Macromedia on Monday plans to announce Version 5 of its ColdFusion Web server, which features performance and productivity enhancements such as advanced full-text searching, on Monday.

This is the first iteration of ColdFusion in nearly 18 months, and first release of the server since Macromedia acquired it from Allaire Corp. in January.

"ColdFusion is at the center of our strategy. We can now offer a complete solution to developers, from the front-end to a means to deploying applications," said Phil Costa, senior product marketing manager at ColdFusion.

The new version is focused on enhancing developer productivity, simplifying management, and increasing performance, Costa said.

New features include an integrated charting engine, advanced full-text searching, and new language features designed to enable faster development of business applications.

Phil Hulsey, an application developer at East Carolina University, has been using the product throughout its beta testing phases.

"It's a really shallow learning curve," from previous versions of ColdFusion, Hulsey said.

After using the beta releases in testing scenarios, Hulsey said East Carolina is confident enough to move forward with the first release candidate.

"We're going to go ahead and roll the release candidate out in production," he added.