[thelist] cf vs asp

aardvark roselli at earthlink.net
Fri Aug 25 09:45:30 CDT 2000


> From:Adam Patrick <apatrick at oracular.com>
> 
> - With ASP you don't get a lot of built in functionality. For instance
> in order to execute winzip (or any program) with ASP, I had to get a
> 3rd-party DLL.  CF has that built in.  There are a number of other
> things like this that CF includes that ASP requires 3rd-party DLLs for
> so the functionality of CF is beyond ASP in that sense.

this is very true... however, assuming you have the VB talent in-
house, this is a very simple DLL to write... and there are a number 
of places you can get a free DLL to do it...

what is key is that most shared NT hosts won't allow you to install 
any custom components, so you need to find script solutions to a 
lot of this (for instance, i got my hands on a great HTTP upload 
script that works perfectly on my shared NT host, without the need 
to install anything)... but if you control the server, this is certainly 
not an issue...

also, NT's native FTP support sucks, so you'd need to grab a third-
party tool in case you plan to use FTP heavily... this is assuming 
you'd run either CF or ASP on NT...

> - ASP requires more steps to do certain things.  For instance, execute
> a query.  In ASP you have to open a connection, prepare the SQL, then
> execute it, then close the connection. Whereas in CF, you just use
> <cfquery> and the app. server does the details.

like a said before, that's because CF adds the layer of 
extrapolation between the OS and the application... so yes, you 
need more code to do it in ASP, but it's all VB code you may have 
sitting around...

> - (correct me if I'm wrong on this) We had to use ODBC to connect to
> Oracle and SQLServer from ASP.  ODBC isn't a super efficient way of
> connecting so that could be a disadvantage performance-wise.

you can connect via ODBC, OLEDB, MS Jet (for Access for 
example)...

either way, if you have in-house NT and VB skills, try ASP, you've 
probably already got it installed on a development server... if it 
doesn't work out, get CF...

if you don't have the in-house talent, or aren't NT-based, try CF... 
the price point to get CF vs. NT/ASP at that point is close enough...





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