Choosing a server technology

You can use Dreamweaver to build web applications using any of five server 

technologies: ColdFusion, ASP.NET, ASP, JSP, or PHP. Each of these 

technologies corresponds to a document type in Dreamweaver. Choosing 

one for your web application depends on several factors, including your 

level of comfort with various scripting languages and the application server 

you plan to use.

If you're new to web application development or to application 

development in general, you'll probably prefer ColdFusion because it 

provides an easy to learn server scripting environment that's also tightly 

integrated with Dreamweaver. If you're familiar with other server 

technologies, such as JSP, PHP, ASP, or ASP.NET, Dreamweaver offers 

great support for these as well.

Which server technology you choose also depends on the application server 

you plan to use for your web application. An application server is software 

that helps a web server process web pages containing server side scripts or 

tags. For example, if you have ColdFusion MX 7 Server, you can choose 

ColdFusion as your server technology. If you have access to a server 

running Microsoft Internet Information Server 5 (IIS) with the .NET 

Framework, you can choose ASP.NET. PHP is an option if you have access 

to a web server with a PHP application server; JSP is an option if you have 

access to a web server with a JSP application server (such as Macromedia 

JRun).

A developer edition of ColdFusion MX 7 is available on the Dreamweaver 

CD (Windows version only) and on the Macromedia website at

www.macromedia.com/go/coldfusion/

.

For more information, see 

 Setting up an application server 

 in 

Using Dreamweaver.

To learn more about ColdFusion, select Using ColdFusion from the Help 

menu.

To learn more about ASP.NET, visit the Microsoft website at 

http://

msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/

.

To learn more about ASP, visit the Microsoft website at 

http://

msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en us/dnanchor/

html/activeservpages.asp

.

226 Understanding Web Applications