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 Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily.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

The solution for getting CFB to open an HTM file in the CF editor is not too hard, but since he was thrown off a bit by some things he saw (when I suggested simply that the answer was in Builder's Preferences>General>Editors>File Associations page), I offered the specific steps. I then decided to go ahead and blog it, since I don't find anyone else having done so (feel free to comment if someone did).

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 Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily.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

This was happening to me until today. Here's how I found out and what I did about it. Hope it may help others. (Maybe this is old news to some, but it was a surprise for me and a classic bad news/good news situation.)

Update: Problem now understood

Since posting this entry, I've learned an explanation for what I was observing (thanks to Dan Switzer and others sharing their comments below to understand it). It was a case of "new" versions of the apps being created which meant that the "old" version i had was no longer being updated, and I had simply missed news of the new app. Hope that may help someone. I leave the rest of the blog entry below in case the details may interest anyone.

How I found out

So I have a couple of iphone apps I use all the time which until today, I was annoyed that seemingly obvious annoyances/limitations were not being resolved by updates. Was no one else annoyed by these? Really? Or was the developer perhaps being lazy? I lived with them. Hey, most of the apps are free or cheap.

But then today I got an email from one vendor highlighting new app features to consider in a recent update, and I noticed that they referred to enhancements to one of the very features I wanted, but they wrote as if it was a "long-standing" feature. How could I have never seen it then?

What I did to check it out

So I wondered if perhaps somehow I was NOT getting word of updates.

I remembered how when you visit the itunes store and click on an app you already have, it says "installed". I wondered if perhaps I may find that I could in fact "install" these apps, which I already had, but which seemed to have become long in the tooth.

Sure enough, I could do so (for at least two of several I checked). And holy smokes: the apps had indeed improved quite a bit.

Wow, what a shame that I've been limping along with older versions that lacked features I'd long-wanted.

Lesson learned

So obviously it's possible for apps to somehow become disconnected from their update stream. The app names had not changed, so that's not it. I don't know what happened. (For those who may wonder, in my case the apps were Harvest--for time/expense tracking--and Tweetdeck.)

And therefore I wanted to share this with others in case it may be an issue for you.

Want to help others with this problem?

Finally, does anyone know if perhaps there's some way to automate this investigation? Maybe there's info on the phone that tracks updates, and perhaps can indicate if the connection to itunes updates has broken. I suppose that's not likely.

But maybe there's a place on the phone (or in itunes on the computer it's synced to) which lists installed apps in order of last update. That would at least help highlight which ones to focus on?

Better still, perhaps there's "an app for that" which helps identify and resolve this very problem.

If you know more about this issue, feel free to share.

Bashers not welcome

One last thing: often when I write on a subject to share a solution to a problem, some folks are compelled to use the opportunity to bash whatever it is that I found the problem with. That's really not the point here, folks.

So if you're a delighted droid user, or perhaps just an apple-hater who loves the chance to give 'em a smack, or whatever, please withhold such comments. I'm serious, and I will delete or edit any comments that ignore this warning and are only about that. Let's just focus on the problem at hand, and any helpful solutions/suggestions.

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.

My session will be "CF911 ColdFusion Performance Report 2011", a new talk/concept I've created. Here's the description:

Starting a new tradition, veteran CF troubleshooter Charlie Arehart will present a review of the performance aspects of making various choices when working with ColdFusion, especially in recent version(s) of ColdFusion. Leveraging the important value of real load testing (as opposed to the less accurate conclusions from "large loop" testing), Charlie's annual report will help attendees appreciate the performance-related improvements of new/changed features, as well some older features where choices can make an important impact. Depending on the timing of the release of "CF next", the session may cover its new features, but it will certainly cover some things new in CF 9 and 9.0.1.

As I note there, I hope this may become an annual event which I might present at this and/or other conferences. (It's an idea rooted in a similar presentation made by a former colleague, from my first IT career from 1982-1997, where he presented the annual "Jim Damon model 204 Performance Report".)

About RIACon

As for RIAcon, I hope you're considering it. Phil Nacelli and the folks at AboutWeb have been working hard to put together the conference, which in some minds is kind of picking up where CFUnited left off. It will be a more intimate event, much like CFunited was when it first started.

Indeed, some will recognize that the location for RIAcon is across the street from one of the hotels where CFunited was held in its early years, right next to the Twinbrook Metro station in Rockville, MD.

A Personal Connection to the Hotel Location

Even more of a delight for me personally is that the hotel (The Legacy Hotel) is right on the land that was once the location of Congressional Roller Skating Rink (until the late 70's), where my sister and I (and many friends) spent our teen years pretty much whenever we weren't in school. Yep, I was a skating nerd: dance, figures, freestyle, and more. Here's incriminating evidence!

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.

The challenge

I helped them determine ultimately that the problem was not CF at all, but instead something amiss in their web server, in this case Apache. (Before any Apache defenders come at me, please: I'm not "hatin' on Apache", just reporting what we observed. Do keep reading for more details.)

I asked if they'd considered at least trying IIS to confirm if it might work better for this challenge, but they preferred the file-based configurability of Apache. While I noted that IIS had gotten better in recent years in that regard, they preferred to bring in some experienced Apache guys to sort things out. (I don't claim any particular expertise with Apache, and I'm not at all averse to letting a customer know when they may need to have someone else help with certain problems.)

The customer's first attempt at resolution

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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.

It's not something most people use often, and there is far more to the feature set than meets the eye. If you don't use the right resources to help you, you could waste time trying to piece together a solution using only scant examples you may find.

In this entry, I'll point to several resources you should consider to help get you quickly up to speed in using--and appreciating--the power of the XML features in CFML.

Even if you don't need them today, you (or someone you know) may need them some day, so keep this in mind. (Or if you find this page doing a google search some years down the road, drop a note to let me know if it helped then!)

Background

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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.

Here are the details.

First are the two talks:

• Pinpointing and Resolving ColdFusion Performance Issues (see the link for details on the topic)
• More Hidden Gems in CFBuilder and CFBuilder 2 (see the link for details on the topic)

(I had put in just the first talk originally, and then a few weeks ago a slot opened and they asked if I could do the other, which I was happy to offer, as an reprisal/update to my talk from the first release.)

Then for the Lightning Round (or what was originally referred to as the Pecha Kucha), my talk will be:

• Lies, damned lies, and CF request timeouts (in which I'll share in 5 minutes some information that even experienced developers admit having never known)

Finally, for the Birds of a Feather (no page on their site listing them yet), the session I will be leading will be:

• CF911: Share your CF server troubleshooting tips (come share some ideas, or learn from myself and others)

Sense a theme? Yep, other than the CFBuilder talk, the other sessions are all focused on the topic that is now most near and dear to my heart (and livelihood): CF Server Troubleshooting. It's what I do, and more important it's how I feel I can best help the most people.

There's one last aspect of my involvement at the conference that I'll mention: they started a new sponsorship program this year called "Friends of cf.Objective()", and I'll be participating in that. No mention of it yet on their site, but there should be more news at the event.

So hope to see you there, or if you won't be there, I'll post if any of these are recorded, or if not then I would likely record them myself in the future.

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.

What's changed about IIS 7 support in 9.01?

Some folks will know that ColdFusion 9 Updater 1 (9.0.1) has finally added full support for IIS 7, without need to rely upon enabling IIS 6 Compatibility (which IS still required for CF 9.0, 8.0, and 8.0.1). This is indeed great news, whether you're running on Vista, Windows 7, or Windows Server 2008, which all have IIS 7 by default, and for which you can enable IIS 6 Compatibility mode, but it's not on by default and not always straightforward to enable.

So bottom line, if you're on 9.0.1, you no longer need to go through the hoops described in the CF9 Admin/Install docs (nor in helpful blog entries like here and here, though those are still great for those running on CF 9.0 and 8, and may even offer tips of value to anyone setting up CF to run on IIS, which has other challenges on Server 2008.)

Gotcha 1: The IIS 7 Compatibility change is NOT documented where expected

Sadly, though, if you go looking for help on this in the CF docs, such as Chapter 6 of the manual, Installing ColdFusion 9, you will find that it has NOT been updated with the info that is new in the updater.

It opens, "If you are configuring IIS 7 ... ensure that you have the options IIS Metabase and IIS 6 configuration compatibility ... and ISAPI Extensions ... selected".

What a shame.

Solution 1: Where the change IS documented

So with respect to change in 9.0.1, where you no longer need to enable IIS 6 compatibility, the details are covered instead in the installation guide that was created just for installing CF9 updater 1 itself, called "Installing the Coldfusion 9 Update", available online at:

http://www.adobe.com/support/documentation/en/coldfusion/901/cf901install.pdf

It's certainly reasonable to expect that the primary install manual would have been updated with the info above.

But that's why I'm pointing this out. I have also added a comment explaining it on the page pointed to in the first link above. Hope that may help someone.

(The same info is also offered as a chapter in the manual, "ColdFusion 9 Updater 1: New Feature Notes", available at http://www.adobe.com/support/documentation/en/coldfusion/901/cf901features.pdf, which is of course very interesting if you may have missed it.)

I'll explain the second gotcha in a follow-up blog entry.

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.

This week will mark our 175th episode, with Jim Harris presenting on "Security: Hiding Info. from Individuals Not Authorized To See It", being held Thursday at noon US ET. (And the 176th episode will follow just after that "Requirements and Estimating", with Peter Bell.

If you've missed out on any of the past sessions, they're recorded and posted at recordings.coldfusionmeetup.com, and since 2010 are available in either streaming or downloadable (flv, mp3, mp4, wmv) format.

If you want to know about future meetings, you can join the 2400+ other members of the group (for free at the first URL above) to get email notifications, or you can follow the RSS feed of the calendar there, or if you can't get to meetup.com (being a social networking site), you can also just follow us via @cfmeetup on twitter.

Here's to 175 more episodes in coming years. :-)

PS If anyone is wondering, I count the sessions since I began hosting the CFMeetup in April 2007. Steven Erat had organized it originally and run it in 2005-2006. I simply started counting the recordings as I posted them and didn't think at the time to go back and find/count any previous sessions, so technically the number could/should be larger, but we'll leave that as a historical aberration. :-)

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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