Cold Fusion and Cold Fusion MX
What is Cold Fusion?
Cold Fusion is a Web application development tool for people who want
to use the Web to create dynamic-page applications and interactive Web
sites on corporate intranets and the Internet. Cold Fusion gives
developers a way to quickly build powerful Web applications which
integrate with key server technologies such as relational databases and
SMTP e-mail. Our high-end platforms and monitoring systems insure
that your Cold Fusion site achieves high levels of reliability whether
hosted on a shared server or dedicated/colocated server.
Do I need any special tools to use Cold Fusion?
No. Since Cold Fusion integrates its special coding with normal HTML
codes, any standard web authoring tool that allows editing of HTML can
be used. This means that all development and debugging of a Cold Fusion
application can take place right on Hostcentric's servers. However, if
you plan on doing heavy development work with Cold Fusion, you may find
it easier to purchase a copy of Cold Fusion to do all your development
locally, and only copy the finished product to our servers. Allaire
also has a new product called Cold Fusion Studio that assists in
publishing Cold Fusion code.
Do I have to buy Cold Fusion?
No. You can use our license which allows our clients to use the Cold
Fusion service. However, if you plan on doing heavy development work
with Cold Fusion, you may find it easier to purchase a copy of Cold
Fusion to do all your development locally, and only copy the finished
product to our servers.
What databases can I use with Cold Fusion?
You can use any ODBC-compliant database (please refer to the database section of our docs for details).
We also can provide high processing Microsoft SQL
Server if requested (additional setup and monthly charges are
involved). If you are planning a moderate level of activity for
your site, we strongly recommend using Microsoft SQL Server.
What version of Cold Fusion do you support?
We support versions 5.0 and 6.1 MX (or higher). Make sure to
stipulate what you need at order time.
Do you support CFX tags? CFFile tags?
Yes, we support both CFX tags and CFFile tags. Several CFX tags are
currently available on our servers. If there is a tag you would like us
to include, contact support. We will examine each tag for stability
before using on our servers and we do reserve the right to not load any
tags we feel may compromise the stability of our systems.
We also allow CFFILE. However, we need all our users to let us know
if they will be using this facility..
What tags can't I use, Using Cookies Instead of the Register
Altering the server's main cold fusion register is dangerous for you
and the other users on the shared server. Thus you can't use any
tag which tries to alter the register. If you use this the system
will suspend your CF priviledges (contact us for a fix).
To this end make sure to use only tags with use COOKIES as storage.
The server should be set to use cookies by default. However, if
you have trouble with a page and keep getting a security error you
should try a statement like follows in your page:
cfapplication name="Login" clientmanagement="Yes" clientstorage="Cookie"
When I need to update my database can I just FTP
over the old one?
No. Because of the way Cold Fusion accesses ODBC databases, you will
often be unable to copy over a database. More importantly, your
database is 'live,' meaning there is a constant possibility someone
will try to access your database while you are copying over your new
database. This can often lead to a corrupted database.
To get around these issues, we ask all clients to copy any new
databases to the server under a different name than the active
database. Once copied, they can quickly rename the old database and put
the new one live.
Do you support the fuel packs? What about Crystal
Report Writer? Cold Fusion Java classes?
Yes, we support all released fuel packs, Crystal Report Writer and Cold
Fusion's Java Classes.
Can I use Cold Fusion with Active Server Pages?
Is one technology better than the other?
You can use both in your website, although not easily on the same page.
They serve the same purpose of creating dynamic web content and they
both have the same functionality either through their core language
base or via DLL extensions that allow one to fill in missing
functionality. Cold Fusion tends to be easier and faster to program in
than ASP.
Can I use Cold Fusion Studio RDS?
Due to security reasons, we are unable to provide Cold Fusion Studio
RDS support, however, the FTP functionality will work.
Where can I learn more about Cold Fusion?