Report: cfFrameworks.com framework survey

This report is based on the frameworks survey posted on the http://succor.co.uk and http://cfFrameworks.com blog during the period since 22/2006. It should be noted that the size of the sample is relatively small (156) and is limited to those who are active in the ColdFusion community and read the succor blog. Nethertheless the results may provide some insight into the adoption of frameworks within the ColdFusion community.

This survey is still open and we would like to encourage you to complete it if you haven't already. You can complete the survey here. This report was based on the results as of 14^th October 2006.

Do you currently use a framework?

Yes	119	(76%)
No	37	(24%)

As you can see from the results over % of those who completed the survey - use frameworks. This is encouraging but in now way can it be taken to be indicative of the larger ColdFusion user base. In reality those who completed the survey are more likely to be from the minority of ColdFusion developers who are actively involved in the community.

Which framework(s) do you currently use

This question had a wide range of answers. Note that as the survey is for frameworks in particular no distinction is made between different types of framework, for example – no distinction is made between persistence frameworks, controller frameworks, domain logic frameworks etc

Also note that participants were allowed and encouraged to list more than one framework if they used more than one.

Fusebox was the most popular framework currently in use 63.

Followed closely by Model glue 42.

And then Mach-II 27.

Interesting is the penetration and rate of adoption of Model Glue in comparison to Fusebox which has been around for far longer. In particular from these results – model glue seems to be used more than mach-ii.

These results indicate that there aren't as many people using their own home grown frameworks (12). As stated this is a very small subset and it is likely in reality that many more people are using their own in house internal framework even if they don't consider it a framework.

Within those who answered that they are using fusebox, (some did not specify what version)

fusebox3	5
fusebox4/4.1	21
fusebox5	7
fusebox	28
fusebox 2	2

Most of those who answered appear to be using 4/4.1 although many were not qualified. At least 2 respondents were still using FB2. Unfortunately because the version is not qualified – these values should be taken with a pinch of salt – for example of the 28, 20 may have been fb3 which greatly changes the picture.

Others frameworks mentioned:

• Rhino
• Newbee
• Switch
• WAF
• ColdBox
• Nipper
• Coal
• Shado MX

How many frameworks

In total just over 10 frameworks were entered into the survey.

There seems to be many front controller frameworks such as Fusebox, and Model glue, a handful of ORM and persistence frameworks – Transfer, Reactor but not many concerned with the business domain – at the moment it only seems to be ColdSpring, Tartan.

It appears there seems to be perhaps too much of an emphasis on controller frameworks.

30% of the respondents are using more than one framework.

Finally despite the rapid adoption of Rails – only 5 people said they were using cfonWheels

I am looking at the following frameworks

This question showed some indication of what frameworks people were considering or intending to look at. Clearly Model Glue showed the most interest, followed by Reactor, then ColdSpring and Mach-ii:

Model Glue	122
Reactor	28
ColdSpring	21
Mach-ii	19

Do you feel that frameworks speed up production

Yes	122
No	33

A significant amount of people felt that frameworks do speed up development (almost the same as the amount of people who actually use frameworks in the first question). This seems to indicate that no one who actually uses a framework considers it to actually increase development time. The logical follow up question to this question (perhaps more targeted at those who do not use frameworks) would be do you feel that frameworks increase development time.

Many thanks for Kola for writing this report.

If you have any thoughts please post them below.

Remeber you can vote on your favorate framework here