As an experienced developer who's somewhat new to Cold Fusion, I had hoped that this book would provide some new and useful ideas and source code. Boy was I wrong.According to the book review, "This book is geared toward the experienced application developer who might be new to ColdFusion." Yet, in the introduction, the book says "This book assumes no prior knowledge of Coldfusion development". That's for sure!
The first four chapters are a beginner's introduction to project management. Skip if you have ever been on a software project team or taken a class in project management.
Chapters five through nine are a rehash of the Cold Fusion manual. Skip if you have the manual or can download it from Allaire's web site.
Chapters 10 through 13, the heart of the book, cover developing a project plan and finally show us some code. The example code is deja vu all over again. Skip if you have any other book on Cold Fusion.
The second half of the book is a complete departure from Cold Fusion entirely (except for an Appendix on Cold Fusion Administrator - again, skip if you have the manual).
Amazingly, seven entire chapters are devoted to installing and testing SQL Server. What in blazes does this have to do with Cold Fusion? We're talking nearly 200 off-topic pages here ...
Skip the second half of this book if you have any book on SQL Server or (like me) are using Oracle and Apache web server.
This book might be okay for a first course in web database development. For serious developers who are truly interested in "Business Intelligence", I consider it a waste of money.
What experienced developers need is a book with a title like "Algorithms in Cold Fusion". How about it, O'Reilly?
