This is lifted from an E-mail that was circulated around our shop a while
back.
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:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
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:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> 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
>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> > 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
> > * [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
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