Sams Teach Yourself ColdFusion in 21 Days quickly empowers you to create your own dynamic database-driven Web applications using Allaire's ColdFusion. Using client-proven methods, and the success of his popular ColdFusion tutorial for Wired, expert author Charles Mohnike provides you with an understanding of the ColdFusion Server and guides you through the use of the ColdFusion Studio, enabling you to create your own ColdFusion applications quickly and easily. Topics such as installing and configuring the ColdFusion Server, working with the ColdFusion Studio, working with SQL, optimizing your datasource, understanding templates and ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML), using ColdFusion tags, manipulating data, creating e-commerce solutions with ColdFusion, and debugging ColdFusion applications.

Professional ColdFusion 5.0 is a chunky and comprehensive guide to Macromedia's Web application server. This book is suitable both for existing ColdFusion professionals and for those evaluating this technology against rivals such as Active Server Pages, JavaServer Pages, and PHP.
ColdFusion is cross-platform, and it integrates well with both COM on Windows and Java on any supported operating system. It has strong development tools, including ColdFusion Studio and Dreamweaver UltraDev, and following its acquisition by Macromedia these are likely to get better still.

The authors kick off with a "Getting Started" section, which explains installation, basic features, and key tools such as the Application Manager and ColdFusion Studio. There is also a thorough explanation of CFML (ColdFusion Markup Language), the core tagging system. A section on database essentials covers a wide variety of database servers. The third section has chapters on state management, templates, error handling, scripting, and drawing charts. The topic of XML and Web services gets a section of its own, followed by coverage of ColdFusion extensions using COM, CORBA, Java, and custom tags. The later parts of the book go into the details of administration, such as scheduling tasks, logs and archives, clustering and load balancing, security, troubleshooting, and optimization. There is a brief case study based on an auction site.