The last type of misconception surrounds corporate support for ColdFusion. Two primary myths exist with regards to this. Some people are under the impression that once you buy ColdFusion, you are on your own with no support. Like all of the other Web development platforms, there is massive community support for ColdFusion. In fact, in my experience, the CF community is much friendlier than any other development community that I've interacted with (and I've interacted with a lot of them over the years). What about corporate support? Macromedia/Adobe has several different support agreements available in order to meet the needs of their customers. There are also many other companies (my employer, AboutWeb LLC, is one of them) that offer support agreements for both ColdFusion and the applications running on top of it. Getting back to Macromedia, they offer support in other ways as well. One way is via the Macromedia (Adobe) Website - particularly through the forums and articles/tech notes that are searchable via their knowledge base. They also help the community help itself by way of their User Group program - through which they help local groups of developers organize meetings, presentations, and speakers. Macromedia also supports the community by way of the Team Macromedia program - individuals who are considered leaders in the community have special access to Macromedia resources (such as the support and product development teams) and are kept up to date with the latest information (and products) even before it's released. Then there's training - Macromedia Training develops great hands-on courses and materials and is very good about controlling and maintaining an excellent caliber of services available via Macromedia Authorized Training Partners and Macromedia Certified Instructors. Last, Macromedia has a good network of preferred service providers. If you call Macromedia looking for help, whether it's training, troubleshooting, or actual development that you need, and if your needs are not within the realm of what they are able to offer you, Macromedia has a list of top companies that they will refer you to and put you in contact with.

The second myth about the support for ColdFusion is that its future is uncertain. I'm not sure why this misconception exists - ColdFusion has been around for over 10 years now and continues to grow both in terms of popularity and feature strength. Though the product has changed ownership twice, continuing to support and enhance the product has been a priority of every company that has acquired ColdFusion. Perhaps some people didn't have total confidence that Macromedia was financially strong enough to feel good about their future (though there was never any justification for such a theory), but nobody should doubt the stability and longevity of Adobe, which is even stronger now that they have acquired Macromedia. ColdFusion makes Adobe a big player in the application server/Web development platform market, and they have made it clear that they have big plans for CF. So the future looks very bright, more so than ever, for ColdFusion.

It's sad that we developers sometimes have to spend our valuable time arguing the same points over and over from one naysayer to the next. Try not to think of it as arguing: what we do is educate, not argue. Hopefully, this article will help those of you who find yourselves in situations where you have to dispel myths about CF better prepared to do so. As I said in the beginning of the article, I often end up preaching to the choir, so better yet, I hope this article finds its way into the hands of individuals who have misconceptions of their own about this terrific product. ColdFusion, like anything else, isn't the one solution to every problem…but when evaluating all of your options it's important to be well informed. More often than not, for Web applications, it is the best solution. If you find yourself or someone else in a situation where they think otherwise, point them at this article, because their reason for leaning one way or the other may well be founded in misconceptions. As a last resort, if any of you still have questions about whether or not CF is the right solution to use on a project, feel free to send me an e-mail at shorwith@aboutweb.com and I'll be sure to help set the record straight.