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Adobe Systems announced the public beta releases of Adobe ColdFusion 9 and a new product known as ColdFusion Builder.
ColdFusion 9 is the soon-to-be generally released latest version of Adobe’s development technology for building dynamic Websites and Internet applications.
Adam Lehman, product manager for ColdFusion, said it increases developer productivity, integrates with complex enterprise environments and delivers rich and interactive experiences for users. ColdFusion Builder is a new Eclipse-based integrated development environment (IDE) used for rapidly developing ColdFusion applications, he said.
“When we asked our customers what they wanted, they said a true IDE,” Lehman said. “We’ve had editors and other things to help developers, but people said they wanted a true IDE for ColdFusion and we’re delivering that in conjunction with ColdFusion 9.”
ColdFusion Builder is a new development tool that provides a unified, customizable and extensible development environment to code applications, manage servers and deploy projects, Lehman said. ColdFusion 9 includes debugging tools, remote support and custom code generation, a customized development environment and support for applications built with ColdFusion 7 and 8.
Also, because many redundant tasks are automated with ColdFusion Builder and the product fosters code reuse, developers will become more productive, Lehman said. In addition, as ColdFusion Builder and Adobe Flash Builder are Eclipse-based, there is deep feature integration and enhanced workflow to generate client and server code. As a result developers can more simply create rich interfaces and applications with ColdFusion server-side logic, Adobe said.
Meanwhile, ColdFusion 9 accelerates the development cycle by reducing complex and powerful business logic into a few lines of code, Lehman said.
ColdFusion 9 applications easily access data from existing enterprise infrastructure including Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Office files and portlet standards, he said. Also, new ColdFusion 9 features include an Adobe AIR application for managing multiple ColdFusion servers from one location, helping to save performance time and reducing redundant tasks, Adobe officials said.
ColdFusion 9 also offers local and remote database synchronization with Adobe AIR, improving user satisfaction by enabling them to use an application regardless of Internet connectivity, the company said. Additionally, deep integration with Hibernate’s object relational mapping (ORM) provides developers with database independent applications, Lehman said. Combined, the new features can enable faster development and deployment of Web applications.
Greater Integration
The bottom line is that with the new release, ColdFusion developers now have greater integration with the Adobe Flash Platform, a complete system of integrated tools, frameworks, clients and servers for the development of Web applications, content and video that runs consistently across operating systems and devices, Lehman said. As a result, developers and IT professionals have an easier path for creating rich user interfaces for their enterprise applications and to integrate across their existing technologies, company officials said.
“ColdFusion adoption has accelerated since we introduced support for Flex, AJAX and PDF with ColdFusion 8,” said David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of the Platform Business Unit at Adobe, in a statement. “The increased integration with everything from Adobe AIR applications to enterprise-based Adobe LiveCycle ES software enables companies to meet critical business needs quickly, while ColdFusion Builder provides developers with an enhanced workflow between ColdFusion and the Flash Platform for RIA development.”
Customers across multiple industries are participating in the ColdFusion 9 and ColdFusion Builder public betas.
“ColdFusion 9 has several new features of interest to enterprise customers, particularly regarding Microsoft SharePoint integration and the ability to read and write Microsoft Office documents as part of a business process flow,” said Joel Cox, IT product manager, Goodyear, in a statement. “The new innovative array of tools with tightened integration elevates ColdFusion to a new level of functionality allowing for improved performance gains for developers and business users alike.”
“We’re seeing an explosion in the growth of the ColdFusion business and the overall community,” Lehman said. “We’re on track to have one million developers on ColdFusion by the end of this year or early 2010.”
The ColdFusion 9 public beta is available for download here. The ColdFusion Builder public beta is available for download here.