Thanks to Railo fans who voted during the Bitnami Application Contest, the fast, free, easy-to-use open-source CFML app is now available on the Bitnami Library!
We weren't surprised by the excitement for Railo since it is the easiest way to build Java EE based web applications without the complexities of Java. Backed by an active development community, Railo provides the quickest CFML engine available so that you can focus on creating the best experience for end users.
Install Railo in a few clicks with the Bitnami Railo installers (available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X), virtual machine images (VMs), and cloud images for Amazon EC2, Azure, and Google cloud platforms.
Or, catch up with Jordan Michaels, Railo's Community Deployments Coordinator, who took time to chat with us about Railo's history and some very cool ongoing projects.
How was the Railo project started? What are the origins of this project?
The Railo project started back in 2002 as a student project, and was continuously developed over the years until it's first launch in late 2005.
In the beginning it was just a project that had to compile CFML into something else. The first version we had, compiled from CFML to PHP. Yes PHP. In those days it was obvious that every server out there would have a PHP processor installed on it, so the choice was logical. However, the reasoning against it was the fact that PHP 5 was in its early beta, and therefore very unstable, inconsistent, and the performance penalty we would experience was too high. From there, we switched to Java and it proved to be the right choice.
Due to the fact that Railo, albeit in its early stage, was so much faster than other engines we decided to take it to a full product. As for its name, the correct pronunciation of Railo, as well as the scene of the origin of the name "Railo" can be found here.
What is the main goal for Railo?
Railo aims to be the fastest CFML processing engine available, while remaining completely free and open-source for anyone to use and develop.
Railo aims to be the fastest CFML processing engine available, while remaining completely free and open-source for anyone to use and develop.
Which projects or organizations are using Railo currently? What kind of projects do they use it for?
Railo is used for all kinds of projects all over the world for sites and companies of various sizes. Probably one of the most popular users of Railo is NASA - who used Railo for their Mars Curiosity website - as well as many of their other projects. You can view more Railo success stories here.
Railo is used for all kinds of projects all over the world for sites and companies of various sizes. Probably one of the most popular users of Railo is NASA - who used Railo for their Mars Curiosity website - as well as many of their other projects. You can view more Railo success stories here.
What do you expect will be the main benefits of having Bitnami packages available for Railo?
It is our hope that the Bitnami Railo stack will make it simple to deploy Railo within the Bitnami cloud service, as well as other providers around the Internet.
Would you like your favorite app to be part of Bitnami? Be sure to suggest and vote for it in our monthly contest!
It is our hope that the Bitnami Railo stack will make it simple to deploy Railo within the Bitnami cloud service, as well as other providers around the Internet.
Would you like your favorite app to be part of Bitnami? Be sure to suggest and vote for it in our monthly contest!