Note: This blog post is from 2020. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily.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 turns out that with the release of CF2021, Adobe introduced a breaking change...if you use any of the CF tags or functions that use date formatting masks. The problem is that while a capital "D" value used in such mask used to simply mean the same as a lower-case "d" ("day of month"), the change in CF2021 is that "D" now means instead "day of YEAR"! That can be a devastating problem that might lurk for days or weeks, corrupting your data.

TLDR; You have two solutions:

• you can choose either find and change the affected code (not easy but using techniques shared below)
• or you can implement a new JVM arg that Adobe offers to revert this behavior back to how things worked before CF2021 (discussed below), which still applies in CF2023 and beyond

If you're affected, you must do one or the other of these things. For more, read on.

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Note: This blog post is from 2020. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily.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 recent release of CF2021 is a great sign for the continued vitality of CF, but this looming deadline is a reminder that as the years roll on, we not only get new versions but we say good-bye to old ones.

Wondering what you can do? or when CF2018 or CF2021 support ends? And what's the difference between "core" and paid Adobe support plans? For more on these, as well as official Adobe documentation that discusses such things, read on.

[Update: CF2016 users got a "reprieve" of sorts, when Adobe released updates to CF2021 and 2018 in March 2021, and they also offered the final update to CF2016, update 17, especially because it address a security vulnerability. Sadly, some of the changes in the update--not related to the security fix--were "breaking" changes. For more on that update, see the Adobe blog post from March 2021.)

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Note: This blog post is from 2020. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily.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.

As with each CF release, there are features great and small--ones that may "sell" it, and ones that may simply make your life easier.

This is a follow-up to my post from last month, Getting started with "Project Stratus" public beta, aka CF2021. In that I highlighted some key info one would need to get started USING the prerelease, which came out in August, but I only briefly mentioned then some of the key new features. (I also explained why I had referred even then to it being CF2021, given info I'd found in the prerelease.)

In this post, I want to highlight more clearly what those new features are, nearly 60 of them in several categories!--just with a brief mention of the feature and perhaps its sub-features--and most important with a pointer to where to find them discussed in far more detail.

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Note: This blog post is from 2020. 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.

• release notes for java 11.0.9
• release notes for java 8.0_271

For some, that's all they need to hear.

And I could (and probably should) leave it at that. But there are other questions which folks will have, including more on getting those binaries/installers (from Oracle or Adobe), on the difference between those LTS versions and "more recent" Java versions, as well as non-Oracle JVMs, and on licensing matters and more. For those, read on. Perhaps I will split this other stuff out into its own post at some point, so I can just point to it from news of these Java updates.

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Note: This blog post is from 2020. 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.

Sorry that I didn't post this sooner. (I'm just not great at promoting my talks: I forgot to mention here when I gave the talk on the online CFMeetup back in Sept--and this one today will be a slightly updated version.)

Anyone can register to attend the session, and I hope you will. You may be surprised to learn a few things.

Here's the description as offered on that Carahsoft site (and see below that on how "I am not Carahsoft"):

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Note: This blog post is from 2020. 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 matters most is that it's one of the boldest new versions of CF in quite some time. In this post, I want to share some tips about getting started with the beta, as I have seen many in the community left wondering about some things.

My focus here is not on "what's new" (I'll offer a brief list here, and more in a later post), but really just "how to get started", especially during the beta (or "prerelease") as some things are not as obvious as they perhaps should be. In fact, I make some pointed suggestions that I hope Adobe will consider, as well as share tips for you in the meantime.

In this post, I cover:

• How easily anyone can join the public beta (Don't miss all that's on the prerelease front page)
• Available documentation resources, don't miss them! (The 500-page (!) release notes, and separate system requirements and known issues docs)
• Getting help with the prerelease, don't go it alone! (Filing bug reports, feature requests for the prerelease; asking for help and learning in the available prerelease forums)
• The available installers and more
• A taste of what's new (more to come in a later post)
• About the use of the codename, Project Stratus

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Note: This blog post is from 2020. 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 2020. 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.

Migrating or Comparing CF Admin Settings, between instances, versions, and engines

You can learn more (including the description, the online meeting URL, where the recording will be posted, and more) at the meetup event page. FWIW, the session name had to be shortened a bit as presented on the meetup site there and even in the title here. :-)

As a bonus for you, my blog readers, I'll note that I'll be covering the CF migration and CAR features, the Commandbox CFConfig tool (which can be used for more than just "box" instances) and the CF2020 cfsetup tool (which has been shown publicly already), and more.

I'll also have a special surprise for people who "just want to compare the Admin settings of two instances without resorting to command-line tools, or hopping back and forth between browser tabs", using a free cross-platform GUI compare tool (and a simple trick in the CF Admin) which has delighted nearly everyone I've ever shown it to. And the tool can benefit you for far more than this one task. :-)

Note: This blog post is from 2020. 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 2020. 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 question, "How can I keep CF Admin settings in sync between multiple servers or instances?" was asked today on the Adobe CF forums. The person had CF instances on multiple servers and lamented having to login to each CF admin to make changes that would apply equally to all instances, in particular creating or changing datasources.

They wondered if in fact there was a feature in the CF Admin to "cluster" datasource definitions, like there is (since CF2016 Enterprise) the feature to "cluster" scheduled tasks.

While I explained that there was not such a "feature" to sync CF admin settings generally across instances, I added that there WERE at least a couple of options one could consider using to achieve the goal. (And as an update after I wrote this in Apr 2020, note that CF2021 came out a few months later offering still one more.) My answer elaborating things (as is my wont) was long enough that I should have probably created a blog post instead. After submitting it, I decided to do just that, here (and I have tweaked here what I said, with some more elaboration and links).

Short answer: there are different tools that might be considered to help with this task (especially automating it), and a couple more that some may consider:

• the CFConfig tool within CommandBox, a powerful and automatable command line tool which uses json files and could allow you to sync things, even across CF versions and between CF and Lucee
• the CF2021 cfsetup tool, a new command line tool which also uses json files and could allow you to sync things, for CF2021 and even earlier version
• the CF Admin API (minimalist and manual), which you'd have to code to sync settings or set them in a synced manner
• the CF CAR file feature deserves a mention also, though its use can't be automated (it seems)
• I would advise AGAINST the seeming "shortcut" of copying neo xml files, especially between different servers or CF versions (same with using symlinks, etc.)

For more on all this, read on.

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