.NET integration in ColdFusion 8

ColdFusion 8 has another feature that allows a ColdFusion developer to leverage .NET inside their CF applications.

It allows you to call .NET classes in your ColdFusion code. ColdFusion 8 allows you to access and use these classes as CFML objects in the following ways.

- Direct access and control of the Microsoft products like Word, Excel PowerPoint and so on.
- Use existing .NET components
- You can use .NET assemblies to leverage features that may not be available in ColdFusion or Java. Note that because ColdFusion is a J2EE application, its more efficient to create what you need in Java then .NET

Also, your .NET classes you want to use do not have to be local. Your ColdFusion application can access .NET components that are on remote systems.

You may be asking, but we run Linux or OSX and do not have the .NET runtime installed. Not to worry, you don’t have to have the .NET runtime installed on the same machine as ColdFusion, you can still access .NET assemblies on remote systems even though your local system does not have the .NET runtime installed.

Here is a simple example from the docs of how to use .NET classes.

Also note that if you make a change in the .NET assembly, ColdFusion will recognize the change and use the new version. You can also secure communication to .NET from ColdFusion using SSL.