Whats New in CF 8 Admin

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• Whats New in CF 8 Admin
• MDCFUG 8/14/2007

Ajay Sathuluri Sr. Web and Database
Engineer TeraTech Inc.
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About Me

• About Me
• Certified ColdFusion MX Developer
• Microsoft Certified Solution Developer
• 8 years with ColdFusion
• Also work with SQL, JavaScript, HTML, Access, VB,
  Oracle
• On site and custom development
• Fusebox and Process Methodology

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What this presentation will cover

• Walkthrough of the CF Administrator
• Most settings
• Datasources
• Debugging
• Server Monitor (all new!)
• Security, Sandbox security

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New Settings Settings page

• Per-Application Settings globally enable/disable
• You can set mappings, custom tag paths for each
  application.
• Set in Application.cfc , not application.cfm
• Mappings
• ltcfset This.mappings/demo
  C\inetpub\commondemogt
• Custom tag paths check this list first before
  that in the CF Administrator
• ltcfset This.customtagpaths c\mapped1,c\inetpu
  b\commondemogt
• Disable CFC Type Check
• New default is unchecked (typecheck not
  disabled), like previously
• Pass a CFC instance to a function as an argument,
  specify type (CF path to that component)
• With CFC type check, CF tries to enforce that the
  passed-in object is an instance of that CFC
  first has to find the CFC file!
• Caused performance issues due to file accesses
  each time function is called
• Use in production
• (Note about whitespace management setting
  Whitespace reduction is much better in CF8)

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New Settings Settings page (2)

• Disable access to internal ColdFusion Java
  components
• Eg coldfusion.runtime. these classes give you
  access to the whole server!
• However, even if you disable here, there may be
  Java system classes you will still have access to
• (Demo)
• Watch configuration files for changes
• CF uses XML files for configuration
• Reloads XML if change on disk
• Mainly for Websphere ND vertical cluster, which
  share files
• Most people dont need, if there will be only one
  set of files per instance.

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Settings Request Tuning

• New page
• Limits on simultaneous requests (how many
  incoming requests of each type can run at once)
• Limits the following, separately
• Flash Remoting requests
• Web Service requests
• CFC function requests (direct HTTP requests to
  the components method
• http//localhost/my.cfc?methodhello
• Not called as webservices Used to return
  datasets as WDDX, or output text (can be XML,
  HTML or JS, even) to browser or AJAX client
• This does not affect invocation of CFC methods
  from within CFML
• (short demo)

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Settings Request Tuning, 2

• Maximum simultaneous Report threads not new
  moved here from Settings page
• (New CFThread) The maximum number of threads
  created by CFTHREAD that will be run
  concurrently.
• Threads created by CFTHREAD in excess of this are
  queued.

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Settings Request Tuning, 3

• Timeout requests waiting in queue, after X
  seconds of waiting
• Only the max number of simultaneous Template
  requests can run at once all others sit in the
  queue
• Running requests have their own timeout
• If another request sits in the queue for more
  than X seconds, it will timeout, and run the
  specified HTML template (specified in the
  Request Queue Timeout Page), or else a generic
  500 Request Timeout message. (This can be only
  HTML will not be processed by CF)
• This value should be at least as long as the
  Request Timeout setting

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Settings Request Tuning, 3

• JRun Master Request limits
• For underlying J2EE engine for this instance of
  ColdFusion
• Max number of running JRun threads
• Max number of Queued JRun threads

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Settings Mail

• New if SMTP server requires authentication, can
  set username and password as default here.
  Otherwise, requires username and password in
  CFMAIL tag
• Also can allow CFMAIL to use SSL and TLS to the
  mail server (authentication, security)
• CFMail new attributes useSSL, useTLS

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Data Services Data Sources

• New datasource drivers
• Apache Derby embedded database library, and
  datasources
• Derby support comes from JAR libraries built-in
  to Java apps, including CF
• Embedded create
• MySQL 4/5
• PostgreSQL
• Log Database Activity
• For all Enterprise DB drivers
• specify logfile and path
• Enable ONLY for temporary debugging if necessary
• Useful for debugging gives a lot of detailed sql
  info
• However gives a LOT of detailed info, including
  sql password in plain text. Heavy DB use will
  result in huge file.
• Validation Query
• Called when a connection from the pool is resued.
• Used to verify, but dont keep it there

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Data Services Verity K2

• If using external verity, can specify Advanced
  Settings, including usernamepassword

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Debugging and Logging Debug Output Settings

• Debug Output Page
• Renamed from Debugging Settings due to the new
  Debugger, and new Debugger Settings page.
• New Enable AJAX Debug Log Window option, which
  allows display of the AJAX debug log window when
  the cfdebug flag is passed in the URL (also
  relies on IP address settings to control who sees
  this)
• Renamed Enable Debugging option to Enable
  Request Debugging Output, to distinguish from
  the new Debugger and AJAX debugging

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Debugging and Logging

• New Debugger plugin for Eclipse allows for
  interactive debugging
• New Debugger Settings Page
• Enable, Port, Max simultaneous sessions
• Scheduled Tasks Page
• New Action Pause/Resume a scheduled task
  (actions Run Now, Pause/Resume, Edit, Delete)
• Enable/disable, instead of changing time setting
• Make sure you Resume task after pause, if you
  want it to keep the next scheduled time
• Code Analyzer Page
• Added CF8 tags and functions

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Security

• New - User Manager
• Add and manage users.
• Users can be granted access to CFAdmin roles and
  sandboxes, and specific pages of the CF
  Administrator
• (Demo)

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Server Monitor

• Server Monitor lets you track activities on a
  ColdFusion Server.
• You can identify information about the
• Server,
• Requests
• Queries,
• Memory Usage
• Errors
• You can start and stop collecting server
  information and take snapshots of the server.

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Server Monitor 2 - Start Monitoring

• Information about all requests, including active
  requests, slowest requests, active sessions,
  cumulative server usage, highest hit counts,
  template cache status, request throttle data,
  requests that timed out, requests with errors,
  and server alerts.
• The Server Monitor does not gather information
  for requests that are excluded on the Filter
  Settings page.

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Server Monitor 3 - Start Profiling

• Tag and function timing information for the
  Slowest Requests report the CFML stack trace for
  the Active Requests report information about
  active queries, slowest queries, cached queries,
  and query cache status database pool status and
  the most frequently run queries.
• This information gathering lets you find
  bottlenecks in your application.

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Server Monitor 4 - Start Profiling

• You can view details about each request that is
  slow or consumes a lot of memory
• You can determine which tags and functions cause
  the request to run slowly and which variables
  consume the most memory.
• You can use this information on both development
  and production servers.
• To gather the profiling information, turn on
  monitoring, profiling, and, if needed, memory
  tracking.

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Server Monitor 5 - Start Memory Tracking

• Information about memory consumption, including
  overall memory usage, the queries and sessions
  that use the most memory, the memory usage of all
  application and server scopes, and profiling
  information on the largest variables on the
  Requests by Memory Usage report, if profiling is
  enabled.

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Server Monitor 6 - Start Memory Tracking

• You must enable profiling to view query-related
  reports
• You must enable profiling and memory tracking to
  view the Queries by Memory Usage report.

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Server Monitor Overhead

• According to Adobe, starting Monitoring and
  Profiling causes "minimal" overhead but Memory
  Tracking can be significant.
• Alerts don't seem to require any of these to be
  started, unless you tell it to Dump Snapshot.

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Newer JVMs can be installed for use with CF8

• 1.6 JVMs
• Fully supported in CF8
• Speed, many other improvements
• Not at all supported for CF7
• 1.5 JVMs
• Fully supported in CF8
• Breaks some features of CFMX and CF7 (CFLDAP,
  Axis, Verity), but may work with the rest of CF7
• May provide significantly better performance!
• YMMV Be careful! (take backup of config files
  before any changes)
• 1.4 JVMs
• Included with CF7.0 (original) 1.4.2_05
• Included with CF7.0.2 1.4.2_09
• Latest supported version is 1.4.2_11
• Latest available version is 1.4.2_13

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References

• Livedocs
• http//livedocs.adobe.com/coldfusion/8/htmldocs/he
  lp.html?contentPart_2_Config_Admin_1.html
• Configuring and Administering ColdFusion
• http//livedocs.adobe.com/coldfusion/8/htmldocs/he
  lp.html?contentPart_2_Config_Admin_1.html1028407
  
• Application.cfchttp//livedocs.adobe.com/coldfusi
  on/8/htmldocs/appFramework_07.html1191449
• Server Monitoring
• http//www.adobe.com/devnet/coldfusion/articles/mo
  nitoring_pt1.html
• http//www.coldfusionjedi.com/index.cfm/2007/7/25/
  Server-Monitor-Alerts-in-ColdFusion-8
• http//carehart.org/blog/client/index.cfm/2007/6/1
  5/cf8_hiddengem_monitoring_without_enabling_monito
  ring
• Quickdocs
• http//cfquickdocs.com/
• Derby
• http//db.apache.org/derby/WhatisApacheDerby3
  F
• Google search
• sitelivedocs.adobe.com ColdFusion 8 keywords

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