User Guide

186 Developing Web Applications with ColdFusion
• Development: The application is easier to develop and maintain because the
application page files are well organized.
• Portability: The application can be more easily moved to another server or
another part of a server without having to change any code in the application
page files.
• Application-level Settings: Application pages that fall under the same root
directory can share application-level settings and functions.
• Security: Application pages that fall under the same directory can share Web
server security settings.
You can use a single
Application.cfm file for your application, or use different
Application.cfm files that govern individual sections of the application.
The directory trees below illustrate two approaches to implementing the Application
Framework.
• In the first example, a company named Web Wonders, Inc. uses a single
Application.cfm file installed in their application root directory to process all
application page requests.
• The illustration on the right shows how Bandwidth Associates uses the settings
in individual
Application.cfm files to specify processing for ColdFusion
applications at the departmental level. Only the Products application pages are
processed using the settings in the root
Application.cfm file. The Consulting,
Marketing, and Sales directories each has its own
Application.cfm file.