Upon reading ASP speaker's statement, my first reaction is 'well, that's
academically true, but usually not true in practice'.
I program in both all the time, so here's my take on it:
ASP is *supposed to be* object based. The MS recommendations for
architecture are that you separate business rules/logic from presentation
rules/logic. You accomplish this by moving the logic of your site into COM
objects and database-side code wherever possible. ASP is then simply the
glue between plain html and calls to the objects that really handle all the
dynamic aspects of your site. It's a wonderful sales pitch. All your
dynamic logic is executed quicker than ASP can, in compiled code or by the
database, and you can code your html with knowledge of, but separately from
your concerns of how the dynamic code works.
That's the sales pitch. In practice, you usually execute your dynamic code
in ASP itself, since extracting it to COM objects makes it more difficult to
revise, means you have to manage source code and compiled objects across
multiple servers (supposing you're using a server farm), and it's just plain
quicker to code/test/code/test.
This puts ASP and Cold Fusion on about the same level. ASP has the
theoretical upper hand, since it can work much more easily with COM objects
than CF... but in practice, you usually don't run into CF's COM limitations
in any way that makes ASP shine.
Being tag-based, I feel Cold Fusion is shy of the "agility" ASP has in
tying HTML to code objects, and extracting business logic from the
presentation logic. However, CF has never failed to provide means to
accomplish functionality I've had to write, and is a competitive alternative
to ASP in practical use. The theoretical debate can rage on. I have code
to write :)
Jonathan
-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Forta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2000 11:21 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: CF is 'template based' and ASP is 'object based'?
Both CF and ASP are script based (also known as "page based" which I assume
is what he means by "template based").
The difference is that ASP does less out of the box, and so COM objects are
used for any and all extensions. CF does you the favor of including lots of
those extensions (like SMTP, POP, HTTP, FTP, and LDAP support) right in the
package, so you don't need to call external objects. But you can indeed do
so, and often should.
Truth is, from a functional perspective, CF and ASP are very similar. Both
are implemented as ISAPI extensions, both are page preprocessors, and both
are script driven.
--- Ben
-----Original Message-----
From: Earl, George [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2000 8:17 AM
To: 'Listserv, Cold Fusion'
Subject: CF is 'template based' and ASP is 'object based'?
An instructor was speaking to a group of our managers and he explained the
difference between CF and ASP as CF is 'template based' and ASP is 'object
based', therefore he prefers ASP because it is more sophisticated (and
because he has used it more). What exactly could he have meant by this?
Isn't ASP 'template based'? Aren't CF custom tags 'objects' in the sense
that he was referring to ASP's objects? And can't CF call the very same
objects that ASP calls? Did this instructor pass along misinformation or is
he just confused or am I confused? We are on the cusp of making a decision
to go with either CF or ASP and there's lots of hand wringing going on
around here . . . Thanks!
George
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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