One of the really great features of CFML is the ability to run SQL against a result set in memory.  This allows you to union separate results together or even apply additional filtering on an exiting result if you can't control what the DB gives you.  Like everything, there is a time and a place for this.  There are people who strongly dislike QoQ (query of queries) but my take is that I think they're great when used with relatively small data sets and unless performance profiling shows they are causing issues, I have no problems using them.