
ColdFusion is a programming language based on standard HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) that is used to write dynamic webpages. It lets you create pages on the fly that differ depending on user input, database lookups, time of day or whatever other criteria you dream up! ColdFusion pages consist of standard HTML tags such as <FONT SIZE=.+2.>, together with CFML (ColdFusion Markup Language) tags such as <CFQUERY>, <CFIF> and <CFLOOP>. ColdFusion was introduced by Allaire in 1996, acquired by Macromedia in a merger in April 2001, and acquired by Adobe in December 2005. It is currently in version 7.0.1, but the next version of the product (codenamed Scorpio) is already in development.
When a page in a ColdFusion application is requested by a browser, it is automatically pre-processed by the ColdFusion Application Server. Based on the CFML in the page, the Application Server executes the application logic, interacts with other server technologies, and then dynamically generates an HTML page which is returned to the browser.