ColdFusion provides you with several techniques and elements to create sections of code that you can use multiple times in an application. Many of the elements also let you extend the built-in capabilities of ColdFusion. ColdFusion provides the following techniques and elements:

• ColdFusion pages you include using the cfinclude tag
• User-defined functions (UDFs)
• ColdFusion components
• Custom CFML tags
• CFX (ColdFusion Extension) tags

The following sections describe the features of each of these elements and provide guidelines for determining which to use in your application. Other chapters describe the elements in detail. The last section in this chapter includes a table to help you choose among these techniques and elements for different purposes.

ColdFusion can also use elements developed using other technologies, including the following:

• JSP tags from JSP tag libraries. For information on using JSP tags, see Integrating J2EE and Java Elements in CFML Applications.
• Java objects, including objects in the Java run-time environment and JavaBeans. For information on using Java objects, see Integrating J2EE and Java Elements in CFML Applications.
• Microsoft COM (Component Object Model) objects. For information on using COM objects, see Integrating COM and CORBA Objects in CFML Applications.
• CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) objects. For information on using CORBA objects, see Integrating COM and CORBA Objects in CFML Applications.
• Web services. For information on using web services, see Using Web Services.