Administrator layout

The home page of the ColdFusion Administrator includes links to Documentation, the Macromedia Servers TechNotes Knowledge Base, Release Notes, Version Information, online Help, and Code Examples:

The figure shows the ColdFusion Administrator home page.

The tasks that you perform in the ColdFusion Administrator are grouped into the following sections. Each section contains links to pages for managing aspects of the system:

Server Settings Manage whitespace, client and memory variables, locking, and mappings. Register a mail server and configure mail logging. Configure your JVM, the ColdFusion charting and graphing engine, and create and manage archives.
Data & Services Configure data sources, Verity collections, and the Verity K2 Server. Define mappings to web services.
Debugging & Logging Manage options that can assist you in troubleshooting your ColdFusion applications. Manage scheduled tasks, system probes, and a variety of log files and server statistics. Run the Code Compatibility Analyzer to assist you in migrating older ColdFusion applications.
Extensions Configure and register Java Applets, CORBA ORBs, and CFX Tags.
Security Control passwords for ColdFusion Administrator and Remote Data Source (RDS) access. Restrict the use of resources, such as data sources.

For more information about each section, see Chapter 2, "Basic ColdFusion MX Administration".

Server Settings section

The Server Settings section contains the following areas:

Settings Manage the number of simultaneous requests, request timeouts, whitespace, and handlers.
Caching Manage caching options for memory, database connection time, the number of cached queries, and using a trusted template cache.
Client Variables Configure an external data source, the operating system registry, or web browser cookies to store client variables. These can use and store information about a client browsing your site to provide customized page content.
Memory Variables Specify timeout values for Application and Session variables. These variables are stored in RAM and maintain information throughout a ColdFusion session.
Mappings Create logical aliases for physical directories on your server. One of your first tasks after installing ColdFusion is to configure the mapping for your web server.
Mail Server Configure the mail server that ColdFusion uses to send dynamic mail messages using SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol).
Charting Specify caching and thread settings for the ColdFusion charting and graphing engine.
Java and JVM Settings Manage Java Virtual Machine settings such as paths, heap sizes, and implementation options.
Archives and Deployment Create and deploy application archives.
Settings Summary View the status of all ColdFusion configuration settings. You can navigate to a particular area of the ColdFusion Administrator by clicking its name.

Data & Services section

The Data & Services section contains the following pages:

Data Sources Create and manage your data sources. You can specify login parameters, connection information, and restrict certain SQL operations. For more information, see Chapter 3, "Data Source Management".
Verity Collections Create and manage your Verity collections. Search engines for your ColdFusion applications use these indexes of various files within specified directories.
Verity K2 Server Configure the Host Name and Port settings for your K2 Server. This specialized server is optimized for high-performance Verity searches.
Web Services Define a mapping to the location of a web service.

Debugging & Logging section

The Debugging & Logging section contains the following pages:

Debugging Settings Enable and configure information to help you diagnose ColdFusion page failures. You can return information on items such as template stack, database activity, and variable values.
Debugging IP Addresses Control which IP addresses receive debug messages.
Logging Settings Specify the directory for your log files, and whether to write some ColdFusion log messages to the operating system's logging facility (such as EventLog for Windows and syslog for UNIX).
Log Files Search, view, download, schedule, archive, or delete a file from a list of all available log files.
Scheduled Tasks Add, edit, or delete scheduled tasks. These tasks are helpful for such items as daily reports, inventories, and statistical reports.
System Probes Manage probes that monitor your application's status. If a potential problem is detected, a system probe can send an alert e-mail message and execute a recovery script.
Code Analyzer Evaluate application code for potential incompatibilities between ColdFusion MX and ColdFusion Server 5.

Extensions section

The Extensions section contains the following pages:

Java Applets Register, edit, or delete Java applets. You must register a Java applet prior to adding it to your CFFORM forms using the cfapplet tag.
CFX Tags Register, edit, or delete C++ and Java custom tags.
Custom Tag Paths Register the paths that contain your custom tags.
CORBA Connectors Register, edit, or delete CORBA connectors. You can also specify ORB initialization options.

Security section

The Security section contains the following pages:

CF Admin Password Set the password for the administrator
RDS Password Set the password for Dreamweaver MX and CF Studio users connecting to ColdFusion.
Sandbox Security Restrict access to ColdFusion resources such as data sources, tags, functions, files and directories, and IP addresses.

For more information, see Chapter 4, "Administering Security".