The ColdFusion Application Server

ColdFusion is an application server—a piece of software that (usually) resides on the same computer as your Web server, enabling the Web server to do things it wouldn’t normally know how to do.

ColdFusion is actually made up of several pieces. The ColdFusion Application Server is the program that actually parses (reads and compiles) and processes any supplied instructions.

Instructions are passed to ColdFusion using templates. A template looks much like any HTML file, with one big difference. Unlike HTML files, ColdFusion templates can contain special tags that instruct ColdFusion to perform specific operations. Here is a sample ColdFusion template that you’ll use later in this book.

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