Migrating from ColdFusion 5 to CF MX

Sandra Clark

Shayna Productions

www.shayna.com

slclark@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

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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.

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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, AUTHENTICATEDCONTEXT(), 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providerdsn attributes are obsolete No more dsnless connections CFUSION_DBCONNECTIONS_FLUSH is obsolete.

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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 doesn’t 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 jdbc:oracle:oci8:@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 <CFSETTING requesttimeout=“”> instead.– Quick Fix <CFSETTING requesttimeout = “#url.requesttimeout#”>

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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 action=“query” 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 action=list, 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:

<ColdFusion MX Installation Directory>/wwwroot/WEB-INF/classes.

CF 5 the class files were in <ColdFusion 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– type=“monitor” 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 action=“list”. 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

type=path– Action=“Optimize” 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()– doesn’t 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/_solaris/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 0^3– 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.

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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

– <cfset x.foo = 1> 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 <CFLOCK> 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/releasenotes/mx/releasenotes_mx.html

– MX Doc Updates: http://www.macromedia.com/v1/Handlers/index.cfm?ID=22811&Method=Full

– MX Doc Additions: http://www.macromedia.com/v1/handlers/index.cfm?id=22993&method=full

– 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

CFAUTHENTICATE CFIMPERSONATE

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

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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

MiscellaneousCFAPPLICATIONCFCACHECFDIRECTORYCFHTTPCFLOGCFLOOPCFMAILCFPARAMCFREGISTRYCFREPORTCFSETTINGCFSWITCHCFQUERY

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Changed Tags 2

DatabaseCFINSERT

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()