ColdFusion Developer's Journal

Adobe announced the public betas of Adobe ColdFusion 9 and ColdFusion Builder software. ColdFusion 9, a powerful development technology for building dynamic Web sites and Internet applications, increases developer productivity, integrates with complex enterprise environments and delivers rich and interactive experiences for users. ColdFusion Builder is a new Eclipse based integrated development environment (IDE) used for rapidly developing ColdFusion applications.

ColdFusion developers can now utilize greater integration with the Adobe Flash Platform, a complete system of integrated tools, frameworks, clients and servers for the development of Web applications, content and video that runs consistently across operating systems and devices. As a result, developers and IT professionals have an easier path for creating rich user interfaces for their enterprise applications and to integrate across their existing technologies.

“ColdFusion adoption has accelerated since we introduced support for Flex, AJAX and PDF with ColdFusion 8,” said David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of the Platform Business Unit at Adobe. “The increased integration with everything from Adobe AIR® applications to enterprise-based Adobe® LiveCycle® ES software enables companies to meet critical business needs quickly, while ColdFusion Builder provides developers with an enhanced workflow between ColdFusion and the Flash Platform for RIA development.”

Customers across multiple industries are participating in the ColdFusion 9 and ColdFusion Builder public betas. “ColdFusion 9 has several new features of interest to enterprise customers, particularly regarding Microsoft SharePoint integration and the ability to read and write Microsoft Office documents as part of a business process flow,” said Joel Cox, IT product manager, Goodyear. “The new innovative array of tools with tightened integration elevates ColdFusion to a new level of functionality allowing for improved performance gains for developers and business users alike.”

ColdFusion 9 accelerates the development cycle by reducing complex and powerful business logic into a few lines of code. ColdFusion 9 applications easily access data from existing enterprise infrastructure including Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Office files and portlet standards. Also, new ColdFusion 9 features include an Adobe® AIR® application for managing multiple ColdFusion servers from one location, helping to save performance time and reducing redundant tasks. ColdFusion 9 also offers local and remote database synchronization with Adobe AIR, improving user satisfaction by enabling them to use an application regardless of Internet connectivity. Additionally, deep integration with Hibernate’s object relational mapping (ORM) provides developers with database independent applications. Combined, the new features can enable faster development and deployment of Web applications.

ColdFusion Builder is a new development tool that provides a unified, customizable and extensible development environment to code applications, manage servers and deploy projects. It includes tools for debugging applications within the IDE, remote support and custom code generation, a customized development environment and support for applications built with ColdFusion 7 and 8. Using ColdFusion Builder, developers can become more productive due to the automation of redundant tasks and reuse of code. Also, because ColdFusion Builder and Adobe® Flash® Builder™ are Eclipse based, there is deep feature integration and enhanced workflow to generate client and server code. As a result developers can more simply create rich interfaces and applications with ColdFusion server-side logic.

The ColdFusion 9 public beta is available for download at www.adobe.com/go/coldfusion_beta_download. The ColdFusion Builder public beta is available for download at www.adobe.com/go/coldfusion_builder_beta_download.