Cold Fusion advice/help needed

Hi all,

Little background:  I did some work earlier this year for a not-for-profit.
Just as we got to the end of the project, the hosting company was changed to
one that would donate some space to a worthy cause.  Well, that was nice,
but I had coded for a standard Windows or Unix environment (just your garden
variety html) and was going to use formmail for the two forms.  The new
hosts put her on a Cold Fusion server.

They also provided free maintenance and promised her to take my html forms
and make them work in Cold Fusion.  Did they?  Sort of.

The short form works.  The problem is the long form, a survey, which has
quite a few entries (maybe more than 100).  Now, at first, the hosting
people told me they had Perl.  They wouldn't tell me the path to it.  I
tried a couple of standard paths (usr/bin/perl and usr/local/bin/perl and
all that), but no dice.  Do Cold Fusion hosts offer Perl?  Maybe the
solution is in there.

Of course, what I know about Cold Fusion could fit on the head of a pin.  In
looking at the shorter form, I could figure out how to make a longer one,
but I'm not sure about the datasource.  I suppose I would need to know what
kind of database to use.  I do understand that CF will support SQL, Access,
Oracle, Sybase... I think.  But with a host that wont' speak to me (when I
call, they are either rude outright, don't know what I'm talking about, or
the guy who I need to talk to is not there...would I like to leave a
message?), what am I supposed to do?

Nevermind that they screwed up a couple of pages (I think they were making
the navigation an ssi, but it was GONE on three pages), nevermind that they
"rearranged" a good bit of the pages.  So, of course, being a reseller to a
host I really like, I offered to donate some space myself, but the client
doesn't understand what all the fuss is about.  Really.  I have explained
until I'm blue.  I'm hoping she'll change her mind on changing hosts, but
I'm not holding my breath.

My question, I think, is this:  how much support should I need from the host
for CF?  Should I be able to just upload a database and write to it?  Am I
being obtuse or am I just being dumb about CF?  Should I expect support from
the host?  In other words, I don't know if I'm stupid or if they are stupid.

I think it was Peter (lemmegolook) Schonefeld who said, just this morning, "
It's when you're screwed by another web professional that you really get
annoyed - but that's
another story!"

For those of you who can/will offer a bit of advice, the page in question is
at http://www.birthmark.org/survey.htm.  I know they LOOKED at it, because
it was aligned at one time.  It now appears to have been thrown at the page.

Thanks, all, for any help you can offer.  I appreciate it.


Missy Scott
MBScott(at)d-assistance.com

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