What Notable Differences are there between Railo, Open Bluedragon, and Adobe Coldfusion?

Asked 18/12, 2010 at 21:17 Answered 19/12, 2010 at 0:50

Solved coldfusion coldfusion-9 railo openbd cfml

An attempt to capture notable differences between implementations:

(I'm aware of Smith, but don't believe it's still active).

Include CFML and platform differences - syntax, feature, and extensibility.

Note, this is not something I've not seen anywhere else, but maybe I'm just not searching correctly. So links to that end would count too.

Update

Here's my definition of notable in this context: something that simplifies solving a difficult problem. For example, Railo offers the <cfvideo> tag, which transcodes video - a non trivial task.

Something I would suggest is not notable: the Railo function ListAvg().

Roxie answered 18/12, 2010 at 21:17 Comment(2)

"notable" is really subjective category. Someone may find ListAvg 100x times useful than cfvideo. – Camail 18/12, 2010 at 22:43

@Sergii - do you find ListAvg() notable? – Roxie 18/12, 2010 at 22:56

Marking as a community wiki.

Overview

Blog post comparing of ColdFusion and Railo - comments are just as interesting.

Aggregation of items I've called "notable":

Open Bluedragon

Web based line debugger: Adobe Eclipse based is finicky.
Memcached intregration: Adobe ehcache solution works well, but memcached still appears to have better failover and sharding. In fact, sharding appears to only be available in Adobe with Terracotta or rolling your own.
Runs on Google App Engine

Railo

<cfvideo>: video transcoding, pay feature, but low cost, free option is ffmpeg, but that has legal question marks
cluster scope: interesting way of solving messaging between servers, pay feature.

Roxie answered 18/12, 2010 at 21:17 Comment(0)

The closest you're going to get to a complete answer will be: http://cfml-engines.info/, which is a work in progress and doesn't have all of the information you're looking for. It's just too open-ended of a question.

Feeling answered 18/12, 2010 at 21:37 Comment(10)

The intention is not capture every nit, but rather notable differences. For instance, I see Railo offers a cluster scope in the enterprise version, which I don't believe has an equivalent in other engines. So understand the CFML standardization committee is effectively caput, but I think it's still possible to tease out some interesting differences. – Roxie 18/12, 2010 at 21:43

@Roxie - Definitely nice information to have. But even at a high level, it is still a pretty broad question. I would be interested to see what people come up with. – Kaitlin 18/12, 2010 at 21:48

@Leigh, agreed it's broad, but one that near as I can tell has been approached only on a point by point basis. So I think there's the possibility of identifying more general differences, but maybe I'm mistaken in thinking they exist. – Roxie 18/12, 2010 at 21:52

@Roxie - Yes, a high level list would be useful. But unfortunately, I suspect it does not exist yet. Though I would be happy to be proven wrong ;) – Kaitlin 18/12, 2010 at 22:56

@Kaitlin - the intent is to capture those high level items here. – Roxie 18/12, 2010 at 22:58

@Henry: it was working when I posted it. No idea why it's down now. – Feeling 20/12, 2010 at 13:38

Doh! Had some server problems the other day, but thought I'd fixed them all. Going to cfml-engines.info/wiki works, and I'll go fix the 403 now. – Skullcap 20/12, 2010 at 17:1

Ok, should be working now. (If anyone spots any more errors please let me know.) – Skullcap 20/12, 2010 at 17:20

Also, my current plans are both to describe every different feature in detail, as well as providing practical summaries of the differences (what you need to know to work across the engines). Eventually, it'd be great to allow the user to define what is notable based on what they use (e.g. "show me how <List functionality> differs" or "what are the <multimedia> options", and so on). Annoyingly, I wont be able to get back on this for at least a couple of months, probably longer - but once I do, hopefully it will be able to provide the information people are after. – Skullcap 20/12, 2010 at 17:20

What I'm looking for is the differences in the syntax of executing let's say a stored procedure, and any differences in the results coming back. – Floydflss 27/1, 2014 at 18:2

You don't need to search A LOT. Both "alternative" engines have official wikis with articles specifically describing the compatibility questions:

Camail answered 18/12, 2010 at 22:7 Comment(1)

So I'd consider the memcached support of Open Blugdragon notable. Wouldn't you? But again, rather than a place where it's possible to see these interesting differences, and perhaps some narrative to go with them, it's laundry lists with little explanation (in fact memcached hasn't even been written on their wiki). – Roxie 18/12, 2010 at 22:23

Another place to look for the latest details on OpenBD: http://www.openbluedragon.org/manual

That documentation is pulled straight from the codebase so it's always up to date. (This is another way of saying the OpenBD wiki may not necessarily be the latest and greatest.)

Olein answered 19/12, 2010 at 0:50 Comment(1)

So I'd say the web based debugger is a notable difference: openbluedragon.org/manual/?/plugin_debugger. Particularly since I find Adobe ColdFusion + Eclipse line debugger to be finicky. As a steering committee member, any other interesting areas you'd highlight? – Roxie 19/12, 2010 at 1:11

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