Charlie Arehart - Server Troubleshooting - resource lists

My meta resource page about updating CF, the Java underlying it, the wsconfig, and more

Sun, 30 Jul 2023 17:39:00 -0500

With all the recent updates to CF (and the ongoing need to keep up and related things up-to-date), I wanted to share some news: I've long had on my site a meta resource page regarding keeping ColdFusion updated, where I offered both links and tips related to updating CF as well as the JVM underlying CF, the web server connector(wsconfig), the CF PMT, FusionReactor, CF Builder (old Eclipse and new VSCode versions) and even Lucee. It's been on my site as my "CFUpdate" page (linked to from my old-school top-level nav bar), and I've kept the page updated. [Hey, updating my meta resource on updates. That's SO meta!] But I suspect a lot of people may never find it for one reason or another, so I wanted to offer a link to it here. Check it out, and I welcome comments or feedback here.

Top 10 CArehart.org blog posts of 2017

Mon, 22 Jan 2018 12:17:00 -0500

With the passing of each year it's good to look back and highlight some of the most interesting posts of the previous year. These aren't in order by any metric, they're just in an order I think may interest most readers. The first several are in fact resource lists where I pulled together resources, to help people in addressing some specific topic/challenge, which is something I enjoy doing as a contribution to the community. Sometimes the posts are related to the consulting work I do, but not always (just like some of the conference presentations I do, which are nearly always about CF, but not always about CF troubleshooting). You'll see also a couple of posts that point to resources where I've been contributing time and content elsewhere (taking away somewhat from my posting things here). First, I've done about a dozen blog posts on the new Adobe CF Community Portal. Second, I've done about a dozen webinars for the FusionReactor folks. I've debated posting each one of those here as I did them (as blog posts here, I mean, throughout the year), but for now I had instead just opted to create a post for each of them last year listing what all I'd done. Enjoy. [More]

Tending the SQL Server garden - tuning and maintenance resources (updated and useful)

Thu, 18 Feb 2016 23:49:00 -0500

Often in my role as an independent consultant providing ColdFusion server troubleshooting services, I find myself helping folks determine whether or that a problem is in their database. And though it may surprise many, I generally do not find the problem to be very often with the SQL they are running. More often it's about configuration issues. For instance, it may be that they have not been keeping their indexes or statistics updated, or it may be that they need indexes that they don't have, or have too many that they don't really need. Or it may be that they have not done any tuning at all and the default settings for their database server are not be well suited to them. And though such problems are common to any database server (MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, and so on), I find that an awful lot of my clients (for whatever reason) do run on Windows and do use SQL Server (and that doesn't make them stupid or lazy. Different strokes for different folks). So in this post I want to focus on some SQL Server resources, related to such matters, which I find that I refer folks to often. Some are blog posts, some are code you can run, and some are tools (mostly free). People using other DBs would do well to read along and could find corresponding resources/tools for the same problems in their respective DB servers. [More]

Finding resources on ColdFusion's mobile development features

Mon, 28 Sep 2015 19:30:00 -0500

Have you wondered where you can find more about ColdFusion's mobile development features? (Did you know that CF11 had added such features?) There are several resources provided by Adobe and others. In this post I highlight those various resources, with a focus on the many (and many kinds of) Adobe-provided ones. [More]

ColdFusion Lockdown/Security guides - there are several, and some you may have missed

Tue, 24 Jun 2014 01:43:00 -0500

While helping people with various problems in my CF server troubleshooting services, I often have the chance to help people identify security vulnerabilities, especially in their configuration of CF and/or their web server, and sometimes related to their code. I was wanting to point out to someone the various ColdFusion security resources, and while I have a category on them in my CF411 site, I thought this was a list worth pulling out into its own blog entry and expanding a bit. You may be surprised to find that there are more to CF security guidelines than just the venerable server "lockdown guide" (for those administering and configuring CF, the OS, and the web server, among other things). Did you know that there have been "developer security guidelines" as well, focused instead on coding? This latter guide has gone through three iterations, including just recently, as I'll discuss along with the lockdown guides, below. [More]

Struggling with using the XML features of CFML? Here's where to learn more

Tue, 10 May 2011 14:51:00 -0500

Are you struggling with using the XML features in CFML? Or do you help people who are? 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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Ultimate list of CF debugging output template alternatives

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:18:00 -0500

Following on the heels of my "Ultimate Var Scope Resource list" last week, here now I present what I think is the ultimate list of CF debugging output template alternatives.

Yes, you CAN modify the debugging output. Some have even done it for you

Many may not realize that the CF debugging output (optionally displayed at the bottom of the page, as enabled in the CF Admin) is actually created by a CFML template that can be modified ([cf]\wwwroot\WEB-INF\debug\classic.cfm). Fortunately, several people have offered various resources that explain how to work with this file and offer packaged alternatives with specific features to resolve particular problems (where people wish the debugging output did more, or could be seen differently than at the bottom of the page). [More]

The Ultimate Var Scope Resource list? Understanding/resolving problems with the var scope in CFML

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:06:00 -0500

Do you know what the "var scope problem" is, and how pernicious it can be in causing very subtle bugs that can cause errors that are VERY hard to understand? I list here several resources to help you understand the issue. Some help plainly explain what the issue is, including even a live demo. I also discuss below the key varscoper tool which you will want to use to help assess and indeed correct your own code. (Update in 2022, 2019: while the many resources are indeed all quite old now, they all still apply, and most still exist. Where needed, I recovered them from the good ol' archive.org, an awesome resource for finding old content, as I've written about before.) [More]

ColdFusion 8 migration resources (from 6, 7, or even earlier)

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 08:18:00 -0500

Someone asked me about migrating from CF 6 to 8, lamenting that he couldn't find any migration resources. Sadly, there are no official Adobe resources for upgrading to CF8, but I will mention a guide to upgrading to CF 7 from CF 6 (or even 5) that Macromedia offered, which many may have missed. I'll also point out a couple other things and blog entries of others that do focus more on moving to CF 8 specifically (and perhaps others will comment with still more.) [More]

Several useful web dev topics, "Better Explained"

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:24:00 -0500

I happened upon a site today with many quick, to the point, highly graphical articles introducing web app development topics that may interest some of my readers. Wanted to pass them along: [More]

Categorizing the 30-some CF frameworks - how did I do?

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:01:00 -0500

Some may know that among my CF411.com site's list of 700+ tools/resources for CFers in 125 categories, I have long listed the 30+ CF frameworks. (Yes, there really are that many.) But until now, I just listed them all together, without any subcategory. Today I took a shot to categorize them and saw 3 categories:

CFML Application Frameworks/Methodologies
CFML Injection Frameworks/Methodologies
CFML ORM Frameworks/Methodologies

How did I do? Are these good categories? Most of them fit in the first category (about 25) are in the first category. I didn't want to break them down into which were MVC, etc. Should I bother? Two are in the injection frameworks category (ColdSpring and Lightwire). How's that for a category name? And there are four in the ORM category. Are things in the right place? Any needed additions/subtractions? As with all the categories in the CF411 list, I welcome suggestions, corrections, etc. And if you didn't know there were 30-some CF frameworks, check out the list: CFML Frameworks/Methodologies One last request: before you comment, please check the other comments and see if I may have already changed/corrected something.

Learning resource for beginning web developers

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 18:51:00 -0500

If you know anyone needing to learn the fundamentals of web application development--not CFML, but things like HTML, CSS, Javascript, and so on--here's an interesting resource. [More]

Got problems with SQL Server tempdb? Here are some resources

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 22:59:00 -0500

I was working with a client the other day where it turned out they had a HUGE SQL Server tempdb. I shared with them some pretty substantial and informative MS resources. In case this may ever happen to my readers, I wanted to pass them along:

Working with tempdb in SQL Server 2005 - a 21-page Microsoft TechNet article, with lots of info on understanding, configuring, maintaining, and troubleshooting problems with tempdb. While written for SQL Server 2005, it could be useful for those on 2000 or 2008 as well. (Should that link ever fail, here's another.)
Troubleshooting Insufficient Disk Space in tempdb
For more on how its usage has increased for SQL Server 2005, see Capacity Planning for tempdb
Finally, for more on managing its growth, see Optimizing tempdb Performanc

You may want to check out several other equally useful TechNet articles on SQL Server (like the first one above, but available on a wide range of issues). Hope that's helpful to someone.

Have there been any updates to the CF Report Builder feature? Yes, in fact

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 17:44:00 -0500

I wanted to share here some info I shared on a mailing list. Someone asserted that "there's been little to no attention given by Adobe towards fixing bugs in the Report Builder feature". Well, no doubt many have long ago dismissed it if they used it when it first came out in CF7 and hit some snags. But to be clear, there have been many improvements made to it in each release/point release and CHFs since then (whether bug fixes, minor improvements, or even some modest ones). For those interested, just search for "report" in the following documents (to find references to cfreport and report builder):

I do realize that many may think there's still plenty more to be updated, but at least it shows it's not really been "little to no attention". :-) Not picking a fight with anyone. I really think most just haven't noticed, so thought this may be helpful.

Announcing CF411.com - your place to find the 411 on things related to CF

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 10:23:00 -0500

Next time you have (or see someone ask) a question about finding some resource or tool related to CF, first check out CF411.com. :-) It's a list of more than 700 tools and resources in over 100 categories. You might find not just one but many alternatives. I hope this will help folks who might otherwise ask or answer questions on mailing lists, forums, and blog comments where such requests frequently appear.

So what's in it?

It's not a FAQ. Rather, some will recognize this as my long-existing list of tools and resources, which this weekend I decided to rechristen it as CF411. The domain name above simple redirects to that part of my site, now also called: CF411. Far more than just tools, it also has dozens of categories of resources: CF job resources, self-help resources, professional assistance resources, tutorial sites, conferences, hosting alternatives, certification prep resources, other sites listing CF resources, and much more. And the tools list has several dozen categories, both those written in CFML (like caching, debugging, file uploading, and code generating tools, as well as CMSs, all the frameworks, and all the CFML engines, to name just a few), and just as many tools not written in CFML but useful for us (including database tools, editors, http debugging, log analysis, load testing, monitoring, and source code tools, to name a few), whether free or commercial. Like my UGTV, I offer CF411 as a contribution to the community, to save people spending a lot of time looking/asking around for stuff. I hope it becomes another one-stop shop for people to find what they need (well, I use the term "shop" loosely. As always, it's all free).

What's in a name?

I hope the new name will just be easier for people to remember/think of the next time they see a question asked that they know is (or think may be) answered on my list, telling folks: "You should check out CF411." I was torn about bothering with a new domain name. I didn't need to bother with my UGTV site: you can google that phrase and my site comes up first (even with Microsoft having launched their own UGTV), but I just figured it might be easier for people to reference in conversation, and some might naturally look for a domain name. As always, I welcome contributions if you think of something (a category or a tool/resource) that I've not listed. I'll begin blogging again soon to highlight more of the many categories.