Deploying ColdFusion Applications

The two main concerns when deploying a ColdFusion project are server compatibility and configuring the server side connection string. The ColdFusion code generated by CodeCharge Studio requires a server that supports the full set of tags in ColdFusion 4.01 or higher. This means that you cannot deploy the site to a ColdFusion Express site. ColdFusion Express supports only a subset of the tags that are supported in the full version of ColdFusion server.

Although the minimal server version required is 4.01, you can also deploy the pages to servers that have version 4.5, 5.0 or ColdFusion MX. The generated code is able to run properly on all these later versions. You can add custom code specific to these later versions provided that the server you will deploy to supports the tags you add. For example, if you deploy to a ColdFusion 5.0 or MX server, you can make use of the CFGraph/CFChart tags but you would not be able to do this with a ColdFusion 4.01 server.

The ColdFusion 4.01 server side connection is unique in that it must be made via ODBC.

Before you publish your site to the server you need to create the ODBC DSN that you will connect to. If you publish your site to a remote host, you will probably need to ask the host to create the DSN for you unless it has already been configured. Once the DSN is created enter the DSN name and any optional parameters (i.e. username and password) under the Server tab of the connections properties dialog.

If you use ColdFusion 5.0 or ColdFusion MX you are not limited to an ODBC DSN when making the server side connection. However, you have to register a data source name in the ColdFusion Administrator for the database you are using.

From the Data Sources window of the ColdFusion Administrator you can create data sources for DB2, Informix, Access, ODBC Sockets, Oracle, SQL Server and Sybase. For detailed information on how to create the different types of data sources, please refer to the ColdFusion Administrator documentation.

Once you have configured the data source you can specify the data source name when configuring the server side connection in CodeCharge Studio. If you do not have access to the ColdFusion Administrator because  you are using a server belonging to a commercial host you will need to request that the data source be created for you.