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I want to strat building dynamic applications and need to learn a server side language. I've narrowed it down to Coldfusion and ASP. Coldfusion appears the easier to learn, but is it as powerful as ASP?
I will need to have functions on my site which open other sites, login automatically and then retrieve data from within the external site. Which language would be best for that purpose.
Any other comments much appreciated...
tkx
coldfusion is extremely easy to learn, but i think ASP is more flexible. with cold fusion, you have to have an actual ColdFusion Server application running on the webserver, in order to display .cfm pages. this can be pretty costly. with ASP, all you need is IIS, which comes on every microsoft webserver OS.
-Matt
I think the advice above is on target. I would add that choosing a technology that is more mainstream would be in your best interest. Since I work on a Windows platform, I highly recommend asp/aspx. Many here work on UNIX and would recommend php for that platform.
Either way, those two are the top two technologies being used for dynamic environments.
yes, MS SQL Server can be expensive as a whole, but be aware that MySQL works just fine with ASP, and Access is also a fine solution for upstart sites (read: few database updates). both MySQL & Access are free alternatives. you will find a lot of companies that allow ASP, and also offer MySQL as their database solution.
jacuzzi- my suggestion is to do your research, and search around for all the different packages that hosting companies offer, then make your decision. you will ultimately find your best choice.
-Matt
