what exactly is cold fusion?

what exactly is cold fusion?

Coldfusion stands for 2 things. It is the name of a programming language and of the application server that runs on that language.

maybe you have get it wrong, it names coldFusion, is a commercial rapid application development platform invented by Jeremy and JJ Allaire in 1995. Originally designed to make it easier to connect simple HTML pages to a database, by 2.0 had become a full platform that included an IDE in addition to a full Scripting Language. Current versions of Coldfusion, sold by Adobe Systems include advanced features for enterprise integration and development of rich internet applications. ColdFusion primarily competes with PHP and ASP.

ColdFusion is an example of what's known as an application server.  It can be used to host web-sites and software-services of various kinds, for lightweight loads or very heavy ones.

The design of ColdFusion is very clever, to the point that (like most cleverness) it's not entirely obvious at first glance.  ColdFusion works with declarative tags that are (usually) interspersed with your HTML code ... yet, these tags truly are declarative in nature, not merely procedural as in (say...) PHP.  A vague simile would be to say that CF is somewhat like a really good macro-processor, and more.

On-the-fly, ColdFusion evaluates a file and translates it into Java code, which it compiles and executes. So, you actually have all of the portability advantages (and if you wish, the language advantages) of the surrounding Java environment.

Firstly it's ColdFusion (one word, capital F in the middle).

Secondly... it's amazing what having a look around the Adobe site might reveal:

http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/

Or even Google...

http://www.google.co.nz/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=ColdFusion&btnI=

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Adam