Note: This blog post is from 2011. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily.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.

Update, Recording: Note that this session was recorded. You can view it here, but note that you must login with an Adobe ID to see it.

And I'm presenting a session tonight, Tuesday September 13, at 7pm Eastern, on "Understanding and Using the ColdFusion Server Monitor".

As many of you know, I'm pretty much a fanatic about the monitor, especially about truly understanding elements of it that many miss. And so in my talk this will not be just a dog and pony show, but I will talk about practical experiences with it, though presented to either those new to it or experienced with it.

Note that the times for all these devweek sessions is shown (on the Adobe site) as being Pacific time, so again mine is at 7pm, not 4pm, Eastern.

And yes, the sessions are being recorded and seem to be made available the next day.

Finally, beware that there is no one URL you can use to join in on all the Connect sessions, nor can you get the Connect session URL by going to the event page (via the first link above). Instead, you must register for each event (free) from that first page, to get each session's Connect URL--and you'll want to do that at least several minutes in advance of any session to have time to register, get the email, login, etc.

See you then.

PS Hey, while we're talking monitoring, note as well that if you've not heard, FusionReactor has come out with its new release 4, which has lots of great additions, especially FREC (or the FR Extensions for CF) which cause FR to grab and log lots of great info that the CF Server Monitor only shows and never logs. I'll be blogging about FR 4 soon, but plenty to see on their site. and FusionAnalytics is also just about to release, really!

I won't be discussing these at this talk, focused solely on the server monitor, but as I always tell folks, each tool has its use and often a single shop can benefit from having both (like I do, as do many of the clients I help with troubleshooting). You can find more from me about FR here in my blog. And I'll have lots more to say about FA and FR4 more soon.

Note: This blog post is from 2011. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily.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.

I'll detail the limits per version/edition below.

I'll also offer a (possibly surprising) workaround that can allow you to get even more requests through IIS, even for a single web site.

(Before I elaborate on that, note that there is a separate issue if you're finding that CF doesn't let you see more than 25 requests at once. That's instead due to a setting in CF/JRun, the maxworkerthreads setting. For more on that, see this blog entry.)

That said, this is a problem which could affect anyone regardless of the app server they may be running behind IIS. (And yes, I do realize that for some, the answer to this problem will be, "see, that's another reason to run Apache." We get that. Let's just focus on this problem for those who choose/have to remain on IIS.)

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Note: This blog post is from 2010. 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.

Here's the next, related, myth:

True or False: "If/when I apply Cumulative Hotfixes, I need apply only the latest CHF, right?"

For instance, let's say you're currently running CF 9 update 1 or CF 8.0.1 and discover (perhaps due to my last blog entry) that you had never applied any of their associated CHFs. It would seem you should just be able to apply the latest CHF and not bother with anything related to the previous ones, right?

Answer: Well, yes and no.

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Note: This blog post is from 2010. 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.

First myth up for consideration:

True or false: "If/when I download CF to install it from scratch, the installer has all the latest fixes (updaters, at least)"

Answer: False (generally). For instance, if you download CF9 today (Dec 2010), you still get CF 9.0, released originally in Oct 2009. You don't get the latest updater (9.0.1 as of this writing, released July 2010), though its existence is at least mentioned on the page, nor of course does it then include any hotfixes or cumulative hotfixes.

Why not, you may wonder? I'll explain more in a moment, along with more about hotfixes and updaters as concepts (and where to find them specifically, for each CF release).

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Note: This blog post is from 2010. 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.

Yes, you CAN modify the debugging output. Some have even done it for you

Fortunately, several people have offered various resources that explain how to work with this file and offer packaged alternatives with specific features to resolve particular problems (where people wish the debugging output did more, or could be seen differently than at the bottom of the page).

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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.

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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.

You may think, "what's new about that?" Well, nothing. I've just had people ask for more beginner/intermediate and more admin-related talks. This seemed to fit the bill for both. Here's the (detailed) description (to make sure the right audience shows up).

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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.

Enabling multiple user access to the ColdFusion Administrator and RDS

If you're using CF 8 Enterprise or Developer edition, you should at least be aware of this feature. Even if it doesn't sound like something you'd need or want to use, check out at least the introductory section.

Besides explaining the features, and showing how to set them up and use them for practical solutions. It also addresses many gotchas and cautions to note, some of which may be surprises.

It shows using the multi-user admin feature for spreading out who can work on different parts of the admin (and shows enabling it even only for access to the CF 8 Server Monitor.)

And for the multi-user RDS feature, it shows leveraging it specifically within Eclipse and Dreamweaver (and points to resources for more on each and on using it with HomeSite+/CF Studio.)

I welcome comments or questions about the article here.

PS If you want to comment asking why one would use RDS due to security concerns, please read the article first. This addresses one significant concern and also points readers to additional resources to consider other concerns.

Note: This blog post is from 2008. 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.

Old News, coming to fruition next month: Sun EOL of J2SE 1.4. Adobe's response

Sun has previously announced (in 2006) that J2SE 1.4 (the JVM that happens to underlie CF 6 and 7) would reach end of life in October 2008.

Well that's next month, and Adobe has offered a technote to explain how this affects CFers on 6 and 7 (they don't mention 6, as it's no longer formally supported).

• Adobe will continue to provide support for configurations requiring this version of the J2SE on a best-effort basis
• Folks can of course upgrade to CF8, which runs on Java 1.6 (and supports 1.5)
• FWIW,folks running JRun can also upgrade to later versions of it that support later versions of the J2SE

All that's good news, really, so nothing to get excited about.

Java SE for Business

Sun themselves have also addressed the problem by releasing something called Java SE for Business, which extends the life considerably (up to 15 years), which an organization can license. Adobe has said in the technote that they will be supporting that as well.

So the sky is not falling

All this means that if you hear anyone start some rumor that the EOL of Java 1.4 spells some doom for CF 6 or 7, nip it in the bug. Point them at this technote.

As further testament to why this is not a significant issue, Adobe also makes note there that "Servers running ColdFusion MX 6.x with J2SE 1.3.1 or JRun 4 with J2SE 1.3.1 have historically run without problems long after Sun Microsystems had End of Lifed that J2SE version."

More questions

But ask your questions, and perhaps another reader (or later, I) will have an answer.

PS I'll grant too that maybe this isn't new information (the Adobe response, and this technote). I only caught it today because I get the feed (as I discussed previously) of new/updated technotes. The technote says it was updated yesterday. They don't say when they're created, so it's possible the technote came out in the past. I just don't recall seeing it. (I wish they would put dates on them for this reason.)

Note: This blog post is from 2008. 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.

While tooling through the ColdFusion technotes, I came across this interesting one: Purpose and location of XML configuration files used in ColdFusion MX. While it's not especially new, it shows having been updated in 2008, and the info offered seems to apply to CF8 just as readily as CF 6 and 7.

It also happens to point to a document with brief descriptions of the JRun XML files as well.