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Asked: 2026-05-12T14:27:28+00:00

I am currently building an Adobe Air desktop app for a medium sized company

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I am currently building an Adobe Air desktop app for a medium sized company and I truley believe that I could use this same app for many other ‘like-companies’. It will greatly improve their efficiency and save them money; and hopefully make me some money too! 🙂 I am in the process of designing the database structure and the layout of the application.

My current skills:

  • intermediate at PHP
  • intermediate at Actionscript 3.0
  • and rather new to flex and adobe air

From what I understand, AMF is the ‘best’ form of communication between Flex and the server-side language. Also, I know that AMF is native for [ColdFusion to Flex] communication whereas PHP requires WebOrb, Zend AMF, or AMFPHP for [PHP to Flex] communication. I really like how ColdFusion is an ‘all in one’.

My Question Is:

If this is a program that I plan on spending a few years or more on, would I be better off going with ColdFusion or PHP?

  • I do not like the fact that I would have to rely on a ‘third-party program’ with PHP
  • ColdFusion, Flex, and Adobe Air are all Adobe -> solid integration
  • yet, I would have to learn ColdFusion

Please Help, any information would be greatly appreciated!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    When I was a youngster who just graduated college without a lick of experience, I learned ColdFusion and had a workable foundation in it at my first job in about a week. It’s really easy to learn.

    Pros of ColdFusion:

    • Easy to learn
    • Allows for rapid development
    • Easiest language in the world to connect to a database and write SQL in
    • It’s an Adobe product so configuration is a snap
    • Just released a new version with plenty of new features
    • You’ll always be able to find a job knowing ColdFusion

    Cons of ColdFusion:

    • Expensive (in $ terms)
    • Harder to find a good hosting company
    • A bit outdated, even with its newest update
    • Extremely verbose and cludgy (might describe it as Enterprisey)

    I’ve used Java and ColdFusion with the Flex AMF protocol, and both are pretty easy and work right out of the box – don’t rule out Java if you have any interest in that.

    Although, without knowing everything, I have to ask: if you’re building a desktop app, why do you need to connect to a backend when AIR has access to SQL lite?

    Keep in mind that as Flex/AIR gets more popular, more languages will (in my opinion) likely provide AMF protocols as part of the language. But you may not want to bet on that.

    Having said all that, I’d say go with ColdFusion. Even though it’s not glamorous, it’s a good skill to have – it’s going to become the COBOL of scripting languages (a few state governments and large chunk of the federal government use it)

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