While I've been very impressed with the clear writing and highly practical instruction in this book, I've noted dozens of syntax, grammatical, spelling, and factual errors, on the order of one every ten pages or so. And this is a very long book. Be prepared to spend a few hours wondering why certain queries just won't work, until your programming buddies tell you that parameter passing to a web page is always done with a "?" and not a "&" as the book occasionally--and erroneously--asserts. If you can make it through the minefields, you'll learn quite a bit about relational databases, Cold Fusion Studio, and data-driven web sites, but not without a few battle scars...

On the whole, the CFWDCK book is very informative, and does take you from start to finish in terms of the creation of a web database. This book has been invaluable to me as go through the process of migrating my flat website to one that is database-driven.

It does do a good job of giving a decent overview of things, and even ventures into SQL (which turns out to be very important in Cold Fusion). And, unlike a lot of books which include CDs, I can say that the software that came with it was worth it. This is especially true if you are the type who erases large zip files after you download and install software. If you are trying to use Cold Fusion with MS Front Page, you might find the two programs don't seem to like each other. Thus, it's good to have a fresh copy of CF available if you need it.

But, like many other "Thick Books", this one does suffer from a few problems:

POOR INDEXING
Most references to CF statements only refer to definitions or sections in the book devoted to them. Not to each different use. This means that, for example, if you want to know about using a CFIF statment within a CFCOLUMN statement, you really gotta hunt.

PARTIALLY SUBSTANTIATED CLAIMS
The back cover of the book talks about how we can make shopping carts, online catalogs, conferencing systems, etc. Where are the examples? Maybe they're there. I couldn't find them

UNCREATIVE EXAMPLES
In any instruction book, most of the examples are going to be centered around basic tasks. How to do a query to a database. How to make a form. Blah, blah, blah. It's all good. But this book seems to ignore a lot of the richness of CFML. Not much talk about graphics at all. One has to hunt for information about using CFML with URLs. It's mostly basic, fairly uncreative applications. For the most part, that's appropriate. But not at this level.

NOT ENOUGH INFO ON CFML ECCENTRICITIES
Some of the tags seem to not work very well with each other. Others require different formatting of URLS. Without this information easily accessible, there is some trial and error that one shouldn't have to go through.

Overall, an excellent book. And, if you are considering Cold Fusion for your website, it's probably the only game out there. Just remember that you will probably need a second book on Cold Fusion once another comes out

I bought this book for my dissertation. After I started to read this book, I fall in love with it. I always have problem reading books in English as my mother language is not English. But this book give me a very clear idea on how to integrate your web page with database. I just finished my dissertation yesterday. But Cold Fusion is still in my mind. You will love this book.