Editing Adobe ColdFusion (section)

=== Main features ===
ColdFusion provides a number of additional features out of the box. Main features include:
* Simplified database access
* Client and server cache management
* Client-side code generation, especially for form [[Widget (computing)|widgets]] and validation
* Conversion from [[HyperText Markup Language|HTML]] to [[Portable Document Format|PDF]]
* Data retrieval from common enterprise systems such as [[Active Directory]], [[Lightweight Directory Access Protocol|LDAP]], [[Simple Mail Transfer Protocol|SMTP]], [[Post Office Protocol|POP]], [[HyperText Transfer Protocol|HTTP]], [[File Transfer Protocol|FTP]], [[Microsoft Exchange Server]] and common data formats such as [[RSS]] and [[Atom (standard)|Atom]]
* File [[Index (database)|indexing]] and searching service based on [[Apache Solr]]
* [[Graphical user interface|GUI]] administration
* Server, application, client, session, and request [[Scope (programming)|scopes]]
* [[XML]] parsing, [[XPath|querying (XPath)]], validation and [[XSLT|transformation (XSLT)]]
* Server clustering
* Task scheduling
* [[Chart|Graphing]] and [[Financial reporting|reporting]]
* Simplified file manipulation including [[raster graphics]] (and [[CAPTCHA]]) and [[ZIP (file format)|zip archives]] (introduction of video manipulation is planned in a future release)
* Simplified [[web service]] implementation (with automated [[Web services description language|WSDL]] generation / transparent [[SOAP (protocol)|SOAP]] handling for both creating and consuming services - as an example, [[ASP.NET]]<ref>[http://digitalcolony.com/2007/08/consuming-web-service-in-aspnet.aspx Consuming a Web Service in ASP.NET Tutorial] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081223084910/http://digitalcolony.com/2007/08/consuming-web-service-in-aspnet.aspx |date=December 23, 2008 }}. Digital Colony (2007-08-23). Retrieved on 2013-07-21.</ref> has no native equivalent for <syntaxhighlight lang="cfm" inline><CFINVOKE WEBSERVICE="http://host/tempconf.cfc?wsdl" METHOD="Celsius2Fahrenheit" TEMP="#tempc#" RETURNVARIABLE="tempf"></syntaxhighlight><ref>[https://www.adobe.com/devnet/coldfusion/articles/cf_aspnet08.html] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060720165335/https://www.adobe.com/devnet/coldfusion/articles/cf_aspnet08.html|date=July 20, 2006}}</ref>)

Other implementations of CFML offer similar or enhanced functionality, such as running in a [[.NET Framework|.NET]] environment or image manipulation.

The engine was written in C and featured, among other things, a built-in scripting language (CFScript), plugin modules written in Java, and a syntax very similar to HTML. The equivalent to an HTML element, a ColdFusion tag begins with the letters "CF" followed by a name that is indicative of what the tag is interpreted to, in HTML. E.g. &lt;cfoutput&gt; to begin the output of variables or other content.

In addition to CFScript and plugins (as described), CFStudio provided a design platform with a [[WYSIWYG]] display. In addition to ColdFusion, CFStudio also supports syntax in other languages popular for backend programming, such as Perl. In addition to making backend functionality easily available to the non-programmer, (version 4.0 and forward in particular) integrated easily with the [[Apache HTTP Server|Apache Web Server]] and with [[Internet Information Services]].