User Guide

6 Chapter 1 Introduction to ColdFusion
For detailed information about security, see Advanced ColdFusion Administration.
For the latest publications from Macromedia on security, visit the Security Zone at
http://www.coldfusion.com/developer/securityzone/.
For a complete feature list and more detailed information, see the ColdFusion
product pages at http://www.coldfusion.com/coldfusion.
About the components
ColdFusion applications rely on several core components:
• ColdFusion application pages
• ColdFusion Server
• ColdFusion Administrator
• ODBC data sources and other data sources
In addition to the core components, as you become more familiar with ColdFusion
and build more complex applications, you can use ColdFusion Extensions to extend
its capabilities.
ColdFusion application pages
ColdFusion application pages (often called templates) look somewhat like HTML
pages, but are much more dynamic and powerful. They are the functional parts of a
ColdFusion application, including the user interface pages and forms that handle
Open integration • Database connectivity using native database drivers (Enterprise
Edition only), ODBC, or OLE DB
• Embedded support for full-text indexing and searching
• Standards-based integration with directory, mail, HTTP, FTP, and
file servers
• Connectivity to distributed object technologies, including
CORBA (Enterprise Edition only), COM (Windows Enterprise
Edition only), Java objects and EJBs
• Open extensibility with C/C++ and Java
Security • Integration with existing authentication systems, including
Windows NT domain and LDAP directory servers, and
proprietary user and group databases
• Advanced access control so that server administrators can
control developers’ access to files and data sources
• Support for existing database security
• Server sandbox security for protecting multiple applications on a
single server (Enterprise Edition only)
• Support for existing Web server authentication, security, and
encryption
Benefits Features