14 DAY TRIAL // San Jose, California-based Adobe Systems Incorporated announced the availability of the public beta versions of its ColdFusion 9 and ColdFusion Builder web development software. The new version of ColdFusion brings better integration with Adobe's Flash Platform as well as other updated features to make developing dynamic web applications and sites easier and faster. With the new version comes a new ColdFusion Builder IDE based on the open-source project Eclipse written in Java.
“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. “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.”
ColdFusion 9 brings Flex and AIR integration, two of Adobe's leading platforms, but also better integration with the Ajax language. The new version also adds integration with some office applications both from Microsoft but also Open Office. Performance was improved with some features like granular control over caching, in-memory file capabilities, and improved clustering. ColdFusion is aimed mainly at businesses and as such the new version allows applications to access data from the existing software infrastructure like Microsoft Share point and other technologies.
ColdFusion Builder is a new product that brings a powerful IDE to allow developers to easily create more complex applications as well as deploy the projects and manage the servers running them. It comes with an integrated debugger and a customized environment and also supports applications built with the older ColdFusion 7 or 8. The product is based on the powerful open-source IDE Eclipse, which Adobe also uses for Adobe Flash Builder, allowing for faster development with automation of some tasks as well as code reuse.
The beta build and the latest stable release of ColdFusion can be found here.