| Getting Started Building ColdFusion MX Applications |
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Database Fundamentals |
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| Getting Started Building ColdFusion MX Applications |
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Database Fundamentals |
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ColdFusion communicates with your data source through a database interface called JDBC. JDBC is a standard application programming interface (API) for accessing information from different database systems and different storage formats.
A data source is a complete database configuration that uses a JDBC driver to communicate with a specific database. In ColdFusion, you must configure a data source for each database file that you want to use. After you configure a data source, the ColdFusion server is then capable of communicating with that data source through the JDBC driver.
You configure data sources in ColdFusion by using the ColdFusion administrator. Chapter 4, "Configuring Your Development Environment" discusses how to configure the sample data source file that is supplied for use with Part II of this book. For more information about configuring a data source in ColdFusion, see Installing ColdFusion MX or Developing ColdFusion MX Applications with CFML.
After ColdFusion makes a connection to the data source, you can interact with that database by using SQL and ColdFusion.
To interact with an established data source, you need to include SQL statements in your CFML statements; for example:
<cfquery name="queryname" datasource="namedbfile">
SELECT FirstName, LastName, DepartmentID From Employee
</cfquery>
In the previous example, the first attribute of cfquery is the name of the query. The second attribute of cfquery defines the name of the data source. The SELECT statement defines the fields (columns) to be retrieved from a tabled named Employee.
The following table lists the CFML tags you can use to interact with a database:
| Command |
Description |
|---|---|
cfquery |
To retrieve (query) information in a database. |
cfinsert |
To add records to a database. |
cfupdate |
To update information in a database. |
In Part II of this book, you will be introduced to these tags when you use them to interact with the sample database. For more information about interacting with a database, see Developing ColdFusion MX Applications with CFML or CFML Reference.