Category: Technology

I just finished a fun piece of code for a client. In addition to web server logs, they have a prioprietary advertising campaign tracker. They needed data aggregated and queries optimized which was phase 1 and included some MS SQL stored procedure magic, queries of queries (ColdFusion), and manually creating query result sets.

Phase II was to minimize the amount of text presented, show results in graphs, and create a way for an advertising client to view only their data. Fortunately, ColdFusion comes through with a fancy tag called CFChart and after the server configuration was debugged, graphs appeared. Then text on the screen was hidden using CSS (and I’m really starting to use and enjoy the cascading aspect of css) and made to appear through JavaScript.

Since some charts show way too much data, a form was added to filter the data and only show lines on the graphs that are relevant to the end user’s needs.

I changed multiple variables at once so all of this may not be necessary. The final solution to the CFChart doesn’t work / won’t display / is blank problem is to add a virtual directory in IIS under the website wanting to use CFChart for "CFIDE" and another virtual directory for "JRunScripts". The last post in this thread helped me realize that having virtual directories for CFIDE and JRunScripts in the webroot was not sufficient.

Allan – CFUG Spain 5 Dec 2004 21:16:55 [ permanent link ]
What you have do is:

1. Create the file GraphData.cfm in the CFIDE directory. (As a file can’t be empty stick a comment in there )
2. Make sure the IIS website entry has a virtual directory to CFIDE (C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\CFIDE)
3. Make sure the IIS website entry has a virtual directory to JRunScripts (C:\CFusionMX\runtime\lib\wsconfig\1)

Then restart CFMX server and Bob should be your uncle.

Allan

Update: Insult to injury. 6.5 hours ago, someone online recommended I confirm my mappings for CFIDE and scripts. I misinterpretted their question and blew it! Time to self-deprecate.

So I’ve spent most of the day working on this issue. To recount, I’m trying to use CFChart to plot some data but the webpage returns blank. What we know:

• ColdFusion Server 7,0,1,116466 (that’s CFMX 7.01 aka CF7.01)
• Windows 2000
• IIS 5.0
• ColdFusion MX 7.0.1 Cumulative Hot Fix 2 applied
• Zero-byte files for internal ColdFusion processes created
• Various permission checked
• Server and services restarted
• caches cleared

The zero byte file reference was interesting. For people having trouble with CFChart or RDS you may need to know:

Some ColdFusion Administrator functions, as well as RDS and cfchart functionality, rely on two ColdFusion templates. However, these templates do not exist by default. You will need to create the following zero-byte files, since IIS will check for them during processing.

1. Open Windows Explorer.
2. Navigate to the web_root/CFIDE directory, typically located at \inetpub\wwwroot\CFIDE.
3. Create a blank file named GraphData.cfm.
4. Create a directory called main.
5. Navigate to the new directory at web_root/CFIDE/main.
6. Create a blank file titled ide.cfm.
7. Repeat steps B-F for any additional instances of web_root/CFIDE.

At this point I’m running out of time. Can I do this with a different solution?