ColdFusion 8 migration resources (from 6, 7, or even earlier)

Note: This blog post is from 2009. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

Who's only now moving to CF 8, you ask?

Some may ask, "why would someone be moving to CF 8 now, which CF9 on the horizon?". Well, a lot of shops don't upgrade immediately, so the question didn't surprise me. So some may only now be moving to 8, and they may not be interested in moving to CF9 for a while. Heck, some (like him) are running only on CF 6, or earlier! Let's just be glad when they people do finally migrate. :-)

And who knows, there may be some who move to CF 9 from 6 or 7, and this info may help them down the road, too.

So, as Casey Kasem used to say, "on with the countdown". :-)

60 page "Migrating Applications to ColdFusion MX 7"

I first pointed out to him that there *was* in fact available in the past an official Macromedia CF document (in the CF7 docs):

Migrating Applications to ColdFusion MX 7 (PDF)

At 60 pages, this is quite a good resource to consider. It "describes migration and known compatibility issues between ColdFusion Server 5 and later versions, including ColdFusion MX 6.1 and ColdFusion MX 7."

Sadly, it was not updated for CF 8, but really, the bigger differences in things were between 6 (being the first release after the rewrite of CF on java) and higher. Of course, those moving from 5 (when CF was written in C++) to higher face far more differences. Again, the guide even covers that. So even those skipping 7 to go to 8 should at least look at the guide.

Never heard of the guide? I'm not surprised. I'll take that up at the end of this entry.

Jim Priest Sought CF8 Migration Stories

Now, he did ask about migration to CF8 specifically.

There was at least one blog entry, from Jim Priest, that sought such CF 8 migration stories.

In the comments, someone commented about "CF8 performance on our CFC-driven apps" after the upgrade to 8. As many now know, that was likely due to a bug in the JVM, rather than CF. CF 8 came running on on JVM 1.6.0_04. Early in the CF8 lifetime, people suggested dropping back to JVM 1.5, but by late 2008 Sun had fixed the problem in 1.6.0_10, and that became the recommendation. Many blogged about it, including Sean Corfield and Ryan Stille who also walks you through making the upgrade.

Someone also commented (in Jim's CF8 Migration Stories entry) about losing their CFIDE directory after the upgrade. I don't know if this is the exact problem, but there was a similar issue documented in the CF 7 timeframe: "CFIDE and cfdocs folders removed after migrating from ColdFusion MX 6.1 to ColdFusion MX 7".

Jim's entry has comments closed for now, so I can only offer these thoughts here. I just asked him by email if he may reopen it to let people post observations like these, to help people who may yet find it and the older comments. We shall see.

Josh Adams offers still more resources

I just found also that Josh Adams (of Adobe) also blogged about Migrating from ColdFusion 5 or older to ColdFusion 8. He shares some other interesting resources, though not that CF7 migration guide. I'll drop him a note and I suspect he'll get that added ASAP. :-)

Steven Erat's discussion of migration from 4.5 to 7

Again, while not specifically about moving to CF 8, Steven Erat did blog some resources to help someone making the move from 4.5 to 7, in his entry, Migrating applications across a six year gap in ColdFusion server implementation. That offers a link to the Migration Guide above but also release notes for each release between 4.5 and 7.02, which is a nice touch.

Don't forget to apply hotfixes

Besides looking at the release notes for each release (something I also highly recommend), I'll also remind folks to also always check for updates, hotfixes, and cumulative hotfixes for any release you may install. What you download (even today from Adobe) may not be the absolute latest version of whatever release you get.

I'll do a blog entry about that with more details in the future. (I did discuss it in my CFMythbusters talk, and the PDF there has some good pointers to get you started on this topic, among others.)

No surprise if you never noticed that CF7 Migration Guide

Sadly, you won't find that CF7 Migration Guide I mentioned on the CF7 livedocs page, since it's a PDF (never made as an HTML file, which the livedocs are). Instead, it's listed on a different CF7 documentation page, that can itself be easily missed. (It is linked to from the CF product and support pages.)

And again the Migration Guide wasn't updated for CF8, so of course it's not mentioned on either the CF8 equivalent of that page or the CF8 livedocs page. Still, since the "changes" from 7 to 8 weren't substantial (new features, not many--if any--breaking changes), the guide helps those moving from CF 5 or 6 to 8, too.

Some won't want to miss the substantial Getting Started Guide

Finally, while we're mentioning CF7 docs that people may have missed, check out also "Getting Started Building ColdFusion MX Applications". That is/was at least listed in the CF7 livedocs (and the other doc link), above. Still, it seems many missed it. It's over 150 pages of great introduction to CF application development (and yes, it shows use of CFCs not just tired old CFQUERY/CFOUTPUT development). Sadly, it too was not upgraded for CF 8 (or 9). It was a great resource for those getting started with CF. I still recommend it all the time.

What other CF 8 Migration resources exist?

So that's my "quick" answer to the person asking for CF8 migration resources. Anyone have more? Whether moving to 8 from 7, or 6, or earlier? :-) Comment here. Readers will be grateful.

I'll prime the pump with a couple more, where people described challenges they faces:

• My ColdFusion 8 Upgrade, by Barney Boisvert
• Upgrading To ColdFusion 8 From ColdFusion MX 7, by Marcelo Lewin

Hope that's helpful. And since I give a nod to Casey Kasem at the opening, I suppose some will think I should mimic his successor, Ryan Seacrest, in closing here. This is "Arehart, out". :-)

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