coldfusion alternative

Norberto Meijome freebsd at meijome.net
Thu Jul 20 01:32:37 UTC 2006


On Wed, 19 Jul 2006 21:10:03 -0400
"Glenn McCalley" <glenn at bnetmd.net> wrote:

> OK so a good customer of long standing wants a coldfusion website.
> Some "developer", the husband of one of his staff (so that makes him a
> trusted advisor, right?), has convinced him "it's the only way to do it".
> My position is maybe that's the only way -he- can do it but there's a whole
> wide world of alternatives out there.
> 
> Looking at it, he wants to collect some data on an input form, then hash it
> over a couple of ways and present the results.  Pretty graphics maybe as
> well.  Looks to me like Perl... don't even need a real database, heck
> DB_File would work just fine for this.
> OK with me...
> ...but what's the argument to present other than "you don't need
> coldfusion"?
> 
> I'd even put CF on the system and be done with it if there was a FreeBSD
> version (anyone have any luck with that?).  Tracked down BlueDragon but
> that's apparently Win only as well.
> 
> Ammunition wanted.
> Thanks
> Glenn.

hey,
sorry, i don't think I've included  much  hard-ammo... but anyway

I had to endure CF in a past life thanks to an over-enthusiastic colleague who
presented similar arguments to those described before I started ... then, of
course, he left and the rest is a (horrid) story. Anyway:

 - licensing : careful here - expensive (definitely way more expensive than
OSS - not only in licensing ,but support, community,etc). Not sure if it is
still true, but I remember we had to renew the license EVERY year to keep a
site alive. Ridiculous.
 - from memory, blue dragon (or some other 'dragon related to cf' did run on
linux and/or FBSD.
- last resort, CF runs on Linux  - maybe it runs under FBsd
with linux-compat?

- what does your client WANT? (not the means to get to it, but the end
result? ) figuring out the tech to use for a solution isnt, IMHO, what he/she
should be worrying about - follow a normal spec out of the project, then
present the different alternatives... maybe, and just *maybe*, CF *IS* the best
solution, but I very seriously doubt it.

btw, you can still have a Flash powered site without cf ;) 

good luck ;)
Beto



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