Problem creating Derby DSN? It's a bug in CF8 Standard

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 Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily.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.

I think this is why it's been so confusing to resolve. Instead, I've seen all kinds of guesses as to the root cause. The challenge is that if you don't have a Standard license, you can't see how things work in Standard. Fortunately, I have one and just ran a test and can confirm this.

How I've demonstrated the problem

I started out on Enterprise (same on Developer), and in the CF Admin chose to create a new datasource, choosing "Apache Derby Embedded" in the "select a valid driver type", and it took me to a page asking just for the "Database folder" where the Derby DB would live, and it offered the optional "create database" checkbox. That and a description field were it. This is indeed what one SHOULD see for a Derby Embedded DSN.

But when I switched my CF license (clicking the blue "i" icon at the top right for the System Information page) to use a Standard license key, and repeated the steps above, I was taken instead to the "other" driver page, where one is prompted to enter a JDBC URL, driver class and name, and many other things that would clearly confuse someone trying to use Derby. What a shame.

Does NOT affect those adding a Derby Client DSN

I'll add that this does NOT happen when choosing the "Apache Derby Client" driver option, even in Standard, which is odd. (And again, it doesn't affect those using Enterprise or Developer edition, even if they're using the Server/Standalone mode that's closest in implementation to Standard.)

What's this Derby thing anyway?

If you're not familiar with the difference between Derby Embedded and Client, or indeed don't know much about Derby at all (the Apache database embedded in CF 8) and may wonder why one may bother to try to use it, you can check out various Derby resources I have offered on my site, including most recently a talk I gave at Max 2008, the recording of which is available here.

Bug report filed

This problem of redirecting to the wrong page seems, then, to be clearly just a bug in CF 8 Standard. I've just filed a bug report on the CF wish form, which I discuss more here for those not familiar with it. Let's hope that perhaps this is addressed in the Centaur release.

For more content like this from Charlie Arehart:

• Signup to get his blog posts by email:
• Follow his blog RSS feed
• View the rest of his blog posts
• View his blog posts on the Adobe CF portal

Need more help with problems?

• If you may prefer direct help, rather than digging around here/elsewhere or via comments, he can help via his online consulting services
• See that page for more on how he can help a) over the web, safely and securely, b) usually very quickly, c) teaching you along the way, and d) with satisfaction guaranteed