ColdFusion MX Developers Cookbook Review, SAMS
by Peter Freitag, Brad Leupen, Chris Reeves
ISBN: 0672324628
I would have been disappointed if this book made me wade through chapters of language basics already covered in the documentation and applications that I'll never want to write. Instead, I found ample coverage on all common tasks and emphasis on important tasks. There was full coverage on Java CFX, for instance, but empahsis on the new and better ways of communicating with Java in CFMX.
Another reviewer questioned the coverage of Arrays, SQL and XML. I already have references for these topics on my bookshelf gathering dust. What I wanted from this book, was quick coverage of the basic tasks concerning XML, for instance, that I would use in any language, but specific to ColdFusion. I got that in 5 minutes. Assign a document to an object, parse the document, etc.
I found I was wanting to play with many of the examples, which is not generally the case with books that have example applications that span entire chapters(examples in this book are concise and to the point). And since building applications is simply a process of building small tasks, testing them and assembling them, I liked the approach. I tried the other way and ended up spending more time on troubleshooting than I did writing the application in the first place. The process of writing the test first really helps in productivity and reduces frustration. This book helps in this area and is why I would also recommend it for beginners.
This book will stay on my desk!
