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 Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily.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 Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily.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

The problem outlined here has to do with being careful when you're modifying CF to enable/disable RDS (or doing any edits in the [cf]/wwwroot/WEB-INF/web.xml file that controls it.) This applies to CF 6, 7, or 8.

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 Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily.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

http://www.cfconversations.com/index.cfm/2009/2/24/CFConversations-30-Interview-20--Charlie-Arehart

I really enjoyed it and hope you will as well. We talked about some things that may surprise people, and more than he quips about in the intro. :-)

Still, it's not just a puff piece. We do talk about quite a few issues of significance to some, and as always I try to offer resources and info to help people in their day-to-day working with CF.

I welcome your thoughts or feedback here.

Indeed, as I noted on the comments at the blog entry above, it bears repeating for some that one quip I made was more relative to the time of the interview, which was around election time. It might be misconstrued now 3 months later. :-)

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.

Some may read this and say, "big deal, I've been doing that for years", but it's one of those little things that some just never notice or think of. If you've not considered the option, why not check it out?

(Update on 9/30/2010: Others may have noticed that they DID have it set to more than 10, but recently they lost that functionality. I have the solution for that, as well.)

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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.

Besides a fresher appearance there's improved organization and navigation. There are high-level views of the products (available on the front page, with tabs along the bottom for each product) and more detailed pages on each (FR and FD), with product tours, benefits, faqs, and much more. This breakdown of high-level and detail views applies as well to discussions of the Air Enterprise Dashboard and their Services (consulting, training, etc.)

Through the updated web site you can also learn about many other resources available, including articles, videos, and blogs by them and others; product docs, screenshots, FAQs and more; info on customers and free/paid support; community tool contributions, and lots more.

The folks behind FusionReactor/FusionDebug are really great. They're very open to communications and always welcome (and act effectively on) feedback. I've been a long-time fan, so much that I work with them directly on doing training and consulting based on their products (while remaining an independent consultant.) It's their very openness and willingness to listen to feedback that brought me to working with them more and more closely over the years. I'm glad to help others take notice of the company and their great products.

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.