Catalyst A client inquiry

Question What is Giga's opinion on scalability and robustness of ColdFusion?

Answer >From the operations point of view, as the volume of transactions against a site grows, Allaire's ColdFusion is, in fact, scalable. However, from the applications development point of view, as the size and complexity of applications and development teams grow, ColdFusion is not able to maintain the same degree of developer productivity (Giga calls this "development scalability"). Thus, the key decision criteria for deciding when to use ColdFusion are application size and complexity, not transaction volume. ColdFusion gained runtime scalability features with version 4.0 in 1998, (see IdeaByte, Cold Fusion: Improving Scalability, but Still Not a Complete Solution for Web Transactions <http://www.gigaweb.com/l.asp?3*105*0*28*310*197491-pc98>, Philip Costa). The current version 4.5 has a number of additional architectural features for both scalability and recovery. ColdFusion now has load balancing, a multithreaded server, failover support, server recovery and caching. Giga has received good client feedback on both ColdFusion's performance and scalability. Allaire is pursuing integration of its JRun Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) server with ColdFusion, but this is more to address the market interest in Java and (potentially) provide a future migration path than to make ColdFusion more scalable. ColdFusion's development scalability characteristics are the same as they have always been. The ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML) does not promote modular, well-layered application development, which is required for complex application work to be divided and shared among the members of a large team and for application components to be reused effectively across applications. Still, ColdFusion development is very productive for small teams, so it is very applicable for small, simple, quick-turnaround, low-affordability systems. Over the years, Allaire has added more capabilities to call from ColdFusion to other environments (component object model (COM), Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs), CORBA, etc.). However, these should be viewed as interfaces to use occasionally, not as primary development methods. Another important development is the recent purchase of Allaire by Macromedia, the maker of Dreamweaver, Shockwave and Flash. Assuming the deal goes through, which Giga thinks is reasonably likely, this may, over time, improve the set of tools integrated around ColdFusion, but it will not materially change the development scalability issues, which are inherent in its tag-based language for coding business rules (see IdeaByte, Macromedia-Allaire Merger Is Neutral for Developers </core/loadContent.asp?urlContent=/Content/GIB/RIB-012001-00209.html>, Randy Heffner).

We ended up using this article to say enter fusebox to solve the development methodology issue.

-----Original Message----- From: Erik Voldengen [mailto:erikv@erikv.com] Sent: Friday, May 11, 2001 9:41 AM To: Fusebox Subject: RE: ColdFusion is NOT suitable for Enterprise Solutions

Adam,

That's a common misconception out there, at least I've seen it many times. While you are collecting hard data, you might also want to mention why, in part, ColdFusion got this nastly little rap.

ColdFusion is easy to learn. Therefore, it brings in programmers who are not necessarily from a programming background. That's important, because the base knowledge of expensive versus efficient coding practices are not always there. Therefore, ColdFusion is definately going to yield some non-Enterprise worthy solutions. Good programmers and architecture, however, can definately get the job done right.

Compare Java to ColdFusion. I believe Java is a lot harder to become a guru at than ColdFusion. And along the way, the sub-par programmers might get weeded out. So while Java is an excellent application platform, it doesn't have the stigma CF has.

But for tag-based solutions, CF, ASP, PHP, whatever, It comes down to proper architecure and programming, and not the platform.

-Erik

> -----Original Message----- > From: John A Smith [mailto:john.smith@ed.ac.uk] > Sent: Friday, May 11, 2001 6:12 AM > To: Fusebox > Subject: RE: ColdFusion is NOT suitable for Enterprise Solutions > > > Adam > > Our MIS systems are an Oracle shop, but they have plenty of > CF apps running > that use Oracle as the back-end datastore. > > Cheers > > John > > john.smith@ed.ac.uk webhelp.ucs.ed.ac.uk > Information Tools +44 131 650 6915 Phone > Computing Services +44 0870 131 2788 eFax > The University of Edinburgh, Main Library > George Sq., Edinburgh EH8 9LJ > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Adam Reynolds [mailto:Adam.Reynolds@unilever.com] > > Sent: 11 May 2001 13:11 > > To: Fusebox > > Subject: ColdFusion is NOT suitable for Enterprise Solutions > > > > > > Discuss... > > > > > > > > We are in the process of doing presentations on various > technologies and I > > really ripped into Oracle WebDB the other week and expect them to be > > gunning for me. I'm doing a presentation on CF, including > the new CF5 > > features. > > > > In lunch today this came up, that CF was not suitable for Enterprise > > Solutions (sheesh). > > > > I also want to emphasise speed of development during the > presentation. > > > > So what I need is links, examples, papers, the lot. > > > > Best Regards, > > > > Adam Reynolds > > ColdFusion Web Developer > > ISMG Development, Unilever > > London > > > > ( +44 20 7822 5450 (ext 5450) > > m: +44 7973 386620 > > * adam.reynolds@unilever.com > > > > > > > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Structure your ColdFusion code with Fusebox. Get the official book at http://www.fusionauthority.com/bkinfo.cfm

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