To process dynamic web pages, you need a web server and an application server. ColdFusion MX provides both. A web server is software that serves web pages in response to requests from web browsers. An application server is software that helps a web server process web pages containing server-side scripts or tags. When such a page is requested by a browser, the web server hands the page off to the application server for processing before sending the page to the browser. For more information, see Understanding Web Applications.
You can download and install a fully functional developer edition of ColdFusion MX from the Macromedia website at www.macromedia.com/software/coldfusion/. A copy of ColdFusion MX Server Developer Edition is also available on the Dreamweaver CD (Windows version only).
Note: You can also install ColdFusion MX on a Mac OS X computer running a J2EE server such as JRun or Tomcat. For more information, see the Macromedia website at www.macromedia.com/support/coldfusion/j2ee/cfmx-mac-onjrunandtomcat.html. The installation process is complicated, though, and Dreamweaver has not been tested with ColdFusion MX on the Macintosh. Also, it may be difficult to connect ColdFusion MX on the Macintosh to database systems such as MySQL.
For more information, see the ColdFusion documentation in Dreamweaver (Help > Using ColdFusion).
After installing and starting ColdFusion, create a root folder for your web application. See Creating a root folder.
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