Flex Vs. ColdFusion

With the right tool kit and experience, you can create Web applications that look more like desktop computer programs than typical Web pages. Flex and ColdFusion are two programming tools produced by Adobe Systems Incorporated you can use alone or together to create Rich Internet Applications or RIA Apple Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, Unix, iOS and Android users.

1. Flex Overview

   • Adobe's Flex is a software development kit or SDK for creating RIAs. You can create Flex applications by purchasing Adobe Flash Builder or by downloading the free Flex SDK. The Flex compiler converts ActionScript-based Flex code into SWF files that run in Web browsers with a Flash or Adobe Air runtime plug-in installed. Flex applications can access database servers and execute server Web scripts written in PHP, Python or ColdFusion. In November 2011, Adobe announced that it is in the process of making Flex open source software and donating the code to the Apache Software Foundation.

   Flex Applications

   • Flex has been used to develop online games, database front ends, email clients, catalogs, Web widgets and Web-based multimedia applications. These applications look and function the same on all Flash-enabled Web browsers and operating systems. The Flex SDK can also create applications that run on Android, Apple's iOS and BlackBerry mobile devices. While Flash applications cannot run on Apple's iPhone and iPad devices, the Flex compiler can create native, iOS Objective-C bytecode that will run and can be sold in Apple's App Store.

   ColdFusion Overview

   • There are two components to ColdFusion: the scripting language called ColdFusion Markup Language or CFML and the server back end that interprets and executes CFML code. Just like PHP and Active Server Pages code, CFML code is embedded within a Web page. CFML code is contained within HTML-like tags whose element names begin with "CF". Originally ColdFusion code ran on Windows servers only. The latest versions of ColdFusion server, however, are written in Java and can run on any operating system with a Java runtime environment installed.

   ColdFusion Applications

   • Like Flex, ColdFusion uses an ActionScript-based programming language to simplify the task of developing Web applications. In addition, CFML code can be combined with HTML5 and Asynchronous JavaScript and XML -- AJAX -- RIA development techniques. CFML extends HTML by adding database access services and data integration with Java and .NET server applications through Simple Object Access Protocol or Soap communication protocols. ColdFusion has been used for online retail storefronts, educational portals, hotel and resort reservation systems and public sector service websites.