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Rating: 
Summary: Very solid. Really great.
Review: At first glance, this tome promises a great deal. Cold Fusion is an application that takes a moment to learn and a real long time to master with it's proprietary language. Forta helps the unwary web-maker through some of the finer points, but nothing that couldn't be found in Allaire's hopelessly weak documentation. I tried to rely on this book where the Allaire software docs fell short, but I ended up chasing red herrings in the poorly designed index. How a book that numbers 1024 pages can only have an index of 40 pages is beyond me. Sorry, but it lost my vote.
Rating:
Summary: Eye Opening Book!
Review: Forta's book is very interesting. I almost bought a book solely on SQL, but just bought this book because of its comprehensive SQL sections. As an Application Server Developer, I also have experience with ASP, and this makes ASP look extremely primitive. In fact, I used the concepts of Cold Fusion presented here to evaluate better solutions for projects in ASP. An example of this is the easy implementation of Dynamic SQL in Coldfusion. I then built a Dynamic SQL implementation. Thanks Mr. Forta for a great one. If you know ASP, this book will show you what you need to engineer within ASP to get it to compete with Cold Fusion. An awesome book!
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Get-You-Started but many editorial errors.
Review: I am about one quarter of the way through this book and have enjoyed the content. However, I find that many of the "tutorial" threads within the sections have many errors. In particular, references to screen shots or code examples do not always correlate with the reference. Some of the technical information is either innacurate or out of date. In particular, some issues on activating ODBC databases for use with Cold Fusion either led to errors that I could not find solutions for, or were just plain incorrect. Also, one of the earlier sections explaining SQL and its use caused me some headaches. The version of MSQUERY was quite different than depicted in the book and it took some trial and error to work around it. Overall, I find that most of the tutorial threads do indeed work, even if you have to make some ad hoc changes in the implementation. Though errors in books and tutorials are generally annoying, you may find that you tend to better remember the solutions, and hence the implementations, once you find them. My 2 cents
Rating:
Summary: Great Book. Even for beginners.
Review: I have very little programming experience and have this book to be very easy to use.
Rating:
Summary: Great for new CF programmers
Review: I read the first edition--and that was my introduction to both databases and Cold Fusion. It was a great book. And the second edition is even better! The author starts from very basic, and gradually takes the reader to the advanced concepts of Cold Fusion, all the time providing a real-life scenario-based development environment.
Rating:
Summary: Ben Forta's are the ONLY Cold Fusion books to buy!
Review: I'm not a progammer, but a Project Manager with NO programming training, so I needed major help in learning how to write SQL scripts. The first day I got Ben's first book, it paid for itself! Thanks to his ability to clearly communicate, with solid sampling, I am now proficient in developing dynamically generated web sites. Ben's books are by far, the best on the market!
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Summary: Why this book gets the best reviews
Review: In the age of web based applications, one of the things that helped Cold Fusion to set itself apart is the availability of Ben Forta's book. It is self-contained (from what the web is all about to relational database design to networking with COM) and yet it is so clear and goal-oriented. It is also filled with simple but superb, well-crafted examples. Cold Fusion owes a lot to Ben Forta. And we all to him as well. He set a standard by which many other technical, professional books can be measured.
Rating:
Summary: Eye Opening Book!
Review: This is the BIBLE for Cold Fusion. I have read a few too many compter books. This is the first one I finished and keeped around. The CD has codeing found in the samples in the book. Very easy reading for this type of book. It even teaches you some HTML. WOW.
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