Customer Reviews

The ColdFusion 4.0 Web Application Construction Kit

5 star:		(71)
4 star:		(32)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I needed to get a web-database solution up with a tight deadline. I was a newbie to web-development although I had VC++, C experience prior to this. After searching extensively through web-database discussion forums and considering suggestions from people involved in rapid applications development for the web, I chose ColdFusion as my development tool. And the search for the perfect book began.

And with this book it ended. This book will hold your hand and walk you through the creation of fantastic web solutions with all the functionality that you can dream of. (A few topics such as performance tuning, advanced security etc. are only covered in the Advanced version of this book.) What I really liked about Ben's style is his real-world approach and his ability to cater to all sorts of novices. This book will give a reasonable primer on databases and will show you how to create your own databases in Access and then use ColdFusion to display the data on the web. It will show you how to use ColdFusion, forms and SQL statements to execute awesomely powerful database queries. It will show you how to use more complex SQL querying techniques. It will show you how to use ColdFusion in the way it is supposed to be used. It will show you how to use the treasure-trove of ColdFusion tags that will make web-development child's play. It is absolutely loaded with code samples and detailed explanations of all the code so that you will be able to very quickly modify them for your own purposes.

If you are wondering about how long it will take you get up and running if you have hardly any development experience - if you buy absolutely no other books aside from this one, read it carefully and modify the sample code for your own purposes, you will be able to develop a web-solution that integrates with a backend database, executes powerful queries, enables updates, adds e-mail functionality, login security, ensures design consistency and ensures client-state persistency, within a week. Give yourself an additional week and you will be able to develop complete shopping cart applications and whatever else you can dream up. And no, I am not exaggerating.

Web-development is no rocket science, ColdFusion will show you why. It has brought beaming smiles to the faces of thousands of developers, novices as well as gurus, and if you buy this book, you too will be grinnning from ear-to-ear.

Ben, thanks a zillion!

I received this book at 11 a.m. yesterday, and I had my database search up and running at 9 p.m. last night. I am by no means any kind of programmer except for the semester of BASIC I took in high school (15 years ago). I am, however, a technical writer, instructor, and consultant, who wishes she had majored in Computer Science instead of Journalism. This book is BY FAR the best instructional book I have read about setting up a database and working with the data over the internet. It doesn't assume that the reader knows much of anything about SQL, Access, and, of course, ColdFusion. I highly recommend this book to novices who are trying to learn ColdFusion and develop databases on the Internet...after all, if I can do it, anyone can!

Besides the plethora of typos scattered throughout, this book covers a basic understanding of ColdFusion, but doesn't spend NEARLY enough time on client & session variables. The section on creating your own CF tags is also very sketchy. These two concepts are crucial to developing complex data-driven websites in ColdFusion--yet they aren't covered very well in this book. If you're just starting out with ColdFusion, SQL or databases, this is a great book. If you're looking for more advanced topics, you might want to pick up another book to accompany this one.

I have gone through this book cover to cover and attempted to do every single excersise in the book. There is no question that the first 300 pages are good.....too bad that book is 700+ pages.

At about Chapter 14 the books examples simply start to go completely downhill. The final damage starts at Chapter 19 where all of Ben's examples simply don't function, there are CONSTANT typos, and the excersises in the book start using tables and data that was never created nor entered.

*IF* you even attempt to do many of the excersises in this book, you'll find yourself pulling your hair out, because the data simply does not exist to make his own labs work...worse yet, I pulled his own database with his own examples and tried to make them work and it's QUITE OBVIOUS that the editor of this book didn't take the time to debug it. I plan to contact the publisher and let them know that this book severely needs to be revised!

As a self-taught, non-programming, and only semi-power userattempting to build interactivity into Web pages within the stategovernment sector, I have found my comprehension of CGI/PERLprogramming or high end Web application suites to be inadequate to the task of developing dynamic Web pages. Watching closely for any signs of light at the end of the tunnel, I soon began to see flickers about something called ColdFusion. On investigation, it sounded to good to be true: a tool that could generate the code needed to parse and handle data coming from HTML forms submissions, something I'd never been able to achieve. Better yet, its ODBC connections promised easy connections to Access or Oracle databases.

Since our internal hosting agency already hosted the ColdFusion server for its state agency clients, the initial buy-in required only the purchase of the ColdFusion 4.0 Studio package. I've got a couple of smart managers who were willing to risk the investment.

Next, I never buy any new software without going to a major bookstore and finding the best 3rd party help book available. So I found the ColdFusion 4.0 Web Application Construction Kit by a guy who I thought must have greatly impressed the Allaire Corporation; I say this because his book looks just like the ColdFusion 4.0 user guide, only heavier. It was one of the best investments in a book we ever made, judging by the accelerated learning curve it provided, speaking from my own experience.

I find no need to nitpick about typos or other minor imperfections. Nothing is perfect, but THIS IS without a doubt THE BEST single reference work on ColdFusion you will find on the market. I will not be the first person to refer to it as his ColdFusion desktop "bible." For those who are disciplined and patient enough to use the accompanying CD and tutorial files, you will find a gold mine of functionality. You will also enjoy a strong sense of satisfaction from watching your skills and confidence build, literally chapter by chapter. I am now one of the ColdFusion-converted, and proud of it.

I'll close this testimonial by proudly admitting that my first ColdFusion application paid for itself in the first week of operation, in saved staff costs. It has only become easier since then, such that "rapid development" has come to mean "overnight" in many cases. We are sold on ColdFusion, and sold on Ben Forta and anything that he writes.

It is unclear who this book was written for. Early chapters target those who know very little about the web. Middle chapters however, require a basic knowledge of HTML and SQL. Finally, later chapters present more code listings with fewer explanations of the code.

Overall, Forta gives great insight into the capabilities of CF and does a very good job demonstrating the logic and coding techniques behind data-driven web pages. However insuffiecient attention is paid to the nuts and bolts syntax of the CFML language. Furthermore, the MULTITUDES of typos and incorrect references to figures, listings, and chapters can be EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING. At times it seems the editor was asleep at the wheel.

There are precious few real-life, task-oriented examples in this book, for example a "How to Create a Login Application" would have been nice.

The E-commerce chapter leaves much to be desired in terms of explanations and seems to have been written for one who already understands CFML code at a fairly high level. It consists entirely of CF custom tags (Which are not addressed in this book!) You have to spend another $50 on Forta's Advanced CF book for the chapter on custom tags.

This book is a must-have for anyone considering developing in CF but not for the casual web page designer. Furthermore, it is not the CF Bible it is purported to be. Prepare to buy Forta's Advanced CF book as well as Danesh's "Mastering ColdFusion 4.5" if you want the whole story.

For someone who knows HTML, but didn't know anything about ColdFusion, this book helped me get started quickly. The explanations were easy to follow, and the numerous examples helped solidify the concepts. The book doesn't assume that you know much about other important topics like programming structure, SQL and databases, so it seems geared for those who, like me, are just beginning to expand beyond static HTML.

There are some errors in the text and typos in the code, as others have discussed at great length in their reviews, but I didn't encounter any that hindered me in the learning process.

I agree with others that the latter parts of the book (on applications and sessions) are a little more difficult to follow, and in the examples he starts using code that isn't thoroughly explained, if at all, in previous chapters (e.g. the "IIF" statement, which is only explained in the appendix).

In my opinion, one topic I wish this book had covered is an example of good design architecture. Page 371 has some tips for preventing problems in coding that are well worth following, but he provides little guidance, in this book at least, on how to accomplish them. Suggestions 4 ("Write code with reuse in mind") and 9 ("Set coding standards") are very important for anyone wanting to deploy more than an extremely simple application. But how do I practice what he's preaching? In other words, how should pieces of code be broken up so that it is more manageable and less task-specific? What are some good standards and specifications to set? I hope these are covered in his second book, which I haven't read. But for those who are interested in learning more about these topics, I encourage you to visit..., where some veteran coders have outlined standards and specifications for writing code that is easy to manage, debug and reuse.

I thought that this was a good book, not great, but solid. Anyone, beginner or expert web programmer can learn something from this book. My suggestion if you have the money is take Allaire's Coldfusion class. If you don't have the money, then invest in this book. My only criticism of this book is that some of the examples do not work, or at least I could not get them working. One example builds on another, and it could get a little frustrating if you did not totally understand the former example. The CD provided is very good and is the same CD that the ColdFusion class provides. Overall, if you want to learn ColdFusion in under 30 days (the amount of time the CD will work) this is the next best thing to taking the class.

If you want an introduction to ColdFusion beyond the basic CFDOCs this is the book you must get. Some other books think they can just get by on telling you the very basics only relating directly to ColdFusion, that might get you started. In reality there is alot more to ColdFusion then the basic CFML language. Ben Forta covers all of the topics from setting up a database, learning basic SQL, using third party software, plus all stages of ColdFusion development and a great ColdFusion refernce. If you are a webmaster, and want to get out of old static webpages, get into ColdFusion with this book right now! If you thought you enjoyed creating websites before as a hobby or a career, just wait until you try this. It will open your eyes to the dynamic world of webpages!In response to the last reviewer's comments, I find it personally offensive that they insult Ben Forta based on his age, saying that he is relying on his name to carry his new book. The fact is Ben Forta has made his own reputation, he is known in the community for his excellent skill in training ColdFusion developers. If we didn't have him as a whole the success of ColdFusion would not be what it is now, we atleast owe him our respect, he has done an excellent job, and that is why people enjoy his books so much.

The ColdFusion web application construction kit from Ben Forta is really an indispensable tool to master ColdFusion and learn all its features. It completes and goes beyond the scope of the documentation that comes with ColdFusion by giving you real-world examples of its features. From the beginning, you build and enrich a web application, using the exciting features of ColdFusion progressively. Paradoxically, the Online Commerce and other related functionality of ColdFusion (Lists, Arrays, Structures) are not well explained. The management of cookies, client variables, sessions are a bit confused. So, you'll still have questions after having read the whole book. Besides of that, if you're serious about ColdFusion development, buy this book and its companion: "Advanced ColdFusion" by the same author.