Do I need Coldfusion service on servers to use it?

[cherphas]

Hello,

I'm building a WEB site for a client of our company. They want a refence manual/help file type site that they can use as a reference when using our software. It will need to be database driven, so I'm using Coldfusion to process info, since that's what my company is giving me. When the site will be done, it will be handed to them and they will use it internally on there server. My question is, will they need a Coldfusion service/software on there servers to use my coldfusion applications? Will it cost them? If so, what are some alternatves to this?

thanks,
Joël

 

[csteinhilber]

Each web server that will need to process ColdFusion pages will need a ColdFusion server.

Technically, you could get around this by setting up one ColdFusion server, and then using something like PERL to pull pages from that server into pages on another server... but it always ends up suffering in performance and I doubt your clients would be happy with it.

Currently there are three versions of the CF server available, Professional (relatively cheap - $799/server), Enterprise ($4,999/server), and J2EE (requires an application server like Weblogic, NAS, etc).

Features/benefits of each are here:

http://www.macromedia.com/software/coldfusion/productinfo/features_by_edition/

As for alternatives, if you're asking for alternatives for running CFML pages... there's nothing else out there to my knowledge that will process CFML. So it's pretty much ColdFusion server, or nothing.

If you're asking for alternatives to CFML, there's always ASP/.NET, PHP, JSP, many others. Each ranging from free to somewhat expensive, depending on what you need.


A single database server, though, can service more than one ColdFusion Server... so you can cut costs there, if your applications and traffic aren't all that heavy.
Hope it helps,
-Carl

 

[webmigit]

Yes they need it on the computer.

Yes they need it (the server application). The one thing that holds Cold Fusion back from holding the controlling share of the developer's choice is the hefty price tag, with free RADs like: PHP and Perl and wanna-be free RADs like ASP, and ASP.net (ASP is nice but so much of it is developed third party, thus meaning that anyone but an expert is going to spend a pretty penny for hefty applications.).

The alternative I'd suggest:

http://www.php.net

Tony ALFII.com

http://www.alfii.com

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[webmigit]

Actually Carl

I posted my post at the same time you posted yours so I didn't see yours..

There is a product called BlueDragon, formally called tagfusion that seems to run faster than CF 5, based on java platform and can handle all of CF 5's tags, though I've never tried it... And it appears to be much cheaper..

http://www.newatlanta.com/products/bluedragon/pricing.cfm

Tony ALFII.com

http://www.alfii.com

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If this post answered or helped to answer your question, please reply with such so that forum members with a similar question will know to use this advice.

 

[csteinhilber]

Interesting. That's exactly why I prefaced my comment about there being no other CFML technology available with "to my knowledge". I just knew that as soon as I said it, someone would point to some other third party technology that could process CFML (I never imagined it'd be you, though, Tony)

Bluedragon does look interesting. It looks to be a parser in a servlet that runs on a J2EE app server (which, I believe, would still be more expensive than CF Server... but if you already have a J2EE app server...)

Thanks for the link, webmigit!
Hope it helps,
-Carl

 

[webmigit]

We do have quite different but quite helpful views on virtually every topic posed to this forum, do we not, Carl?

Tony ALFII.com

http://www.alfii.com

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