If you have been having performance problems with CFBuilder or CFEclipse on windows (slowness, high CPU usage) then you may find the following solution provided by Kevin Miller useful to help resolve your issues.

For those of you that continue to experience hangs and massive slowdowns running CFB on Windows 7 64bit, the one thing I found that made all the difference in the world is to have Eclipse use the jvm.dll rather than javaw.exe (the default).  I’m using the CFB plugin into Eclipse, but I suspect this may also apply to CFB standalone on Win7 64bit as well.  No amount of configuration changes, switching between 32 and 64bit JVM/Eclipse or disabling of features made any difference to the significant performance problems I was continuing to experience UNTIL I explicitly had Eclipse start up using the dll (forcing the JVM to load within the Eclipse process).

I also found that simply adding the –vm argument to the eclipse.ini apparently doesn’t work when trying to specify a specific JRE to use (at least on my machine); regardless of the existence of this argument in the ini file, it will still always fire up C:\Windows\System32\javaw.exe, which is where the problems I was seeing are (high CPU utilization, memory consumption).  Not sure why that argument is ignored, perhaps a path issue, but I found that the only way I could be certain that I could run Eclipse with a specific JRE was to invoke Eclipse with the –vm command line argument.

I removed all my old JRE installs and installed the most recent 64bit JRE to C:\Java\64bit\.

What didn’t work:

I first tried updating eclipse.ini with:

-vm C:\Java\64bit\jre6\bin\javaw.exe

but found that Eclipse was still invoking the C:\Windows\System32\javaw.exe for some reason.  Eclipse started of course, and the javaw.exe process started going bananas again every time I would try to edit a file and *change the value of an html input tag* of all things – as soon as I changed the input value by adding one letter (even before saving) the javaw.exe process would immediately start eating cpu and memory, and I could repeat this problem consistently across multiple files.  Eclipse would hang, and I’d have to forcibly kill it as it would never recover.

I then tried invoking Eclipse with the command line –vm argument, like so:

D:\eclipse\eclipse.exe -vm C:\Java\64bit\jre6\bin\javaw.exe

leaving all the other arguments alone in the ini file; now, I could see that it was definitely using this particular javaw.exe but had exactly the same behavior I described above, edit a file (local filesystem, not network just to clear that it isn’t network related) and javaw.exe freaked out and Eclipse hung until forcibly killed.

I then tried changing the –vm argument in the eclipse.ini file to:

-vm C:\Java\64bit\jre6\bin\server\jvm.dll 

When Eclipse started it still had fired up javaw.exe in the Windows system32 directory as above.  Whatever.

What worked:

Finally, I invoked Eclipse using the command line –vm argument pointing to the JRE’s jvm.dll, like so:

D:\eclipse\eclipse.exe -vm C:\Java\64bit\jre6\bin\server\jvm.dll  

and holy crap, it runs great.  Responsive, no appreciable sluggishness, I even turned a bunch of the code assist and insight features back on in light of how great it works now.  Because javaw.exe isn’t running I have seen none of the problems I had when using the default invocation.  I don’t understand why this option isn’t talked about more (I recall seeing only one reference to it in all the stuff I read), nor why it works better for me than the default javaw.exe but I’ve been running it all day now and it has been working terrific so far.

So, if you’re on Win7 (or maybe even Vista) 64bit, have a 64bit JVM and 64Bit Eclipse and are seeing crappy performance or stability, try this method and see if it doesn’t solve your problems.  Off now to uninstall IntelliJ and Komodo trials ….

Trackback url

Thanks to the folks over at HeliconTech we now have a new configuration FREE IIS friendly installer of Railo, which I have now installed on the cfmldeveloper servers. To read more about the new installer see my blog.

Enabling Railo is really simple, just create your site as normal (if you are already using ColdFusion then disable it in the web site properties page first), then go into the file manager, navigate into the wwwroot and edit the web.config file.

now replace the contents of the file with the following.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 <configuration>
 <system.webServer>
 <heliconZoo>
 <application name="railo.project">
 <environmentVariables>
 </environmentVariables>
 </application>
 </heliconZoo>
 <handlers>
 <add name="railo.project#x86.cfm" scriptProcessor="railo" path="*.cfm" verb="*" modules="HeliconZoo_x86" preCondition="bitness32" resourceType="Unspecified" requireAccess="Script" />
 <add name="railo.project#x86.cfc" scriptProcessor="railo" path="*.cfc" verb="*" modules="HeliconZoo_x86" preCondition="bitness32" resourceType="Unspecified" requireAccess="Script" />
 <add name="railo.project#x86.cfml" scriptProcessor="railo" path="*.cfml" verb="*" modules="HeliconZoo_x86" preCondition="bitness32" resourceType="Unspecified" requireAccess="Script" />
 <add name="railo.project#x86.cfr" scriptProcessor="railo" path="*.cfr" verb="*" modules="HeliconZoo_x86" preCondition="bitness32" resourceType="Unspecified" requireAccess="Script" />
 <add name="railo.project#x86.cfswf" scriptProcessor="railo" path="*.cfswf" verb="*" modules="HeliconZoo_x86" preCondition="bitness32" resourceType="Unspecified" requireAccess="Script" />
 <add name="railo.project#x64.cfm" scriptProcessor="railo" path="*.cfm" verb="*" modules="HeliconZoo_x64" preCondition="bitness64" resourceType="Unspecified" requireAccess="Script" />
 <add name="railo.project#x64.cfc" scriptProcessor="railo" path="*.cfc" verb="*" modules="HeliconZoo_x64" preCondition="bitness64" resourceType="Unspecified" requireAccess="Script" />
 <add name="railo.project#x64.cfml" scriptProcessor="railo" path="*.cfml" verb="*" modules="HeliconZoo_x64" preCondition="bitness64" resourceType="Unspecified" requireAccess="Script" />
 <add name="railo.project#x64.cfr" scriptProcessor="railo" path="*.cfr" verb="*" modules="HeliconZoo_x64" preCondition="bitness64" resourceType="Unspecified" requireAccess="Script" />
 <add name="railo.project#x64.cfswf" scriptProcessor="railo" path="*.cfswf" verb="*" modules="HeliconZoo_x64" preCondition="bitness64" resourceType="Unspecified" requireAccess="Script" />
 </handlers>

 </system.webServer>
</configuration>

Now open your railo admin and set your password. DONE!
http://yoursite.cfmldeveloper.com/railo-context/admin/web.cfm

SEO Friendly URL's

If you need to use SEO friendly URL's for things like Mangoblog and MuraCMS, this doesn't work out of the box with railo.

in your web root you will have a "web-inf" folder which is created automatically the first time you run a CFM page, this contains your Railo context, inside this folder create a web.xml file and paste in the below contents fig 2. 
This will allow the most common SEO URL  "index.cfm/something" to work, I have also included the required filters for MangoBlog. Now you just need to modify this file within each of your sites and add any required url-filters.
The only caveat is that you need to restart your app server in order for the settings to take affect, This can be done via the website properties page in website panel, see Fig 1 below, or by making a change to your web.comfig file which causes the app pool to recycle, this must be a real change, not just adding spaces.

FIG 1

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<web-app
xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd"
metadata-complete="true"
version="2.5"
>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>CFMLServlet</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>index.cfm/*</url-pattern>
<url-pattern>/post.cfm/*</url-pattern>
<url-pattern>/archives.cfm/*</url-pattern>
<url-pattern>/page.cfm/*</url-pattern>
<url-pattern>/author.cfm/*</url-pattern>
<url-pattern>/feeds.cfm/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
</web-app>

A new book has been published by PACKT publishing for anyone interested in learning Railo, or if you are considering migrating from Coldfusion to railo this book will help you get your head around the differences between the 2 platforms and learn some of the features unique to Railo.

at only £11.39 for the eBook it is a steal.

CLICK HERE for more details.

The developer hositng server has now been updated to Railo 3.2, enjoy!

What's new in Railo 3.2

Two of the main focuses for this release were the extensibility of Railo and the caching options. We have introduced a set of new tags and functions and of course we fixed several bugs collected in our bug tracking system. Many of the new improvements and features raise Railo Server 3.2 to a must have update. Here’s a list of things we have introduced and improved in Railo Server 3.2:

• AJAX tags & functions, MAP support
  Our thanks for these extensions go to Andrea Campolonghi who single-handedly created all the new tags that come with these functions
• Application.cfc Enhancements
  Global Datasources
  OnCFCRequest() support
• Auto Import CFC’s
  These CFC’s provide script support for several protocol-based tags, such as cfmail. Many thanks here to Andrea Campolonghi and Mark Drew.
• Full scripting support with enhancements
  Optional semicolons
• New caching features
  Railo 3.2 implements the new CFML cache functions and extends them by allowing the defininition of several caches per context globally (server admin) or locally (web admin).
  Next to the normal RAM, Railo supports several different Cache engines such as Memcached and EHCache as well as several NoSQL databases like: CouchDB (Mark Drew), Membase, MongoDB and Riak (all Andrea Campolonghi)
• Lots of new functions
  Extensions to existing tags and function
• ORM support (beta)
• Event Gateway support (beta)
• Performance improvements
• New features in the Railo administrator
  • New administrator layout
  • Cache, ORM and Gateway support
  • Caching/Performance settings
  • Check out the wiki page about the changes in the Railo administrators.
• Other administrator enhancements
  • CFC cache
  • Custom tag cache

This and more can be found in the new Railo Server 3.2 release. Have a look at our wiki pages which gives you all the details about this exciting release and at our continuing roadmap for Railo.

We thank everyone who contributed to this marvellous release:

• Andrea Campolonghi, Responsible for the complete AJAX integration and several cache implementations.
• Jordan Michaels and Bilal Soylu for the great cross platform installers
• AJ Mercer, Railo Community Manager Australia
• Todd Rafferty, Railo Community Manager
• Paul Klinkenberg, Railo Extension Manager
• Pete Freitag (Foundeo Inc: http://foundeo.com) for discovering some XSS security vulnerabilities
• And everyone else who helped and we did not mention

CFSearch.com is an old CF project of mine that has been festering unloved for a few years. The original site was built back in 1999 and was a ColdFusion directory/search engine type thing allowing users to register their site, product or service and allow it to be searched on. I have barely touched it since then. I kept meaning to build a new site but never got round to it, so I eventually just turned it into a google adwords site.

Recently I decided to revive the project using Google's custom search engine technology which does most of the hard work for you, I still need to extract and verify a lot of the sites from the old database as many of them are probably dead by now, but the system is up and running and has enough data in it to be useful and usable. I have kept it very minimilist (google style) for now, but will add more features over time.

So if you run a CFML related site or blog, have written some cf open source software or sell any CF related products or services then please pop over to cfsearch.com and submit your site.