Transcript Week2
Week 2 IBS 685 Static Page Architecture • The user requests the page by typing a URL in a browser • The Browser requests the page from the Web Server • The Web Server sends the page to the browser in the form of HTML • The browser interprets the HTML and displays the page to the user. Web Servers • Web Servers send requested pages to browsers – Reply to requests from browsers using HTTP – Perform server side processing using these languages • • • • CFML ASP (Microsofts Active Server pages) Perl Java Understanding Web Applications • Web Servers Just serve • Web servers are simple applications- they sit and wait for requests that they attempt to fulfill as soon as they arrive. • Web servers do not – let you interact with a database; – they don’t let you personalize web pages; – they don’t let you process the results of a users form submission • All they do is serve pages. So how do you extend your server to do all the things just listed? Web Application Servers • That is where Web Application servers come into play. • A web application server is a piece of software that extends the Web Server, enabling it to do things it could not do by itself. Application server • When a web server receives a request from a Web Browser, it looks at that request to determine whether it is a simple web page or a page that needs processing by a web application server. • Cfm extension • If so then the web server passes it to the appropriate Web application server and returns the results that it gets back What is Cold Fusion • It is a complete application development system • The components include – CF application server – Dreamweaver • CF usually resides on the same computer as your web server, enabling a web server to do things it would not normally know how to do. CFML • Cold Fusion is two distinct technologies – The CF Application server – The CFML language • Cold Fusion’s power comes from its capable and flexible language. • CFML extends HTML by adding tags with the following capabilities – – – – – – – Read and update data to, databases and tables Create dynamic data-driven pages Perform conditional processing Populate forms with live data Process form submissions Generate and retrieve email messages Interact with local files CFML • • • • • • • <Cfinclude> <Cfoutput> <Cfabort> <Cfapplication> <Cfcookie> <Cfform> <Cflocation> • All ColdFusion tags begin with the letters CF • CF tags were named very intelligently • CFML tags can be freely mixed with the HTML tags in the page • Each tag identifies a particular operation – Including block of code – Setting a variable Book Files • On the CD Rom that accompanies this book, in the OWS directory, you will find the sample application pages used in the chapters. • You should store all the sample applications in a folder named OWS under the Web server root directory. • Web Server root is located at – C:\CfusionMX7\wwwroot Cold Fusion Administrator • CF Application server has all sorts configuration and management options. – Some must be configured before features will work (Connections to databases) – Other options are configured if necessary. • All these configuration options are managed via CFA. – You can access it from any computer with an internet connection. Always LOG OUT • You should get in the habit of always logging out of the administrator when you are finished using it. Using the CFA • Creating an ODBC data source • For CF to interact with a database, a connection to that database must be defined. • ODBC is is not a CF invention many programs other than CF use ODBC. • Data sources are the ODBC connections. • Lets create a data source for the OWS database. Basic Development Configuration Development Database Database on a separate machine MS SQL Server, Oracle Development Server Run a web server and Cold Fusion Server Hosts Web sites and CF Templates ColdFusion Developers Dynamic Page Publishing with Cold Fusion • The information is usually queried from a database and then displayed on the page • Dynamic page processing is similar to that of static page processing with additional steps: