Adobe is now shipping its ColdFusion 8 application development platform, offering faster performance and basic linkages to Adobe’s AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) technology.
ColdFusion is a server technology for building Internet applications. AIR, which is Adobe’s planned software for deploying Internet applications on the desktop, can use ColdFusion as a server component. AIR applications can connect to ColdFusion for enterprise data and services. It had been known as Apollo and is only available in a beta form at this point; general availability is expected later this year.
Although ColdFusion 7.0.2, released last year, could offer basic data exchange with AIR, version 8 improves data synchronization and performance significantly, according Adobe. Also highlighted in version 8 of ColdFusion is multithreaded support within the ColdFusion language. Another feature is a Server Monitor capability, which is a rich Internet application that gauges metrics like memory usage and page response times.Version 8 enables invoking of .Net objects and generation of PDF documents. Interactive debugging is offered based on the Eclipse IDE.
The enterprise version of ColdFusion 8 costs US$7,499. It enables deployments with a J2EE application server. The standard edition, for smaller installations, costs US$1,299.