a document type in Dreamweaver. Choosing
one for your web application depends on several factors, including your
level of comfort with various scripting languages and the application server
you plan to use.
If you're new to web application development or to application
development in general, you'll probably prefer ColdFusion because it
provides an easy-to-learn server scripting environment that's also tightly
integrated with Dreamweaver. If you're familiar with other server
technologies, such as JSP, PHP, ASP, or ASP.NET, Dreamweaver offers
great support for these as well.
Which server technology you choose also depends on the application server
you plan to use for your web application. An application server is software
that helps a web server process web pages containing server-side scripts or
tags. For example, if you have ColdFusion MX 7 Server, you can choose
ColdFusion as your server technology. If you have access to a server
running Microsoft Internet Information Server 5 (IIS) with the .NET
Framework, you can choose ASP.NET. PHP is an option if you have access
to a web server with a PHP application server; JSP is an option if you have
access to a web server with a JSP application server (such as Macromedia
JRun).
A developer edition of ColdFusion MX 7 is available on the Dreamweaver
CD (Windows version only) and on the Macromedia website at
www.macromedia.com/go/coldfusion/.
For more information, see "Setting up an application server" in
Using Dreamweaver.
To learn more about ColdFusion, select Using ColdFusion from the Help
menu.
To learn more about ASP.NET, visit the Microsoft website at http://
msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/.
To learn more about ASP, visit the Microsoft website at http://
msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnanchor/
html/activeservpages.asp.
226 Understanding Web Applications