Hi,
I've bben following this thread over the past few days and would like to add
my 2c and dispel a few erroneous "facts". Snippets here are from various
emails in the thread:
Peter Schoenster wrote:
> As far as I am concered, an excellent resource for web/database
> connectivity is Phillip Greenspun:
>
> http://photo.net/wtr/rdbms-backed.html
This resource is "copyright 1989-1996" and last modified "Sunday, December
14, 1997". It contains various outdated references. I do not want to use
bandwidth to criticize the article, but I think readers must beware that it
is only useful as a tiny part of understanding web/database connectivity. It
omits discussion of many tools and flat out states that it does not have
experience using others.
Peter wrote:
> > >Should web/database development be left to people who have not
> > >studied database theory/practice etc.? Will what these people
> > >imagine as possible now be dependent on their grasp of the
> > >software and not the concept?
>
Kathy replied:
> > Depends on the size of the application -- and what you mean by "study."
> > I've studied DB but by no means would call myself a DBA. But I
> can create
> > small apps that work well -- at the same time, I'm not going to imagine
> > that I'm a "developer" in the sense that I could create an application
> > that would be used by the Entire Boeing Co (all 225,000 employees).
>
Peter:
> I think you are much more like me. My experience has been that
> employers and employees evaluate skills via knowledge of software
> programs. I recall once when I was asked if I knew ftp. What an odd
> question. I said I could write a very limited ftp "client" via
> perl/lwp but I have never created a server. They had no idea what I
> was talking about; they just wanted to know if I could use ftp
> software, if I knew what ftp was.
Kathy:
> > Assumptions here. CF is separate from the DB design. It USES
> the DB -- if
> > they are designed poorly, that will affect the CF performance.
Peter:
> I don't understand that. Perhaps I misunderstand what CF is. Is CF
> not a rdbms? Maybe I am off-base on this. Perhaps it is just a gui
> version of something like PHP.
You do misunderstand what CF is. It is not an rdbms. It is not a GUI. It is
a slew of special "tags" that you can embed in your html pages. Many of the
tags can be used to connect to databases and manipulate data in the
databases. It does not provide any tools for creating the database itself.
In addition, CF supplies a robust selection of tags and functions that you
can use to create program logic, build arrays, do math, process strings,
search for text with regular expressions and many of the other things that
you would expect from a scripting language.
If the tags and functions provided by CF are not enough for you, you can
build your own "modules", or custom CF tags, to run data in and out of. If
there is something that you can not pull off with a custom tag, then you can
write CF extensions using C++.
This is similar to perl, where you can:
1) write a script
2) create your own functions
3) add to it with C++, if you need to
CF is not a GUI, it is a text based "language". Just like you may use texpad
to edit your perl scripts, there are a few tools available to speed the use
of CF, such as Cold Fusion Studio, from Allaire or any other editor that
allows you to define your own text insert shortcuts.
BTW, CF Studio is not a WYSIWYG editor, it is a text editor similar to
Homesite.
Re: comparing CF and PHP, they are quite similar in approach, but use
different syntax. PHP also embeds code in your html page, which is parsed
when it passes through the server.
For more info on the functions and tags available in CF, see the docs
available with the downloaded product or at the Allaire site. In short,
there are:
approximately 55 CF tags
approximately 182 functions
Many of the things I can do in perl I can do more quickly with CF. Not all
things, though. CF is not built to be a text file handler, like perl is. And
perl is not built to be a database manipulation engine...it was built to
process text files. Most (all?) of the perl-to-database connectivity is done
via add-on modules such as DBI, msqlPerl, etc.
Another point that I think should be clear is the fact that CF is not a
one-trick pony, allowing you to do all kinds of database stuff, at the
expense of allowing you to do many other things that a scripting language
should do. I sometimes use the CF "language" in a page simply to add some
logic to a page, to embed other files (like SSI), to send or receive email,
to copy/move/delete files, to ftp files, to harvest data from another http
server, etc. For full descriptions of what CF can do, see their docs or
check out the developer forum at allaire.com, one of the best I've seen.
> I just hate to see things go proprietary. The internet developed in
> an open-source environment and this move by MS and other companies to
> take it private is anathema to me. Or does CFprovide the source
> code?
No, Allaire does not provide the source code. I understand that they want to
earn money for their efforts. I also understand your preference of the
"Freeware" ethic.
> If people want to use proprietary software where they are dependent
> on their supplier, so be it. But gee, don't complain when upgrades
> are slow and bugs are plentiful.
Fortunately, bugs in CF have been low, probably due to the dedication of
their beta team. I hope that the trend continues, but there is no gaurantee,
for sure.
> Using a perl/dbi approach a
> person's only excuse is personal ignorance.
I think you are saying "well, if there's a bug, then you can fix it and if
you can't get it to do something, then you can create the extension
yourself". If that's so, then I agree. I don't think we need to open a
freeware vs commercialware debate. The two schools are obviously different.
Fact is that CF is a commercial product, not freeware.
? wrote:
>>Cold Fusion is similar in many ways to ASP or PHP. You can even
>create your own
>>Cold Fusion tags if you want to write compiled code, which means
>CF has no real
>>limitations. If you want to write code with the default tags (which is
what
>>most do), your options are still extremely good.
Matthew Soffen wrote:
>The problem is that depending on the complexity of your page it
>can be slow. The interpreted tags (thats what they are) get
>interpreted by the CF interpreter and then spit out to your db
>generated page. And if you ask any person familiar programming
>in interpreted vs. compiled languages they will tell you the
>compiled programs are lots faster than interpreted ones. (Just
>as C/C++ is lots faster than perl).
>From the CF docs:
"CF Pages are automatically compiled by a just-in-time optimizing p-coder
that significantly increasing performance for complex Cold Fusion pages and
applications by eliminating parsing overhead."
"Pages are cached in memory across multiple user requests offering
significant performance advantages by eliminating disk I/O overhead."
"Database connections are cached and pooled for use across multiple client
requests. This increases performance by eliminating long ODBC connection
times and allowing multiple page requests to share the same connection."
Sanford Carr wrote:
>C++/Perl/CGI/Hand-Coded HTML is equivalent to an aritisan made and
>designed desk. Takes considerable expertise and usually costs more but
>will stand up to any conmdition that's thrown at it and still look
>great, almost forever.
I agree with the artisan comparison, but then the degree of artisanship
depends on who is wielding the tool. Use of the tool does not mean that a
quality product results.
C++ and Perl are ways to implement CGI. CF is an app server that hooks into
the OS's API.
>ColdFusion/ASP/Front Page/"WYSIWYG" Editors are more mass production
>stuff. Functional within certain limits, quick to get in place, but
>less flexible when you want to "push the envelope."
How you define "mass production" is not clear. CF is designed to be a RAD
tool for web application developers. BTW, CF can be extended with custom C++
modules, so you can "push the envelope" with CF. I am not experienced in
ASP. FP..well, we've been through that. And all "WYSIWYG" editors are not
created equal.
Peter wrote:
>I think this thread has gone on long enough. Beginning to waste
>bandwidth.
Welp, sorry if I'm dragging it on!
Jack
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