I posted a while back that we were not moving to Flex 2 but we were waiting to see what ColdFusion 8 had to offer.
I have evaluated the features and benefits of both languages and have made the decision that ColdFusion 8 is a better solution.
The addition of DHTML widgets, such as Tabs, Grid etc, etc has been a welcomed addition for us. We develop applications that are for use within Clinical Trials and a lot of our customers simply do not have the permission to install the flash player. This makes it hard for us to use Flex or any of the CF7 flash features.
But the new HTML options available in ColdFusion 8 will now allow us to have a Web 2 dynamic application that is both functional and attractive.
The other thing that hurt Flex in this evaluation is that compare to ColdFusion, Flex is hard work. ColdFusion excels better than any other language that I have ever used at making complicated things easier.
I did tout that we might consider our future with CF and move to .NET (which would be our second choice) given the price hike, but I'm over that now and we purchased standard edition.
So pricing issues aside, this is just a great product, probably 25% better than ColdFusion 7 and the speed increases are fabulous. So in a market where we were tossing up between Flex, .NET and ColdFusion 8, even though the other two are free, ColdFusion still wins.
4 comments:
Faisal Abid Says :
Alright, I understand the fact of what you are excatly trying to say , however I really must say, comparing Flex 2 and Coldfusion is like comparing Apples and Adobes (bad pun) but realistically speaking, Sure flex 2 can do things Coldfusion can do , but what Coldfusion should be seen as not a competitor of Flex 2, but to work in harmony . If you develop cfc's, you have two options, give them an html ajax look , or a cool Flashy Flex look , the choice is yours but Flex does not replace coldfusion and coldfusion does not replace flex
Hi Dale,
Great to see that you've put the pricing issues aside. I'm sure you can understand that the prices will vary across regions and all depend on market trends, demand, currency rates and so on. The list of determining factors is huge! The performance enhancements alone are well worth it!!
Comparing Flex 2 with CF is not the right comparison. I'm sure you are referring to the client-side components of each, and in your case it really appears to be a comparison between HTML/AJAX/DHTML with Flash/Flex. Please respond with your difficulties with learning Flex so that we can help where possible.
Regarding Flash Player installs in corporate environments, what issues are you seeing here? More and more clinical institutions are turning to Flex for it's richness in controls (in particular when creating rich dashboards with charting controls etc). Is this purely a security discussion? If so, there is plenty of material we can provide you with to help your cause.
Good luck with CF8!! Glad to see you're still on board.
Andrew
Adobe
I understand that these are different applications. But for our application we were considering
1. ColdFusion
2. Flex with CF Backend
3. ASP.NET
The problems we had with flex, is that it can get quite complicated quite quickly and while not rocket science compared to ColdFusion it is hard work.
So while people think it may not be a fair comparrison, well for us it was just comparing different options and I understand that these are different things.
I too am happy to stay with ColdFusion, I actually like Flex 2 and .NET but everytime I go to do something, I think this would be so much easier in ColdFusion.
Hello Dale,
We faced a similar situation last year when it was time to develop the new version of our internal systems.
We decided on Flex/Coldfusion. All the business stuff is in the CFC and the frontend in Flex.
At the beginning Flex was frustrating mainly because of the non-blocking processing. It was a pain not to be able to have the process block while we would ask users about choices or confirmations.... But we found a way around that.
But now I would not go back. Our users are raving on the interface and at one point you get the hang of Flex/AS3 and it becomes really easy to add stuff in the application.
This autumn we will develop a module for the salesforce. I am considering CF8/Ajax for it be cause we have not nailed down precisely the requirements for that module.... Pure web will allow us to rapidly develop something for them. All logic will be in CFCs... so next spring we will simply redo the final interface in Flex and reuse all the CFC !!!
Flex and CF8 is a very nice combination for IT solutions.
Good luck with your project !!
Yves
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