| Developer(s) | Railo Technologies |
|---|---|
| Initial release | April 2006 |
| Stable release | 3.2.3 / 13 May 2011 |
| Operating system | Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac OS X |
| Available in | English |
| Type | Application server |
| License | LGPL v2.1 |
| Website | Railo Homepage |
Railo is Open Source software which implements the general-purpose CFML server-side scripting language, often used to create dynamic websites, web applications and intranet systems. CFML is a dynamic language supporting multiple programming paradigms and runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM).
Railo was created by the Swiss company Railo Technologies GmbH, intended as a high performance alternative to Adobe ColdFusion. In 2008, Railo switched to an Open Source community-driven model, and became a JBoss project. The Railo Open Source project is led by Railo Technologies, with development work funded by consulting and support contracts, but anyone may contribute code for consideration.
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Railo began in 2002 as a student project to compile CFML code into PHP, a choice made due to the ubiquity of PHP, however it was found that this did not give the desired performance and stability, and the decision was made to switch to the Java platform instead.[1]
The project was successful enough that it was decided to continue to develop into a full product. Several alpha and beta releases were made before the official 1.0 release in April 2006. Railo continued to be developed but was relatively unknown to many CFML developers, until June 2008 at the Scotch on the Rocks conference in Edinburgh, when Railo Technologies used the Day 2 keynote to announce a partnership with JBoss and a switch to Open Source.[2]
Railo was named after an alien dog in Star Trek Enterprise. The dog is actually named Rhylo[3], but written phonetically in German it is Railo.[4] Thus, Railo can be pronounced either as rhy-lo or as rai-lo - both are acceptable.
Railo major releases have a codename of notable and loyal dogs from history.
| Major version (Codename) |
Minor version | Release date | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | Alpha 1 | 2004-04-10 | The first official release of the Railo CFML engine.[5] |
| Alpha 2 | 2004-05-18 | ||
| Alpha 3 | 2004-08-03 | ||
| Alpha 4 | 2004-10-21 | ||
| Beta 1 | 2005-01-16 | The first beta release of Railo. | |
| Beta 2 | 2005 | ||
| Beta 3 | 2005 | ||
| RC1 | 2005-09-23 | The first release candidate of Railo was presented to the German CFUG in Munich.[6] | |
| 1.0 | 1.0.0.000 | 2006-04 | |
| 2.0 | 2.0.0.000 | 2007-09-10 | |
| 2.0.1.000 | |||
| 2.0.2.000 | |||
| 3.0 | 3.0.0.000 | 2008-09-09 | |
| 3.0.1.000 | |||
| 3.0.2.000 | |||
| 3.0.3.000 | |||
| 3.1
(Barry) |
3.1.0.000 | 2009-08-12 | First Open Source release of Railo.[7] |
| 3.1.1.000 | 2009-08-11 | ||
| 3.1.2.000 | 2010-11-26 | ||
| 3.2 | 3.2.1.000 | 2011-12-24 | |
| 3.2.2.000 | 2011-03-18 | ||
| 3.2.3.000 | 2011-06-10 | The current stable version of Railo. | |
| 3.3
(Hachiko) |
3.3.0.000 | The next version of Railo, currently available as a preview release, adds built-in support for ORM and many other features. | |
| 4.0
(Appollo) |
4.0.0.000 | Alpha version, not yet released, but can be built from source via GitHub[8] |
Railo runs on the JVM as a servlet, and will work with any servlet container (e.g. Apache Tomcat, Eclipse Jetty) or application server (e.g JBoss AS, GlassFish). It is possible to connect a web server (e.g. Apache, IIS, nginx, Cherokee) in front, using connectors such as mod jk, mod proxy, or equivalent, but this is not required by Railo.
Railo has an installer for Linux, Mac OS, and Windows, which bundles Apache Tomcat. There is also a pre-configured Railo Express download using Jetty.
From v4.0 onwards, Railo will have a command line version, enabling CFML to be used as a general-purpose language, outside of the servlet environment.[9]
Railo since v3.1 is licensed as LGPL v2.1[10], with the source code available on GitHub[11]
A primary aim of Railo was to provide the functionality of ColdFusion using less resources and giving better performance, and the Railo Technologies team continue to "treat slowness as a bug" as a core development philosophy. Many performance tests have shown Railo to perform faster than other CFML engines.
In addition to this, Railo attempts to resolve many inconsistencies found in traditional CFML. These are either forced changes in behaviour, or configurable options in the Railo Administrator.
The Railo Technologies team have always been open to feedback and active at CFML community events, and are keen to remind people that Railo is a community project.
Railo Technologies also creates strong technology partnerships with CFML software companies, including Blue River Interactive Group (developers of Mura CMS), CONTENS Software GmbH (developers of CONTENS CMS), and Intergral GmbH (developers of FusionReactor and FusionDebug), to help ensure their software works well with Railo. In addition, Railo Technologies offer formal "Partner Programs" for Solutions (development), Hosting, and Training.[12]
Railo is used by a number of companies, notably including:
onError and try/catch)onMissingMethod and implicit getters and setters)_toString, _toNumeric, _toBoolean, _toDate) [19]onSessionStart and onSessionEnd triggers.CFML has built-in functionality for preventing code injection, via the cfqueryparam tag, and functions such as HtmlEditFormat, XmlFormat, JsStringFormat. There are also third-party CFML implementations of the OWASP Enterprise Security API[27], and the AntiSamy project[28].
One of the key architecture decisions with Railo was to follow the JEE servlet model, with support for multiple independent web contexts on a single server. This is a key security factor, as it prevents unrelated applications from interfering with each other, as may happen on a shared ColdFusion server (which only has a single web context).
Railo implements the CFML language - see the CFML syntax section for examples.
CFML has a tag-based syntax which is visually different from most other languages, though aside from this it is similar to other dynamic languages, with the following exceptions:
Whilst Railo implements CFML, and is generally compatible with Adobe ColdFusion (ACF), the original CFML engine, there are some notable differences between the two:
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