Platinum Edition Using HTML 4, XML, and Java 1.2
(Publisher: Macmillan Computer Publishing)
Author(s): Eric Ladd
ISBN: 078971759x
Publication Date: 11/01/98

Installing ColdFusion on either platform is fairly straightforward. On a Windows machine, you’ll be walked through the process over the course of several dialog boxes that prompt you for information such as the directory where you want to install ColdFusion, which Web server ColdFusion will be working with, and what password you want to use with the ColdFusion Administrator and ColdFusion Studio. If you’re doing a Solaris installation, you’ll find that all you need to do is launch the installation file and respond to the few questions you are asked during the install.

After you’ve installed the application server, you can immediately check to see if it is working properly by accessing the ColdFusion Getting Started page at http://127.0.0.1/CFDOCS/index.htm. There you will find links to an application where you can test your installation, as well as links to help and documentation in HTML format (see Figure 34.2).

FIGURE 34.2  The ColdFusion Getting Started page enables you to test your installation and serves as a reference while you’re developing applications.

---

NOTE:  The IP address 127.0.0.1 is reserved for addressing the Web server running on the machine on which you did the ColdFusion installation.

---

With the ColdFusion Application Server installed, you can then configure the server using the ColdFusion Administrator. The many functions of the Administrator are discussed in the next section.

Using the ColdFusion Administrator

A lot is going on behind the scenes within the ColdFusion development environment, and you can orchestrate all aspects of this activity through the ColdFusion Administrator. Specifically, you can do things such as

•  Stop and start the ColdFusion Application Server.

•  Create and configure ODBC data sources.

•  Activate debugging messages that make it easier to troubleshoot your applications.

•  Specify how and where the ColdFusion Application Server should log certain events.

•  Configure the ColdFusion Application Server to work with an electronic mail server.

•  Create searchable Verity collections.

•  Install custom CFML tags.

•  Register Java applets.

To access the ColdFusion Administrator, access the URL http://127.0.0.1/CFIDE/administrator/index.cfm and enter the Administrator password you specified during the installation of the ColdFusion Application Server. After you’re authenticated, you’ll see a screen such as the one in Figure 34.3.

FIGURE 34.3  You can control the ColdFusion development environment through a browser-based interface.

The main administrator page is split into two frames. The left frame contains buttons that enable you to quickly navigate to the major parts of the Administrator. The right frame displays the settings that you can change within a given part. The next several sections of this chapter walk you through the various parts of the Administrator and point out the ColdFusion environment parameters that you can control through the Administrator.

Configuring the ColdFusion Application Server

The right frame in Figure 34.3 shows the many server settings you can configure using the Administrator. These include

•  Number of simultaneous requests—You can enhance the application server’s performance by limiting the number of requests that it can simultaneously process. Any requests beyond this limiting number are queued in memory and processed in the order in which they are received.

	A good rule of thumb is to make the maximum number of simultaneous requests equal to the number of processors on your server.

•  Request timeout—You can specify a certain number of seconds after which the processing of a template will time out. This helps to avoid situations where infinite loops or especially large query result sets might bog down your server.

---

NOTE:  Even if you specify a timeout value, you should keep in mind that users can override this value by adding a RequestTimeOut parameter to the URL of the ColdFusion template that they are calling. If you have the timeout set to 30 seconds, for example, a user could circumvent this by entering a URL such as:

http://www.cfserver.com/template.cfm?RequestTimeOut=300

The RequestTimeOut parameter passed with the URL will increase the timeout value for that request to 300 seconds instead of the 30 seconds that you specified in the Administrator.

---

•  Template caching—A cached template will be processed much more quickly than one that is not cached, so you should set this value as high as your server’s memory will allow. In an ideal setting, you would set this value equal to the total size in kilobytes of all your ColdFusion templates. That way, all your templates could be cached after they are initially processed, and subsequent calls to those templates would run much more quickly.

•  Schedule refresh interval—The ColdFusion Scheduler enables you to submit templates for processing at specified times. This setting in the Administrator tells the Scheduler how frequently it should check for new scheduled tasks.

•  Client data retention—ColdFusion can store individual client data and retain it for a certain number of days. You can instruct ColdFusion to purge this data after a set number of days of inactivity using this Administrator setting.

•  Application and session variables—ColdFusion also supports the storage of application-specific and user session-specific variables on the server. You can control the maximum and default timeout times for these variables with the ColdFusion Administrator.

---

NOTE:  If your server’s memory resources are limited, you may want to think about turning off application and session variables because they increase the amount of memory that the ColdFusion Application Server uses.

---

•  Passwords—You can enable password-protected access to the ColdFusion Application Server from both the Administrator and from ColdFusion Studio by putting a check in the appropriate box and specifying the password you want to use. You are strongly encouraged to do this so that users are not able to alter your ColdFusion environment’s settings.