Communicate between Java & ColdFusion

[Mike Paim]

I've got a ColdFusion shopping cart system that I'm building using CF MX. I
need to get data from a database that's managed by a program written in Java on
a seperate server. I'm thinking that the easiest way to get the data would be
through XML. - Does CF already have an XML parser to handle this? - Is there
anything special I should think about in getting these two systems to
communicate? - Any related websites or books that would be good reading
material on this topic? Thanks, Michael

[Mike Greider]

Can the functionality be exposed via web services? ColdFusion has some easy web
service functionality built right in. The web service route might be a good for
the future too. It'd be easy to have other programs utilize the same web
services.

[altimage]

Can you just read directly from the database and skip having to talk to the Java app at all?

altImage

[Mike Paim]

The actual data that I want to get at will be in a database on another totally
seperate server. The Java App is used to determin some business layer logic
that they wish not to replicate on the CF side. So, I would probably say, no we
can't access it directly. Thanks, Michael