ColdFusion Muse

The Keystore and a Nettlesome Certificate

A developer on one of my lists had an issue getting a web service to work correctly. The service ran over SSL and it seemed that he was having the problem with his certificate existing in the trusted Keystore. He found Steve Erat's blog on using the keytool and followed the instructions. But the service was still giving him a handshake error(javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException - no trusted certificate found). After a few more failed efforts he decided (on the advice of the list) to explore the possibility that it was a bug in the JVM based on some indicators from Sun. But he didn't want to upgrade his JVM - not wanting to have to do full-fledged regression testing. So instead, he found a nifty work around.

Java Based Directory List

This is a follow post to my previous post on cfdirectory as a bottleneck. A helpful muse reader of that post named Daniel Gracia sent me some Java code that builds a directory list. The code itself is a call to the core io.File class. It takes a directory path and returns an array of files and folders mixed (with the folders identified with a period). His claim was that it performed faster than Cfdirectory. His claim is 100% true, but there are some nuances to it. I ran a few tests and here is what I found.

Flash Upload and Zero Length Content

We have an application that uses the directory and upload functions that are a part of flash (starting with version 8) to build a list of files and post them one by one to a Coldfusion handler. We took this process from one server, a Coldfusion 6.1 server on Windows 2003, to a new server, a Coldfusion 7.02 server on Windows 2003. Suddenly we noticed a host of new error messages. The errors all indicated that no form data had been posted by the uploader. We checked and files were still being uploaded. It was a mystery.

Looking for Bottlenecks? Watch Out for Cfdirectory

I have a client with a file intensive application. It allows users to upload images and manage galleries. It's very slick and uses the flash uploader to accomplish multiple file uploads. He was having performance problems with the uploader. The flash uploader is a nifty way to upload a wheel-barrow full of files in a single operation. You can even check for things like file size and type in advance instead of waiting for the whole file to arrive on the server.

What we began to notice is that some requests took longer than others, a lot longer. I, being the expert troubleshooter that I am, naturally thought it was file sizes. I assumed that requests for a 2 meg file upload naturally took longer than requests that handled files of 200k. When we looked closer, however, it turns out that was not the case. A much more sinister culprit was lurking.

The Infamous "Connector" Scripts and Your Default Document

Flash remoting is supposed to be enabled by default. Indeed, if you set up a web server, add some sites and then install CFMX flash remoting works fine. If, however, you are in the habit of adding new sites to your IIS server that are going to use flash remoting, it may not work. A virtual directory to JrunScripts and some other settings are missing. The fix? Well, one easy "shotgun" approach is simply to run the connector script. It sets things up correctly and remoting starts to work. But (as is often the case) there is a small issue you might run into.

Coldfusion, File IO and an iSsci Array - Swapping Mayhem

A successful startup company with an ailing server contacted me recently. This company sold beautiful photography sites with a customizable flash interface. The sites feature public and private galleries and an amazing dashboard that uses the flash uploader for afusion to allow a user to upload multiple files at once. It was very cool stuff. They called me because their server was experiencing difficulty like that I described in some previous posts on Hanging Threads. What we found was a brand new clue...

Why You Should Join AA (Access Anonymous)

I'm an Access hater too - so the idea of giving tips on it galls me just a bit. Recently, however, I had the opportunity to help a fellow with his Access driven Coldfusion site. This poor soul had moved his Coldfusion site from experthost.com to godaddy.com to save a few bucks. Saving money on hosting is almost never worth it in my opinion - but I won't go there for this post. After much heartache he got the Access DSN installed using the godaddy control panel. But, uh oh... the new Access driver is the one with Unicode support (at least that's what I surmise without talking to the perky but useless godaddy support). That means that lots of things are now broken.

IIS Connector Mania

We recently moved a site from windows 2000 to windows 2003. Everything was working fine except that the chart images didn't show up. Ok - I know this one. The virtual directories it needs aren't set up correctly (JrunScripts for example). The answer - run the connector script located in /cfusionmx7/bin/connectors. This server was lightly used so I decided to try something new. I decided to remove 1 connector and add 1 connector. I used a tip from Bruce Purcell I removed the connector and added a connector to just 1 site. Unfortunately the script hung and it took me 20 minutes of downtime to figure out why.