I’m helping to write a tool to edit simple database information in a browser. ColdFusion is meant for rapid application development and is perfect for this or any small scale data project because it’s very easy to quickly make pages and is designed for use with a database.

One of the reasons ColdFusion is so easy to pick up and run with is that its style is very similar to html with its own opening and ending tags(this probably makes it easier to learn than ASP or PHP). In fact, ColdFusion is commonly integrated with html directly meaning you will see a lot of html tags in coldfusion (.cfm) pages. The ColdFusion tags are denoted by the “cf” they include, for example:

<CFFORM name=“HelloWorld”>
...
</CFFORM >

Using the <CFQUERY> tag you can write your SQL directly into the page and display the results by using the <CFOUTPUT> tag and surrounding your variables with the ‘#’ symbol any time you desire to reference them.

<CFQUERY NAME=“findUser” DATASOURCE=“userDatabase”>
   SELECT *
   FROM userTable
   WHERE userName = ‘#Attributes.name#’
</CFQUERY>

<CFIF findUser.recordcount EQ 0>
   <textarea>
      User Name <CFOUTPUT>#findUser.userName#</CFOUTPUT> was not found
   </textarea>
</CFIF>

ColdFusion is now owned by Adobe Software who released ColdFusion 9 in October. ColdFusion 9 has integration with Adobe flash as well as Microsoft Office. It’s compatible with all databases. If you are new to scripting and markup languages and ColdFusion is available to you it is an excellent way to start out and learn.