Event gateways are connectors, bridges between ColdFusion and other systems and technologies. Whereas out of the box ColdFusion can respond to HTTP requests (via Web Server connectors) and can talk to a variety of back-end technologies (databases, LDAP, Web Services, and more), event gateways allow ColdFusion to respond to and interact with just about anything.
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Event gateways are supported in ColdFusion Enterprise and ColdFusion Developer Edition, but not in ColdFusion Standard.