Clogging up the Web

Since I started ColdFusion development, about 5 years ago, I have relied on my old grounding in structured programming (I started off as a COBOL developer, then graduating to C). I have training in Object Oriented Programming (OOP) and Design. In fact, I learned it when UML was just being born and learned Rumbaugh OMT, which is really the main basis for UML as far as I can see.

When you try maintaining a rapidly changing ColdFusion application over a number of years, it can become difficult unless you are a very organised person, which I am not. It seems to me that component based development is the way to go. And the release of ColdFusion MX 6.1 has made component based development in ColdFusion a real option (there were some issues with ColdFusion components prior to version 6.1). I have not looked at whether MX 7.0 has brought anything new to CFCs, but I am reading the MX 7.0 documentation on CFCs as we speak, so expect an update.

CFCs represent a slight issue in a shared hosting environment, particularly for less experienced ColdFusion hosting companies. If your hosting company does not understand the concept of CFCs (and how they are mapped, and the dot-based url’s, etc) then don’t host a CFC based application with them. No hosting control panel offers the ability to automatically setup CFCs for a virtual site - it involves adding a mapping in the administrator - so you will need a friendly hosting company to do it for you. I am happy to do it for our customers on request.

So, I am looking forward to applying my OOP knowledge to CFCs. If it makes commercial sense, I will rewrite some of WEBpowerment (the CMS I have developed) using CFCs.