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CF911: New Adobe document about #ColdFusion security hotfixes: required reading, I'd say

Here's a new document from Adobe (new as of last week, it seems) that you may have missed, but which I would argue is REQUIRED READING for all CF admins and developers:

Important hotfix-related notes for ColdFusion 9 and ColdFusion 10

What is this about? and why is it important? Read on below, as the document itself and current links from Adobe don't quite convey its significance, I think. For more perspective, I discuss below both what has happened to many folks after applying ColdFusion security hotfixes in recent years, and how this document helps.

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Solving seeming #ColdFusion / MySQL 5.6 incompatibility, by updating CF's MySQL driver

If you're running ColdFusion 10 (and perhaps also CF 9 or earlier), you will find that if you update your MySQL installation to version 5.6, you'll get the following error from any SQL you try to run from CFQUERY (and perhaps other CF querying tags, like CFSTOREDPROC):

You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'OPTION SQL_SELECT_LIMIT=DEFAULT'

Summary: There is a reasonable explanation and a rather simple solution: update the MySQL driver that CF is using to at least version 5.1.22 of the driver, the first to support MySQL 5.6, because the one built into CF 10 (driver version 5.1.17) not only does not. More important, that older driver uses something that causes the failure above in 5.6.

That explanation of the "solution" may be enough for some to take the ball and run with it (and if not, I will offer more details on how to do that), though it should be noted that updating the driver is not formally supported, nor is MySQL 5.6 technically supported at all in CF10 (or 9). But for those who will press on knowing that risk, you now know what you need to do.

But as often, there's much more to this than meets the eye, so I hope you will follow along to learn more. I have broken this into two parts:

  • the problem (with what I hope is helpful explanation of what the real root of the problem is),
  • who's to blame (not Adobe, I will argue)
  • and the solution (with some caveats that even experienced folks, or those who don't care about "the problem", should still read.

And again, while I discuss this in the context of CF10, where I've seen the problem happen, it could apply also to CF9 (and it seems reasonable that it would), so all the information still applies, it would seem.

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BlogCFC was created by Raymond Camden. This blog is running version 5.005.

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