Server Monitor
See exactly what's happening in your application to help identify bottlenecks and tune the server for better performance. ColdFusion 8 also features a Multiserver Monitor to gain insight on all servers in a cluster.
PDF features
ColdFusion 8 applications can dynamically generate and interact with PDF documents and forms for a printable, portable way to intelligently capture and share information.
Ajax features
ColdFusion 8 can easily provide data to existing Ajax applications and frameworks. You can use simple tags to access a large library of prebuilt Ajax user interface components such as rich text editors, data grids, tree controls, tab navigators, and more.
.NET integration
With ColdFusion 8, you can specify any .NET object — either local or remote — and use it in your ColdFusion application, just like any Java™ or other object resource.
Microsoft Exchange Server integration
Programmatically interact with a Microsoft Exchange server to perform common tasks such as reading, creating, and modifying calendar events, contacts, tasks, and e-mail.
Interactive debugger
ColdFusion 8 introduces an Eclipse™ plug-in debugger. Use it to set breakpoints, watch variables, and step through code, making it easier to debug all your application code.
Performance increases
Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software delivers significant performance improvements over all earlier releases of the product.
Server Monitor
ColdFusion 8 introduces the new Server Monitor and Multiserver Monitor. By providing information about the server — including requests, queries, memory usage, and errors — the Server Monitor allows you to troubleshoot and fine-tune applications in development and in production. You can also set alerts and other actions to help prevent memory problems, slow pages, or other issues that would negatively impact a user's experience with the application.
PDF features
ColdFusion 8 applications can dynamically generate and interact with PDF documents and forms for a printable, portable way to intelligently capture and share information.
Ajax features
ColdFusion 8 can easily provide data to existing Ajax applications and frameworks. You can use simple tags to access a large library of prebuilt Ajax user interface components such as rich text editors, data grids, tree controls, tab navigators, and more.
.NET integration
With ColdFusion 8, you can specify any .NET object — either local or remote — and use it in your ColdFusion application, just like any Java™ or other object resource.
Microsoft Exchange Server integration
ColdFusion 8 applications can programmatically access Exchange Server functionality such as calendars, tasks, and contacts.
Interactive debugger
ColdFusion 8 introduces an Eclipse™ plug-in debugger. Use it to set breakpoints, watch variables, and step through code, making it easier to debug all your application code.
Adobe Flex integration
ColdFusion 8 now includes Adobe LiveCycle® Data Services ES (formerly Flex™ Data Services) and other data exchange improvements to simplify the data-enabling of rich Internet applications (RIAs) you build with ColdFusion and Flex.
Per-application settings
ColdFusion 8 allows you to set ColdFusion mappings and custom tag paths on a per-application basis.
Multi-threading
ColdFusion 8 introduces the new CFTHREAD tag, which allows you to create, end, join together, or temporarily suspend the processing of specific ColdFusion threads.
Image manipulation
ColdFusion 8 adds more than 50 new tags and functions for creating and manipulating images, from simple to sophisticated. For example, the new CFIMAGE tag provides shortcuts to the most common image actions, including reading, writing, resizing, rotating, and converting images.
Presentations on demand
ColdFusion 8 allows you to dynamically create multimedia experiences and eLearning courses with animation, audio, and video. These high-quality, on-demand presentations are generated on the server with up-to-the-minute data and content from multiple external sources.
Atom and RSS feeds
ColdFusion 8 introduces the new CFFEED tag, which can read and create RSS and Atom feeds in commonly used formats, so you can quickly and easily create complex content syndication applications.
ZIP and JAR file features
ColdFusion 8 introduces two new tags, CFZIP and CFZIPPARAM, so you can manipulate ZIP and JAR files for working with file archives.
User-based Administrator and RDS access
ColdFusion 8 allows you to create multiple ColdFusion Administrator and Remote Development Services (RDS) accounts with individual permissions, so you can tailor Administrator and RDS access to fit your specific security needs. The roles assigned to a user determine which pages in the ColdFusion Administrator and which functions in the Administrator API a user can access.
Improved file manipulation functions
ColdFusion 8 adds several new file manipulation functions to the ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML), most notably the ability to read and write large files in defined segments, rather than in a single operation.
JavaScript operators in CFML
ColdFusion 8 supports common JavaScript operators such as ++, ==, ||, <, and > so they can be used in CFML expressions.
CFC improvements
ColdFusion 8 adds several highly requested improvements to ColdFusion components (CFCs), including the ability to create interface definitions, use J2EE session replication in a cluster, have access to the CFCs in session data across all the machines in a cluster, and use the new onMissing Method function.
Strong encryption libraries
ColdFusion 8 now includes RSA BSAFE Crypto-J libraries, which provide FIPs 140-certified strong encryption.
Reporting enhancements
ColdFusion 8 introduces a completely new version of the ColdFusion Report Builder. Use it to create high-quality, structured reports with more output choices and a more consistent look and feel throughout your applications. You can also create and apply cascading style sheet (CSS) definitions to reports, export your reports in HTML or XML format, and create report styles for all of your reports.
Database interaction improvements
ColdFusion 8 supports nested transactions, provides a new DBINFO tag to programmatically access information about a data source, allows stored procedures and queries using CFQUERYPARAM to be cached, and much more. Plus, there is expanded database driver support with new options for SQL Server 2005, Oracle 10g, Sybase ASE15, MySQL 4 and 5, PostgreSQL 8, and others.
Argument collections
ColdFusion 8 makes it much simpler to code tags with many attributes. You can now specify an argumentsCollection attribute in most tags to specify the tag's attributes in a single structure.
Array and structure creation improvements
ColdFusion 8 allows you to create arrays and structures implicitly in assignment statements without using the ArrayNew or Structnew functions. The result is cleaner code with less typing.
Expanded platform, OS, and database support
ColdFusion 8 offers broad platform support with notable additions of Mac OS X on Intel®, JBoss, 64-bit support on Solaris™, JDK 1.5 and JDK 1.6, and support for VMware and Microsoft Virtual Server.
See Feature Comparison PDF in Supporting Documents for a complete comparison
Enterprise Edition
Used for delivering multiple websites and applications on one or more servers, ColdFusion 8 Enterprise includes all the capabilities of ColdFusion 8 Standard, plus special features for enabling enterprise-class business applications.
Standard Edition
Used for delivering a single website or application on a single server, ColdFusion 8 Standard provides powerful development capabilities in an easy-to-manage configuration that is ideal for small to medium-size businesses.
Developer Edition
ColdFusion 8 Developer is a free, fully functional version of ColdFusion for local development of applications that will be deployed on either Standard or Enterprise servers. In addition to localhost, applications running on a Developer Edition server can be accessed from two remote IP addresses, making team development even easier.
Trial Edition
For evaluating ColdFusion 8 Enterprise, we offer a free 30-day trial. This is a fully functional server that includes all the features of ColdFusion 8 Enterprise. At the end of the 30-day trial, the Trial Edition automatically becomes the Developer Edition. At any time, full commercial deployment capabilities for an existing Trial or Developer Edition installation can be activated by simply inserting a valid serial number for ColdFusion 8 Standard or ColdFusion 8 Enterprise without the need to reinstall.