Adobe ColdFusion 8 software solves the day-to-day challenges of Internet application development, allowing you to be extremely productive as you create and deliver engaging online applications. And because it fits into any IT environment, you can use ColdFusion 8 for everything from small departmental applications to highly scalable, reliable implementations of your most important business applications.

 

ColdFusion 8 Server Monitor lets developers swiftly identify bottlenecks and tune the server for better performance.

 

ColdFusion 8 enables developers to seamlessly integrate their ColdFusion applications with other Adobe technologies such as Adobe Flex, PDF, Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), and Adobe LiveCycle. ColdFusion 8 also uses Ajax-based components, enabling developers to design and deploy engaging applications by integrating complex environments into intuitive interfaces.

 

ColdFusion 8 offers expanded support such as .NET integration, Microsoft Windows Vista and JBoss support, and integration with the latest version of enterprise databases, giving organizations enhanced efficiency, interoperability, and scalability.

 

It is available in the following Editions:

 

·         ColdFusion MX Standard: an entry-level server for basic Web sites and small to medium-sized applications including core capabilities for developing dynamic Internet applications using the ColdFusion Markup Language.

·         ColdFusion MX Enterprise: a complete solution for development of advanced Web applications and services including high performance, management and security features required for large-scale Web sites, applications and hosting environments.

Features

·         Performance increases:  Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software delivers significant performance improvements over all earlier releases of the product.

·         Server Monitor: ColdFusion 8 introduces the new Server Monitor and Multiserver Monitor. By providing information about the server — including requests, queries, memory usage, and errors — the Server Monitor allows you to troubleshoot and fine-tune applications in development and in production. You can also set alerts and other actions to help prevent memory problems, slow pages, or other issues that would negatively impact a user's experience with the application.

·         PDF features: ColdFusion 8 applications can dynamically generate and interact with PDF documents and forms for a printable, portable way to intelligently capture and share information.

·         Ajax features: ColdFusion 8 can easily provide data to existing Ajax applications and frameworks. You can use simple tags to access a large library of prebuilt Ajax user interface components such as rich text editors, data grids, tree controls, tab navigators, and more.

·         .NET integration: With ColdFusion 8, you can specify any .NET object — either local or remote — and use it in your ColdFusion application, just like any Java™ or other object resource.

·         Microsoft Exchange Server integration: ColdFusion 8 applications can programmatically access Exchange Server functionality such as calendars, tasks, and contacts.

·         Interactive debugger:

·         ColdFusion 8 introduces an Eclipse™ plug-in debugger. Use it to set breakpoints, watch variables, and step through code, making it easier to debug all your application code.

·         Adobe Flex integration: ColdFusion 8 now includes Adobe LiveCycle® Data Services ES (formerly Flex™ Data Services) and other data exchange improvements to simplify the data-enabling of rich Internet applications (RIAs) you build with ColdFusion and Flex.

·         Per-application settings: ColdFusion 8 allows you to set ColdFusion mappings and custom tag paths on a per-application basis.

·         Multi-threading: ColdFusion 8 introduces the new CFTHREAD tag, which allows you to create, end, join together, or temporarily suspend the processing of specific ColdFusion threads.

·         Image manipulation: ColdFusion 8 adds more than 50 new tags and functions for creating and manipulating images, from simple to sophisticated. For example, the new CFIMAGE tag provides shortcuts to the most common image actions, including reading, writing, resizing, rotating, and converting images.

·         Presentations on demand: ColdFusion 8 allows you to dynamically create multimedia experiences and eLearning courses with animation, audio, and video. These high-quality, on-demand presentations are generated on the server with up-to-the-minute data and content from multiple external sources.

·         Atom and RSS feeds: ColdFusion 8 introduces the new CFFEED tag, which can read and create RSS and Atom feeds in commonly used formats, so you can quickly and easily create complex content syndication applications.

·         ZIP and JAR file features: ColdFusion 8 introduces two new tags, CFZIP and CFZIPPARAM, so you can manipulate ZIP and JAR files for working with file archives.

·         User-based Administrator and RDS access:

·         ColdFusion 8 allows you to create multiple ColdFusion Administrator and Remote Development Services (RDS) accounts with individual permissions, so you can tailor Administrator and RDS access to fit your specific security needs. The roles assigned to a user determine which pages in the ColdFusion Administrator and which functions in the Administrator API a user can access.

·         Improved file manipulation functions: ColdFusion 8 adds several new file manipulation functions to the ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML), most notably the ability to read and write large files in defined segments, rather than in a single operation.

·         JavaScript operators in CFML: ColdFusion 8 supports common JavaScript operators such as ++, ==, ||, <, and > so they can be used in CFML expressions.

·         CFC improvements: ColdFusion 8 adds several highly requested improvements to ColdFusion components (CFCs), including the ability to create interface definitions, use J2EE session replication in a cluster, have access to the CFCs in session data across all the machines in a cluster, and use the new onMissing Method function.

·         Strong encryption libraries: ColdFusion 8 now includes RSA BSAFE Crypto-J libraries, which provide FIPs 140-certified strong encryption.

·         Reporting enhancements: ColdFusion 8 introduces a completely new version of the ColdFusion Report Builder. Use it to create high-quality, structured reports with more output choices and a more consistent look and feel throughout your applications. You can also create and apply cascading style sheet (CSS) definitions to reports, export your reports in HTML or XML format, and create report styles for all of your reports.

·         Database interaction improvements: ColdFusion 8 provides a new DBINFO tag to programmatically access information about a data source, allows stored procedures and queries using CFQUERYPARAM to be cached, and much more. Plus, there is expanded database driver support with new options for SQL Server 2005, Oracle 10g, Sybase ASE15, MySQL 4 and 5, PostgreSQL 8, and others.

·         Argument collections: ColdFusion 8 makes it much simpler to code tags with many attributes. You can now specify an argumentsCollection attribute in most tags to specify the tag's attributes in a single structure.

·         Array and structure creation improvements: ColdFusion 8 allows you to create arrays and structures implicitly in assignment statements without using the ArrayNew or Structnew functions. The result is cleaner code with less typing.

·         Expanded platform, OS, and database support:ColdFusion 8 offers broad platform support with notable additions of Mac OS X on Intel®, JBoss, 64-bit support, JDK 1.5 and JDK 1.6, and support for VMware and Microsoft Virtual Server.

 

ColdFusion 8 system requirements

 

Windows

·         Intel® Pentium® II or AMD Athlon processor

·         Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Professional with Service Pack 3; Windows 2000 Server, Advanced Server, or Datacenter Server with Service Pack 3; Windows Server® 2003 Web, Standard, or Enterprise Edition with Service Pack 1 and R2; Windows Server® 2008; Windows XP Professional or Home Edition; or Windows Vista®

·         512MB of RAM (1GB recommended)

·         500MB of available hard-disk space

·         DVD-ROM drive

Macintosh

·         PowerPC® G4 or G5 or Intel Pentium 4 processor

·         Mac OS X v.10.4.x, 10.5.x

·         512MB of RAM (1GB recommended)

·         500MB of available hard-disk space

·         DVD-ROM drive

Linux

·         Intel Pentium II or AMD Athlon processor

·         Red Hat® Linux® AS or ES 3.0, 4.0, or 5.0; SUSE™ Linux Enterprise Server 9 or 10

·         512MB of RAM (1GB recommended)

·         500MB of available hard-disk space

·         DVD-ROM drive

Solaris

·         SPARC® processor

·         Solaris™ 9 or 10

·         512MB of RAM (1GB recommended)

·         500MB of available hard-disk space

·         DVD-ROM drive