FAQ - Cold Fusion
What is Cold Fusion?
Cold Fusion is a Web application development
tool for people who want to use the Web to create
dynamic-page applications and interactive Web
sites on corporate intranets and the Internet.
Cold Fusion gives developers a way to quickly
build powerful Web applications which integrate
with key server technologies such as relational
databases and SMTP e-mail.
Why Host Cold Fusion With
Pc-Works Interactive?
Our Cold Fusion hosting experience is
unparalleled in the industry. Hosting is done
through Pc-Works Interactive's Virtualscape division which
is manned by a team of engineers who have
developed and managed Cold Fusion websites for
five years. This team is recognized by Allaire and
by the rest of the Cold Fusion community as one of
the most knowledgeable hosting services on the
'net. Pc-Works Interactive's high-end platform and
monitoring systems insure that your Cold Fusion
site achieves high levels of reliability whether
hosted on a shared server or dedicated/colocated
server.
Do I need any special tools to
use Cold Fusion?
No. Since Cold Fusion integrates its special
coding with normal HTML codes, any standard web
authoring tool that allows editing of HTML can be
used. This means that all development and
debugging of a Cold Fusion application can take
place right on Pc-Works Interactive's servers. However, if
you plan on doing heavy development work with Cold
Fusion, you may find it easier to purchase a copy
of Cold Fusion to do all your development locally,
and only copy the finished product to our servers.
Allaire also has a new product called Cold Fusion
Studio that assists in publishing Cold Fusion
code.
Do I have to buy Cold Fusion?
No. Pc-Works
Interactive purchases the licenses for its
servers and allows our clients to use the Cold
Fusion service. However, if you plan on doing
heavy development work with Cold Fusion, you may
find it easier to purchase a copy of Cold Fusion
to do all your development locally, and only copy
the finished product to our servers.
What databases can I use with
Cold Fusion?
You can use any ODBC-compliant database such as
FoxPro, Access, Paradox, etc. Pc-Works Interactive also
provides its clients with Microsoft SQL Server if
requested (additional setup and monthly charges
are involved). If you are planning a moderate
level of activity for your site, we strongly
recommend using Microsoft SQL Server.
What version of Cold Fusion do
you support?
All our newest servers currently use version
4.51.
Do you support CFX tags?
CFFile tags?
Yes, we support both CFX tags and CFFile tags.
Several CFX tags are currently available on our
servers. If there is a tag you would like us to
include, contact support@Pc-Works Interactive. We will
examine each tag for stability before using on our
servers and we do reserve the right to not load
any tags we feel may compromise the stability of
our systems.
We also allow CFFILE. However, we need all our
users to let us know if they will be using this
facility.
What databases can I use with
Cold Fusion?
You can use any ODBC-compliant database such as
FoxPro, Access, Paradox, etc. Pc-Works
Interactive also
provides its clients with Microsoft SQL Server if
requested (additional setup and monthly charges
are involved). Please contact support@Pc-Works
Interactive
for help in setting up your databases.
When I need to update my
database can I just FTP over the old one?
No. Because of the way Cold Fusion accesses
ODBC databases, you will often be unable to copy
over a database. More importantly, your database
is 'live,' meaning there is a constant possibility
someone will try to access your database while you
are copying over your new database. This can often
lead to a corrupted database.
To get around these issues, we ask all clients
to copy any new databases to the server under a
different name than the active database. Once
copied, they can quickly rename the old database
and put the new one live. Of course if there is
ever a problem, we ask clients to contact us at
support@Pc-Works Interactive.
Do you support the fuel
packs? What about Crystal Report Writer? Cold
Fusion Java classes?
Yes, we support all released fuel packs,
Crystal Report Writer and Cold Fusion's Java
Classes.
Can I use Cold Fusion with
Active Server Pages? Is one technology better than
the other?
You can use both in your website, although not
easily on the same page. They serve the same
purpose of creating dynamic web content and they
both have the same functionality either through
their core language base or via DLL extensions
that allow one to fill in missing functionality.
Cold Fusion tends to be easier and faster to
program in than ASP.
Can I use Cold Fusion Studio
RDS?
Due to security reasons,
Pc-Works Interactive is unable
to provide Cold Fusion Studio RDS support,
however, the FTP functionality will work.
Where can I learn more about
Cold Fusion?