User Guide

CHAPTER 5

Lesson 1: Preparing to Build the Sample

Application

In this tutorial, you will build a simple ColdFusion web application for a fictitious travel

company called Compass Travel. Compass Travel markets a wide range of adventure trips to the

public through its website. Trip coordinators at Compass Travel are responsible for maintaining

the trip information made available to the public. You will build the sample tutorial application

to assist the trip coordinators in maintaining trip information in the Compass Travel database.

ColdFusion development is the emphasis of the tutorial, therefore, you will not need to design or

build the Compass Travel database. It is important, however, for you to be familiar with the

layout of the database. Additionally, you must understand the functional requirements that will

help in determining the application design. This lesson provides an overview of these application

design steps, while the remainder of this book guides you through the lessons on constructing the

sample application.

Application development steps

Most software applications perform three major functions:

• A user interface to capture data

• Logic to validate the captured data

• A database to store the validated data

The process steps to develop these major functions varies from project to project. In this tutorial

you will review or participate in the following application development steps to build the

Compass Travel Trips Maintenance application:

An overview of each of these application development steps is explored in greater detail in the

following sections.

Step Description

1 Determine the application functional requirements.

2 Determine the data requirements by identifying the information required for the Trip

Maintenance application.

3 Design the database for your application by exploring the database tables that will store

the trip information.

4 Develop the ColdFusion application pages.