[.ca] ColdFusion MX Developer's Cookbook (ISBN 0672324628)

Great techniques you can use today!:
Are you tired of all the Flash talk and ready to dive into improving your ColdFusion skills? This is the book for you then! The authors waste no time diving into techniques for improving you skills. In the first couple of pages on string manipulation, I learned tips I could use today. They move quickly into arrays and structures (a challenge for most beginners!) If you're building an application for the first time, the techniques and advice offered throughout will give you working code to build and expand upon. One section is devoted to database interaction including a simple SQL database you can build to run examples and separate coverage of stored procedures in both MS SQL Server and Oracle. Each recipe is described in a short sentence, making it easy to determine whether it's the one you're looking for, followed by the technique with one or more examples and further comments. There's no wasted text. Especially interesting to me are the chapters detailing use of the new XML tags and functions and interoperability with JSPs and Servelets. An excellent list of resource websites is included as an appendix. This book is a great companion to your CFML Reference guide. The only improvement would be to make it a fatter, more detailed book! The cookbook is one of Sams Developer's Library editions, specializing in providing practicing programmers with a core reference to assist them in common day-to-day programming tasks. Highly recommended for intermediate developers wanting to improve their skills quickly. Lisa Wilson Sacramento ColdFusion User Group Manager

Excellent Resource:
I find this book to be a very useful resource -- it has an extensive index and table of contents that are helpful when I'm looking for a specific topic. While the book is not organized in a sequential, "learn from the start" order, I find that its recipe format, with descriptive section headers, often prompts me to explore new topics and learn more about aspects of the technology that I haven't used in the past. Each recipe includes a Technique section with code examples, and then a Comments section that discusses the code in easy-to-understand English. I would recommend this book to anyone doing anything that involves ColdFusion.

Easy to understand:
As a person with English as a second language, some content in the users guides that comes with the software can be tricky to understand. This book saves my hair! Even though the content is easy to understand, I was hoping to cover the more CFMX specific new features, especially Flash Remoting. There was no mention of that feature in the book. Overall, advanced developer probably won't get much new out of this book, but beginner and intermediate programmer will have this as a great and easy to understand resource.

Easy to Understand and Very Good:
It's not very often that I find myself reading a cookbook from beginning to end, but I did on this one. Despite having three authors, it's very well organized and easy to read, with a simple and consistent presentation for each of the recipes or topics. It makes a good reference companion book for ColdFusion developers, whether mere beginners or more experienced experts. Only some 300 pages long, it is definitely concise but thorough, in contrast to some other weightier, but not necessarily better, books on ColdFusion. I wish it had appeared years ago for previous versions of ColdFusion.

Concise and task-oriented:
This book's strength is that it is extremely task-oriented. Readers will find clear information about how to do a variety of specific tasks in Cold Fusion, such as searching a verity collection or creating a java CFX tag. Readers looking for information about how to build full-fledged applications may not be entirely satisfied with this book, as it isn't set up as a tutorial. The book would be a perfect companion to a more exhaustive tome -- it's a nice "quick reference" guide when you need a refresher on how to do a discrete task.