Date: Jul. 9, 2002
Link: http://www.sys-con.com/coldfusion/article.cfm?id=431
Source Author or Organization: Ben Forta, ColdFusion Developer's Journal

In this article top ColdFusion guru Ben Forta examines ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML) development with Java and XML on the back-end. Beginning with ColdFusion MX the application has been rewritten from the ground up with a Java code base and improved native XML file format. Illustrating with a code example of using the tag to utilize a JavaServer Pages (JSP) library, Forta shows ColdFusion developers the potential of simplified access to JSP tags and tag libraries, Java Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), JavaBeans and Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB).

Forta then explains how developers can use their existing skills in creating and manipulating ColdFusion structures to greaty simplify working with XML data, including tasks such as converting XML to and from ColdFusion objects, creating XML objects, extracting data using XML Path Language (XPath) and applying Extensible Style Language Transformations (XSLT). Code examples demonstrate generating XML output from a database query and parsing an XML document then saving an attribute to a ColdFusion variable.

Forta finishes with a discussion about how to use ColdFusion Components (CFCs) and ActionScript to build rich clients and Web services via ColdFusion and support for Web service-related standards, including Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) and Web Services Definition Language (WSDL), which can be auto-generated.