Adobe Systems has announced the release of ColdFusion 8, a major new release of its Internet application development software for Mac OS X and Windows. It’s available in Standard and Enterprise editions for $1,299 and $7,499 per two-CPU license, respectively. A free Developer Edition is also available.
ColdFusion 8 is used to create Web sites with dynamic content and Internet applications. It was first released in May, 2007 as a public beta version, but this marks the product’s official release as a finished product.
New to ColdFusion 8 is the Server Monitor, which helps developers identify bottlenecks in their code and tune the server for better performance. It also features better PDF support, with the ability to generate and interact with PDF documents.
ColdFusion 8 also sports the ability to provide data to applications and frameworks that utilize Asynchronous Javascript And XML (AJAX). you can use tags to access a library of prebuilt AJAX user interface components. The new version also lets you specify any Microsoft .NET object stored locally or remotely and use it in your ColdFusion application, similarly to how Java works.
The new release also lets you interact with Microsoft Exchange servers to read, create and modify calendar events, contacts, task lists and e-mail. And a new Eclipse plug-in debugger can be used to set breakpoints, watch variables and step through code.
System requirements call for a G4 or better (Intel included), Mac OS X v10.4 or later, 512MB RAM, 500MB hard disk space and DVD-ROM.