eg <cfset application.mydata = application.queryCFC.getAllMyData() />

The results have been that what was taking up to ~600ms before is now
done in ~47ms.

This is a small web app so I am happy I can do this. I just wonder if
this is a bad habit to get into?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------
More detail - why I did it.

We have lots of short lived, simple web projects - "summer schools"
being one example - they all want their own  design and live in a
range of different domains (and sub-domains). Once or twice we even
have to move the app from one domain to another so I wanted to build
simple self contained projects that I could just pick up and dump
elsewhere if needed.
Our existing database is filling up with these temporary projects so
while I search for an effective conference(?) management system (x-
domain). I thought I would experiment with storing data in XML.
So far I quite like it - I am trying to engineer the apps in a MVC way
so if I want to create a new one all I need to do is delete my XML
files, edit the config file and create my design.
I have found reading the XML files a bit more time consuming than
straight db queries though - especially when joining data from
different files.

The above performance boost example was on one problematic page that I
probably needed to re-engineer anyway however this was a simple and
quick solution that I was able to implement very easily.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------

Is anybody else using XML to store data? I am especially interested to
see how other people store dates in XML. Just curious.

If you want the coldspring-style answer though, you may want to abstract
calls for the query.

I'm assuming that your code will have lots of references to
application.mydata - what happens if you want to re-engineer things in the
future? You have to update all these references.

Instead, set up a service cfc that has a function to return your query. You
can then manage this service with Coldspring. So on your front-end code, you
might just be calling cs.getBean('myService').getAllMyData()

Internally, your service may just be storing the query in the application
scope, but the rest of your application doesn't need to know this. In
future, you could change the way your service works internally, and your
front-end code doesn't change at all.

It can take a while to get your head around the benefits of coldspring, but
it's great when you start using it. It makes your code a lot more reusable