Migrating from ColdFusion 5 to CF MX

1
Migrating from ColdFusion 5 to CF MX

• Sandra Clark
• Shayna Productions
• www.shayna.com
• slclark_at_shayna.com

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Agenda

• ColdFusion Code Compatibility Analyzer
• Migration Plan
• Definite Code Breaking Changes
• Possible Code Breaking Changes
• Subtle Changes
• Session Management and Locking
• Questions and Answers

3
ColdFusion Code Compatibility Analyzer

• Located in the ColdFusion Administrator
• Will check for the following issues
• Obsolete and Deprecated Features
• Items which might produce different results in
  ColdFusion MX
• Good starting point
• Code still needs to be gone through by thorough
  testing.

4
Migration Plan

• What is a Migration Plan
• A structured strategy to ensure that items
  running smoothly on CF5 run smoothly when ported
  to CF MX
• Migration Plan Steps
• Archive and Deploy a CF 5 Application to a Test
  Server running CF5
• Test Application to make sure it runs correctly
• Install CF MX onto the test server
• Use the ColdFusion Code Compatibility Analyzer
• Using the results of the Code Compatibility
  Analyzer and the Migration Guide, determine what
  needs to be fixed.
• Use a source code control system while making
  changes to source.
• Test under Load!!!

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Definite Code Breaking Changes

• Advanced Security
• CFLOG
• Database Changes
• Scoping

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Advanced Security and CFLOG

• Advanced Security
• ColdFusion MX is now based on a totally new
  security model than ColdFusion 5
• All Tags and functions having to do with the
  security model are obsolete.
• CFAUTHENTICATE, CFIMPERSONATE, AUTHENTICATEDCONTEX
  T(), AUTHENTICATEDUSER(), ISAUTHENTICATED(),
  ISAUTHORIZED(), ISPROTECTED()
• CFLOG
• Thread, date and time attributes are deprecated.
• All of these attributes default to Yes. Setting
  any of these attribute values to No will cause a
  runtime exception.
• Log files no longer supported
• Executive.log, Remote.log, Proxy.log,
  cfadmin.log, Install.log
• Server.stdout, Rdsservice.stdout

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Database Changes Generic

• ColdFusion MX now uses the JDBC Drivers instead
  of ODBC or Native Drivers
• All dbtypes except for query are obsolete
• dbserver, dbname, connectstring, provider and
  providerdsn attributes are obsolete
• No more dsnless connections
• CFUSION_DBCONNECTIONS_FLUSH is obsolete.

8
Database Changes Generic

• CFPROCPARAM
• Ignores the dbvarname attribute for all drivers.
• If your CF 5 application depends on this, specify
  a CFPROCPARAM in the correct positional order.
• QUERY OF QUERIES
• Will not let you use Reserved SQL words (date,
  size, etc) as field names.
• Alias the names in your first SQL query and then
  use the aliased names instead in the query of
  queries.
• CFREPORT
• No longer manages ODBC connection for Crystal
  Reports. Passes datasource, username and password
  attributes to Crystal Reports for it to handle
  the ODBC connection directly.

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Database Changes Generic

• CFQUERY
• No longer allows SQL reserved words as variable
  or column names.
• QUERYADDNEW()
• An invalid name passed in will throw an error.
• CF 5 just continued.

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Database Changes Access

• Memo fields
• Does not work correctly with the default settings
  in ColdFusion Administrator.
• By default the CLOB and BLOB fields are
  unchecked. Check both of these fields in the
  datasource Administrator to re-enable Access Memo
  Fields

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Database Changes Oracle

• Maxrows attribute is obsolete
• Use CFPROCRESULT instead if you have ref cursors
  in packages or stored procedures. This will
  cause DataDirect JDBC to place Oracle ref cursors
  into a result set.

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Database Changes Oracle

• Problems using the Secure Oracle Connection
• Problem When using the encryption/security
  features of Oracle, CF5 will connect correctly,
  CF MX will not.
• Situation While the Oracle thin client supports
  encryption, it does so only when using the JDBC
  driver manager directly. ColdFusion MX uses the
  datasource object to connect which doesnt
  support the encryption.
• Solution Use Oracles JDBC oci driver, which
  requires the oci libraries. This driver will
  pick up the encryption properties from the
  sqlnet.ora file. Download the driver and
  libraries from oracle. Use Type other to
  configure the driver in ColdFusion MX. The class
  name is oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver and a
  sample url is jdbcoracleoci8_at_oracle_server

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Scoping

• All Client, Session, Server, Request and
  Attributes scopes must be called with their
  appropriate scope.
• Client.CFID instead of CFID
• MX will no longer search the scopes for variables
• Variables scope is the only exception for
  prefacing.
• The url variable requesttimeout is no longer
  supported.
• Use ltCFSETTING requesttimeoutgt instead.
• Quick Fix ltCFSETTING requesttimeout
  url.requesttimeoutgt

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Possible Code Breaking Changes

• CFLDAP
• CFGRAPH
• CFAPPLICATION
• CFREGISTRY
• CFDIRECTORY
• CFHTTP
• CFSERVLET
• CFSETTING
• CFX TAGS

• STRUCTKEYLIST()
• FORM.FIELDNAMES
• DATEDIFF()
• ERROR HANDLING
• VERITY

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CFLDAP and CFGRAPH

• CFLDAP
• Sort attribute is deprecated
• When actionquery and dn is in the list of
  attributes.
• CFLDAP will consistently return each dn
  (distinguished name) with a comma followed by a
  space.
• CFGRAPH
• CFGRAPH and CFGRAPHDATA are deprecated and will
  be obsoleted. Use CFCHART, CFCHARTDATA and
  CFCHARTSERIES instead.
• Renders graphs slightly differently than in CF5

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CFAPPLICATION and CFREGISTRY

• CFAPPLICATION
• ClientStorage registry is deprecated and will
  be obsolete in later Unix versions of CF MX
• CFREGISTRY
• Unix
• Deprecated and will be obsolete in future
  versions
• Windows
• Do not use CFREGISTRY to read CF Server settings
  from the registry.
• Much of the information is no longer stored in
  the registry or are stored in different areas of
  the registry.

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CFDIRECTORY

• CFDIRECTORY
• In Windows versions of CF MX
• CFDIRECTORY will no longer return . or ..
• Sorting will only be supported on the ReadOnly
  and Hidden Attributes.
• Unix, Linux versions
• When actionlist, only the ReadOnly and Hidden
  attributes will be reported.

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CFHTTP

• CFHTTP
• Response headers now returned in Mixed Case.
• Response headers now returned in random order
• Status Code 200 now followed by OK
• CF5 returned Success

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CFSERVLET CFSETTING, CFX Tags

• CFSERVLET
• Deprecated
• Using CFSERVLET to call methods on servlets will
  be obsolete in future versions.
• You can only call servlets which were created in
  JRUN version 3.1
• CFSETTING
• catchExceptionsByPattern Attribute is obsoleted.
• CFX Tags
• Java CFX tags must have the class files in
• ltColdFusion MX Installation Directorygt/wwwroot/WEB
  -INF/classes.
• CF 5 the class files were in ltColdFusion 5
  Installation Directory/Java/classes

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STRUCTKEYLIST(), Forms

• STRUCTKEYLIST()
• Returns Struct Keys in the order in which they
  were created, not in alphabetical order
• Returns in the case they were created in.
• Form.FieldNames
• Returns Form.Fieldnames in the order in which
  they were created and not in All Uppercase.

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Error Handling

• CFERROR
• typemonitor is now obsolete
• Must now specify a template handler as a path
  relative to the web root directory \error.cfm for
  web_root\error.cfm
• Do not use the full path
• CFCATCH
• Message variable gets the current values every
  time an exception is thrown.
• CF MX ignores any cfset assignment to a cfcatch
  object member such as cfcatch.message.
• CFCATCH can no longer be used to catch function
  validation errors.

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Verity

• CFCollection
• Action attribute is now optional, its default
  value is list a new value
• A new attribute, name is required when
  actionlist. This retrieves a query object with
  the properties of every Verity collection
  registered by CF MX or the K2Server
• CFINDEX
• Key Attribute can be used for the query
  attribute, type-file or typepath
• ActionOptimize is now obsolete.
• External attribute is no longer necessary.

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Subtle Changes

• Locale Formatting
• CFX Libraries
• Server Variables
• Form Variables
• Database Changes

• Date Changes
• Null Values
• PI
• Regular Expressions

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Locale Formatting

• LS Formatting works differently from CF 5 to CF
  MX
• MX uses Java locale standards in its locale
  specific functions
• Previous versions of ColdFusion used either
  Windows or Unix locale-specific rules depending
  on the platform.
• By using Java standards, consistency is achieved
  across all platforms. However, this means that
  lsParseDateTime will now produce slightly
  different results than previous versions.
• Listing of Java DateTime Formats
• http//www.inter-locale.com/demos/locales.jsp
• LSDATEFORMAT()
• doesnt support mmm-dd-yyyy mask except in
  english locales

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CFX Libraries

• Do not need to be recompiled.
• It does not matter where you place the libraries
  as long as the location is set in the
  LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
• This can be set in the cfstart.sh script ini
  "neo/bin"
• LD_LIBRARY_PATH/opt/neo/lib/opt/neo/verity/_sola
  ris/bin/opt/mylibraries export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

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Server Variables

• Certain Server Variables are giving different
  information between CF 5 and CF MX
• Server.OS.Name for Windows 2000
• Gives Windows NT for CF 5
• Gives Windows 2000 for CF MX
• Server.OS.AdditionalInformation
• Gives Service Pack Info for CF5
• Gives nothing for CF MX
• Server.OS.BuildNumber
• Gives Build Number for CF5
• Gives nothing for CF MX

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Forms

• Case
• CF MX now preserves case in form.fieldnames
  instead of forcing them to upper case.
• Case is still ignored when evaluating field
  names.
• Use FINDNOCASE() or LISTFINDNOCASE() when
  searching form.fieldnames instead of the case
  sensitive alternatives

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Database Changes

• QueryColumn Object
• Acts more like an array
• Query Result Appearances
• data being returned with space characters
  appended to end
• Query Column Names
• CF MX preserves case of column names.
• CF5 forced column names to lowercase.

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Date Changes

• Date Pivot for 2 digit years
• CF MX uses 20 as the date pivot for calculating
  the century
• CF5 used 29
• Certain locales use 28 as the date pivot.
• Milliseconds
• are no longer stripped off date/time objects.
• DATEDIFF()
• One less second in a minute when calculating a
  negative difference in CF 5

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Null Values

• CF 5
• converted all null values to an empty string
• CF MX
• preserves null values, but converts them to an
  empty string when used as simple values

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PI and Operands

• PI
• Defined with a slightly different precision then
  CF5.
• Would only cause slightly different results when
  using trigonometric functions.
• Operands
• Exponent results will differ.
• For 03
• CF5 will return an error
• CF MX will return a 1

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Regular Expressions

• Now recognizes accented letters
• Must escape the \ backslash character even if it
  is inside a character class

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Session Management

• J2EE Sessions
• by default session management relies on j2ee
  session management, which uses jrunsessionid as
  the session cookie. It is a session cookie, when
  user close the browser, the cookie goes away,
  therefore the session is terminated right there.
• If Application has client management turned off
  and session management is turned on using J2EE
  sessions you may not have CFID and CFToken
  variables.

34
Session Management Compatibility Fixes

• Delete the lines in your code that use cfcookie
  to reset the age,
• no longer needed.
• Uncheck use J2EE session in the server settings
  page on CF Admin.
• This will place CF MX in a compatible mode with
  the way CF5 operated.
• This change requires a server restart

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Variable Changes

• Structures
• Now preserves the case of a structKey
• Different cases DO NOT create different keys
• ltcfset x.foo 1gt will now create a structure x
  with a key foo without having to explicitly
  create x as structNew()
• Duplicate URL Parameters
• Now come across as a comma delimited list of
  values
• CF 5 only the last value is passed.

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ThisTag Changes

• CF5
• allowed changes to the system values in the
  ThisTag Scope that persisted throughout the
  execution of the tag.
• CF MX
• Setting thisTag.hasend or thisTag.executionmode
  throws an exception.

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Locking

• While MX uses Java Data Structures that are
  designed to be thread safe, it is still
  considered best practices to lock
• Code that is correctly locked could (assuming it
  is otherwise correct) be proved to do what it's
  intended to do. Code that is not correctly locked
  may give different results depending on what
  other requests may be concurrently modifying
  shared data no theorem can account for this.
• Code that is correctly locked can be run on a CF
  MX installation or a CF5 installation.
• The ltCFLOCKgt tag has low overhead.
• Must continue to lock for race conditions
• Application.incrementvariable
  Application.Incrementvariable 1

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Questions and Answers

• Where to get more information
• Macromedia CF MX Migrating ColdFusion 5
  Applications
• MX Release Notes
• http//www.macromedia.com/support/coldfusion/relea
  senotes/mx/releasenotes_mx.html
• MX Doc Updates
• http//www.macromedia.com/v1/Handlers/index.cfm?ID
  22811MethodFull
• MX Doc Additions
• http//www.macromedia.com/v1/handlers/index.cfm?id
  22993methodfull
• MX LiveDocs
• http//livedocs.macromedia.com/cfmxdocs/
• Macromedia Designer Developer Center
• http//www.macromedia.com/desdev/mx/coldfusion/

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Extras
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Changed Tags and Functions

• Obsoleted
• Deprecated
• Changed

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Obsolete Tags and Functions

• AUTHENTICATEDCONTEXT(),
• AUTHENTICATEDUSER(),
• ISAUTHENTICATED(),
• ISAUTHORIZED(),
• ISPROTECTED()

• CFAUTHENTICATE
• CFIMPERSONATE

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Obsolete Internal Functions

• CF_GETDATASOURCEUSERNAME()
• CF_ISCOLDFUSIONDATASOURCE()
• CF_SETDATASOURCEPASSWORD()
• CF_SETDATASOURCEUSERNAME()
• CFUSION_DBCONNECTIONS_FLUSH()
• CFUSION_DISABLE_DBCONNECTIONS()
• CFUSION_GETODBCDSN()
• CFUSION_GETODBCINI()
• CFUSION_SETODBCINI()
• CFUSION_SETTINGS_REFRESH()
• CFUSION_VERIFYMAIL()

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Deprecated Tags and Functions

• CFGRAPH
• CFGRAPHDATA
• CFREGISTRY
• (UNIX systems only)
• CFSERVLET
• CFSERVLETPARAM

• GETSETTINGS()
• GETTEMPLATEPATH()
• PARAMETEREXISTS()

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Changed Tags

• CFFORM
• CFAPPLET
• CFFORM
• Error Handling
• CFCATCH
• CFERROR
• Verity
• CFCOLLECTION
• CFINDEX

• Miscellaneous
• CFAPPLICATION
• CFCACHE
• CFDIRECTORY
• CFHTTP
• CFLOG
• CFLOOP
• CFMAIL
• CFPARAM
• CFREGISTRY
• CFREPORT
• CFSETTING
• CFSWITCH
• CFQUERY

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Changed Tags 2

• Database
• CFINSERT
• CFQUERY
• CFUPDATE
• CFSTOREDPROC
• CFLDAP
• CPROCPARAM

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Changed Functions

• Arrays
• ARRAYAVG()
• ARRAYMIN()
• ARRAYMAX()
• ARRAYSUM()
• ISARRAY()
• Dates
• DATEDIFF()
• DATEFORMAT()
• LSPARSEDATETIME()
• PARSEDATETIME()

• Lists
• LISTSETAT()
• LISTSORT()

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Change Functions 2

• Miscellaneous
• DELETECLIENTVARIABLES()
• GETBASETAGLIST()
• GETLOCALE()
• ISCURRENCYFORMAT()
• GETTEMPDIRECTORY()
• ISWDDX()
• LEN()
• REREPLACE()
• REREPLACENOCASE()
• STRUCTKEYLIST()