Providing Data Sources  
 
 

Any ColdFusion application can make use of any available supported data source. Once a data source has been made available to ColdFusion using the ColdFusion Administrator, interacting with that data source is a simple matter of naming the data source and telling ColdFusion what you want to do. Often, this interaction employs the CFQUERY tag , as the following example shows:

<CFQUERY NAME="EmployeeName" 
    DATASOURCE="BigCompany">
    SELECT FirstName + " " + LastName 
    FROM Employees AS FullName
</CFQUERY>

This example is saying: "Give me the list of names from the BigCompany database that are in the FirstName and LastName columns of the Employees table. And while you're at it, combine the FirstName and LastName columns into a new column called FullName." Here, the script passed by CFQUERY is an example of a simple SQL (Structured Query Language) statement. For a quick introduction to SQL, see Chapter 11, Inserting, Updating, and Deleting Data.

 
 
  Other types of data sources  
 

In addition to traditional ODBC data sources (which can include spreadsheet and text files) your ColdFusion application pages can also retrieve data from a variety of Web data sources:

  • Directory servers that support LDAP, such as Netscape Directory Server or Microsoft Active Directory.
  • Any standard mail server that supports POP.
  • File Transfer Protocol (FTP) servers.


 
 
BackUp LevelNext
 
 

allaire     AllaireDoc@allaire.com
    Copyright © 1998, Allaire Corporation. All rights reserved.