[CF8] java.lang.NullPointerException

Report · Oct 02, 2007

Hello,

On my CF8 web host, I sometimes get strange java.lang.nullpointerexceptions errors. All my code works flawless since the year 2000. The same pages do work but sometimes, maybe 1 out of 30 try's, the error appears again. First I thought it was a session problem or a problem with Application.cfm. But I stripped those down and it even happens with simple queries. I think it has to do with queries or MySQL 5.

Has anyone encountered this error? The system says "The system has attempted to use an undefined value, which usually indicates a programming error, either in your code or some system code." But I have all my values defined and it is not a programming error. It is more like a server configuration error I guess.

The following information is meant for the website developer for debugging purposes.
Error Occurred While Processing Request
The system has attempted to use an undefined value, which usually indicates a programming error, either in your code or some system code.

Null Pointers are another name for undefined values.
500

ROOT CAUSE:
java.lang.NullPointerException
at com.mysql.jdbc.Statement.setMaxRows(Statement.java:2178)
at coldfusion.server.j2ee.sql.JRunStatement.setMaxRows(JRunStatement.java:214)
at coldfusion.sql.Executive.executeQuery(Executive.java:1229)
at coldfusion.sql.Executive.executeQuery(Executive.java:1008)
at coldfusion.sql.Executive.executeQuery(Executive.java:939)
at coldfusion.sql.SqlImpl.execute(SqlImpl.java:325)
at coldfusion.tagext.sql.QueryTag.executeQuery(QueryTag.java:831)
at coldfusion.tagext.sql.QueryTag.doEndTag(QueryTag.java:521)
at cfhetkoor2ecfm251397670.runPage(E:\westlandkoorconcordia.nl\wwwroot\hetkoor.cfm:1)
at coldfusion.runtime.CfJspPage.invoke(CfJspPage.java:192)
at coldfusion.tagext.lang.IncludeTag.doStartTag(IncludeTag.java:366)
at coldfusion.filter.CfincludeFilter.invoke(CfincludeFilter.java:65)
at coldfusion.filter.ApplicationFilter.invoke(ApplicationFilter.java:279)
at coldfusion.filter.RequestMonitorFilter.invoke(RequestMonitorFilter.java:48)
at coldfusion.filter.MonitoringFilter.invoke(MonitoringFilter.java:40)
at coldfusion.filter.PathFilter.invoke(PathFilter.java:86)
at coldfusion.filter.ExceptionFilter.invoke(ExceptionFilter.java:70)
at coldfusion.filter.ClientScopePersistenceFilter.invoke(ClientScopePersistenceFilter.java:28)
at coldfusion.filter.BrowserFilter.invoke(BrowserFilter.java:38)
at coldfusion.filter.NoCacheFilter.invoke(NoCacheFilter.java:46)
at coldfusion.filter.GlobalsFilter.invoke(GlobalsFilter.java:38)
at coldfusion.filter.DatasourceFilter.invoke(DatasourceFilter.java:22)
at coldfusion.CfmServlet.service(CfmServlet.java:175)
at coldfusion.bootstrap.BootstrapServlet.service(BootstrapServlet.java:89)
at jrun.servlet.FilterChain.doFilter(FilterChain.java:86)
at coldfusion.monitor.event.MonitoringServletFilter.doFilter(MonitoringServletFilter.java:42)
at coldfusion.bootstrap.BootstrapFilter.doFilter(BootstrapFilter.java:46)
at jrun.servlet.FilterChain.doFilter(FilterChain.java:94)
at jrun.servlet.FilterChain.service(FilterChain.java:101)
at jrun.servlet.ServletInvoker.invoke(ServletInvoker.java:106)
at jrun.servlet.JRunInvokerChain.invokeNext(JRunInvokerChain.java:42)
at jrun.servlet.JRunRequestDispatcher.invoke(JRunRequestDispatcher.java:284)
at jrun.servlet.ServletEngineService.dispatch(ServletEngineService.java:543)
at jrun.servlet.jrpp.JRunProxyService.invokeRunnable(JRunProxyService.java:203)
at jrunx.scheduler.ThreadPool$DownstreamMetrics.invokeRunnable(ThreadPool.java:320)
at jrunx.scheduler.ThreadPool$ThreadThrottle.invokeRunnable(ThreadPool.java:428)
at jrunx.scheduler.ThreadPool$UpstreamMetrics.invokeRunnable(ThreadPool.java:266)
at jrunx.scheduler.WorkerThread.run(WorkerThread.java:66)

javax.servlet.ServletException: ROOT CAUSE:
java.lang.NullPointerException
at com.mysql.jdbc.Statement.setMaxRows(Statement.java:2178)
at coldfusion.server.j2ee.sql.JRunStatement.setMaxRows(JRunStatement.java:214)
at coldfusion.sql.Executive.executeQuery(Executive.java:1229)
at coldfusion.sql.Executive.executeQuery(Executive.java:1008)
at coldfusion.sql.Executive.executeQuery(Executive.java:939)
at coldfusion.sql.SqlImpl.execute(SqlImpl.java:325)
at coldfusion.tagext.sql.QueryTag.executeQuery(QueryTag.java:831)
at coldfusion.tagext.sql.QueryTag.doEndTag(QueryTag.java:521)
at cfhetkoor2ecfm251397670.runPage(E:\westlandkoorconcordia.nl\wwwroot\hetkoor.cfm:1)
at coldfusion.runtime.CfJspPage.invoke(CfJspPage.java:192)
at coldfusion.tagext.lang.IncludeTag.doStartTag(IncludeTag.java:366)
at coldfusion.filter.CfincludeFilter.invoke(CfincludeFilter.java:65)
at coldfusion.filter.ApplicationFilter.invoke(ApplicationFilter.java:279)
at coldfusion.filter.RequestMonitorFilter.invoke(RequestMonitorFilter.java:48)
at coldfusion.filter.MonitoringFilter.invoke(MonitoringFilter.java:40)
at coldfusion.filter.PathFilter.invoke(PathFilter.java:86)
at coldfusion.filter.ExceptionFilter.invoke(ExceptionFilter.java:70)
at coldfusion.filter.ClientScopePersistenceFilter.invoke(ClientScopePersistenceFilter.java:28)
at coldfusion.filter.BrowserFilter.invoke(BrowserFilter.java:38)
at coldfusion.filter.NoCacheFilter.invoke(NoCacheFilter.java:46)
at coldfusion.filter.GlobalsFilter.invoke(GlobalsFilter.java:38)
at coldfusion.filter.DatasourceFilter.invoke(DatasourceFilter.java:22)
at coldfusion.CfmServlet.service(CfmServlet.java:175)
at coldfusion.bootstrap.BootstrapServlet.service(BootstrapServlet.java:89)
at jrun.servlet.FilterChain.doFilter(FilterChain.java:86)
at coldfusion.monitor.event.MonitoringServletFilter.doFilter(MonitoringServletFilter.java:42)
at coldfusion.bootstrap.BootstrapFilter.doFilter(BootstrapFilter.java:46)
at jrun.servlet.FilterChain.doFilter(FilterChain.java:94)
at jrun.servlet.FilterChain.service(FilterChain.java:101)
at jrun.servlet.ServletInvoker.invoke(ServletInvoker.java:106)
at jrun.servlet.JRunInvokerChain.invokeNext(JRunInvokerChain.java:42)
at jrun.servlet.JRunRequestDispatcher.invoke(JRunRequestDispatcher.java:284)
at jrun.servlet.ServletEngineService.dispatch(ServletEngineService.java:543)
at jrun.servlet.jrpp.JRunProxyService.invokeRunnable(JRunProxyService.java:203)
at jrunx.scheduler.ThreadPool$DownstreamMetrics.invokeRunnable(ThreadPool.java:320)
at jrunx.scheduler.ThreadPool$ThreadThrottle.invokeRunnable(ThreadPool.java:428)
at jrunx.scheduler.ThreadPool$UpstreamMetrics.invokeRunnable(ThreadPool.java:266)
at jrunx.scheduler.WorkerThread.run(WorkerThread.java:66)

at coldfusion.monitor.event.MonitoringServletFilter.doFilter(MonitoringServletFilter.java:70)
at coldfusion.bootstrap.BootstrapFilter.doFilter(BootstrapFilter.java:46)
at jrun.servlet.FilterChain.doFilter(FilterChain.java:94)
at jrun.servlet.FilterChain.service(FilterChain.java:101)
at jrun.servlet.ServletInvoker.invoke(ServletInvoker.java:106)
at jrun.servlet.JRunInvokerChain.invokeNext(JRunInvokerChain.java:42)
at jrun.servlet.JRunRequestDispatcher.invoke(JRunRequestDispatcher.java:284)
at jrun.servlet.ServletEngineService.dispatch(ServletEngineService.java:543)
at jrun.servlet.jrpp.JRunProxyService.invokeRunnable(JRunProxyService.java:203)
at jrunx.scheduler.ThreadPool$DownstreamMetrics.invokeRunnable(ThreadPool.java:320)
at jrunx.scheduler.ThreadPool$ThreadThrottle.invokeRunnable(ThreadPool.java:428)
at jrunx.scheduler.ThreadPool$UpstreamMetrics.invokeRunnable(ThreadPool.java:266)
at jrunx.scheduler.WorkerThread.run(WorkerThread.java:66)
The system has attempted to use an undefined value, which usually indicates a programming error, either in your code or some system code. Text

Report · Sep 12, 2008

quote:

Originally posted by: BKBK
Let's follow another strategy. Run the following query on the MySQL database

show variables;

What value do you get for wait_timeout and for interactive_timeout ? Each has a default value of 28800, that is, 8 hours, converted into seconds.

Is either of the values much lower for your MySQL server? If so, increase it or have it increased. You can do so, for example, by adding the line

wait_timeout=28800

or the line

interactive_timeout=28800

or both to the [mysqld] section of the my.ini configuration file. Restart the MySQL server for the changes to take effect.

BKBK - changing the 2 timeout's above appears to have done the trick for us - THANK YOU SO MUCH! We will keep testing, as it is possible it has not shown up yet since it is an intermittent thing, but I think this will work for us - thanks again!

Report · Sep 18, 2008

quote:

changing the 2 timeout's above appears to have done the trick for us - ...

Spoke too soon, changing the timeout values does not resolve this issue. Does any one else have a suggestion?

Report · Oct 19, 2008

I too am having the same null pointer exception issue. After talking my boss into spending $7K on CF8 Enterprise, I cannot just jump ship to PHP, so I will love to know if there is anything we can about this.

I have turned off "Maintain Connection across all clients" on my test database connection to see if that will help. But it looks like this issue (from reading the above posts) has something to do with the MySQL 4/5 driver. I seriously hope something can be done about this as I have been thinking it was my code all along.

Report · Oct 25, 2008

Sign me up as another casualty of this debilitating error inflicted upon a CF8/MySQL 5.0 user.

Here it is for all to see again and again and again...

"Error Occurred While Processing Request

The system has attempted to use an undefined value, which usually indicates a programming error, either in your code or some system code.

Null Pointers are another name for undefined values."

Report · Sep 09, 2008

interactive_timeout: 100
wait_timeout: 1200

But this hasn't anything to do with it. It is something with the MySQL driver. With the Adobe software, it gives random errors. But when you can make the ColdFusion DSN with the Helm control panel, there are no errors. Same MySQL server with same values. Thus, the software from Helm is better than the software from Adobe...

Report · Sep 09, 2008

Maybe Helm uses a newer and|or better driver then ships with ColdFusion!
Since, while Adobe provides the drivers, they do not write them. Other
companies write the drivers. (P.S. this is a large reason for the price
difference between standard and enterprise ColdFusion, the licensee fees
paid by Adobe to Oracle for the native Oracle driver included in
Enterprise)

Adobe nee Macromedia nee Alaire provide documentation on how to
update|change database drivers anytime it is desirable to do so.
Especially since a stable ColdFusion server can easily live much longer
then the lifespan of a driver version.

Report · Sep 09, 2008

quote:

Originally posted by: Newsgroup User

Since, while Adobe provides the drivers, they do not write them. Other
companies write the drivers.

Newsgroup User - Do you work for Adobe? Hope not, as I hope this is not a common view point with them.

--- Rant mode ON ----
Adobe charges $7,500 for this product to run on a single server and says it works with MySQL 4 or 5. We make purchasing decisions based on these claims. We don't care if they write the DB driver or acquire it. It needs to work as advertised and as it did on prior CF releases. The view that "if MySQL access does not work, you can try and find drivers yourself" is B.S. The number of people that have reported this problem and the length of time without Adobe comment/help or intervention is shameful.

We had planned to open an incident ($500) with Adobe to get a resolution to this but getting a "not our problem - we did not write the driver" response is not something I care to drop $500 on.

We have 3 licenses of CF Enterprise we have to decide on for a customer in 17 days. Looks like our response will be to not use CF for this client and save the $22,500 . Unfortunately we have quite a few other clients that it will be tougher to migrate off CF.
--- Rant mode OFF ----

BKBK - thanks for the suggestion. We will try that and if it works, or not, will report back.

Report · Sep 09, 2008

FreedomNet wrote:

> Newsgroup User - Do you work for Adobe? Hope not, as I hope this is not a
> common view point with them.
>

No I do *NOT* work for Adobe, and these Forums are not official adobe
support, but rather community friends helping friends, so since my help
is undesired, I'll stop offering it to you.

If one would still like a suggestion try contacting these folks who do
work for Adobe, but be warned that this link is a year out of date,
because that is how long it has been since I have had a need to engage
Adobe with our $7,499x7 purchase.

http://www.forta.com/blog/index.cfm/2007/10/9/ColdFusions-Dedicated-Account-Managers

Report · Sep 10, 2008

quote:

No I do *NOT* work for Adobe, and these Forums are not official adobe
support, but rather community friends helping friends, so since my help
is undesired, I'll stop offering it to you.

Newsgroup User - my apologies. I jumped to the conclusion that you were with Adobe and that this was their "unofficial" position. That got my blood pressure up that there was no shot at a resolution and that we had invested a lot of time and money in something that did not do simple inserts or selects any longer in MySQL. Sorry.

Report · Sep 09, 2008

Well, with the introduction of ColdFusion 8, the least Adobe could have done was to provide a working MySQL driver. This one has a bug. And we are almost a year later, and nothing has been fixed yet.

I have begged my webhost not to update the older servers from CF7 to CF8 because CF8 isn't functioning 100% with the provided drivers. It is a shame that this has to happen! And my webhost agrees and they don't update any more servers. So this bug costs Adobe money, because clients do not buy the products anymore because they doesn't seem to work.

Report · Sep 09, 2008

It was because of this thread coming alive again that I had a look at this again. Unbelievable nothing has happened!

Well, to hell with it: I have spend too much time on the troubles with CF over the past years already. Do you remember the fixes and work-arounds for datasources that couldn't be found a couple of years ago? They didn't learn from that at all.

And besides, my new PHP pages do load a lot faster then the same pages in ColdFusion. So I am happy without CF now!

I also recall a large website called "myspace.com" which had switched from CF to .NET, with a 75% performance increase. Way to go Adobe! (now probably the slowest corporate site in the world)

Report · Oct 25, 2008

In my opinion, the best clue to this puzzel so far is that given by Rich.Thibault early on in this thread, namely,

" ... your post got me looking at their source code. The NPE happens at line 2178, which I believe is this line inside setMaxRows():

http://svn.mysql.com/svnpublic/connector-j/tags/5.0.5/connector-j/src/com/mysql/jdbc/Statement.java

this.connection.unsetMaxRows(this);

So it looks like CF is invoking setMaxRows() after the connection has already gone dead (null). It should be detecting the dead connection, removing it from the pool, and starting a new one."

Report · Oct 26, 2008

Is there anything that can be done on our end to prevent, reduce this problem? I have, for the moment, had some luck by unchecking " Maintain connections across client requests". However this problem seems to be so random that I am not sure if it has been fixed or I just have not experienced it yet.

Report · Nov 22, 2008

:smile; My first ever posting so please be patient with me.
I have had the same problem and this forum has helped greatly, many thanks to all. While I am getting my ISP to change the wait_timeout from 20 secs. I have put in place this fix in the application.cfc file.

<cftry>
<CFQUERY NAME="qGlobalStatus"
DATASOURCE="#application.shopDSN#"
USERNAME="#application.userName#"
PASSWORD="#application.shopPass#">

SELECT fldErrorhandling,
fldShopOpen
FROM tglobals;
</CFQUERY>
<CFIF qGlobalStatus.fldShopOpen EQ False>
<CFLOCATION addtoken="no" url="shopClosed.htm">
</CFIF>

<cfcatch type="java.lang.NullPointerException">
<CFLOCATION addtoken="no" url="#CGI.SCRIPT_NAME#?#CGI.QUERY_STRING#">
</cfcatch>
</cftry>

Report · Nov 22, 2008

:smile; My first ever posting so please be patient with me.
I have had the same problem and this forum has helped greatly, many thanks to all. While I am getting my ISP to change the wait_timeout from 20 secs. I have put in place this fix in the application.cfc file.

<cftry>
<CFQUERY NAME="qGlobalStatus"
DATASOURCE="#application.shopDSN#"
USERNAME="#application.userName#"
PASSWORD="#application.shopPass#">

SELECT fldErrorhandling,
fldShopOpen
FROM tglobals;
</CFQUERY>


<cfcatch type="java.lang.NullPointerException">
<CFLOCATION addtoken="no" url="#CGI.SCRIPT_NAME#?#CGI.QUERY_STRING#">
</cfcatch>
</cftry>
It works well and certainly easier than recoding in php or .net.

Report · Nov 22, 2008

:smile; My first ever posting so please be patient with me.
I have had the same problem and this forum has helped greatly, many thanks to all. While I am getting my ISP to change the wait_timeout from 20 secs. I have put in place this fix in the application.cfc file.

<cftry>
<CFQUERY NAME="qGlobalStatus"
DATASOURCE="#application.shopDSN#"
USERNAME="#application.userName#"
PASSWORD="#application.shopPass#">

SELECT fldErrorhandling,
fldShopOpen
FROM tglobals;
</CFQUERY>


<cfcatch type="java.lang.NullPointerException">
<CFLOCATION addtoken="no" url="#CGI.SCRIPT_NAME#?#CGI.QUERY_STRING#">
</cfcatch>
</cftry>
It works well and certainly easier than recoding in php or .net.

Report · Nov 22, 2008

Sorry about the 3 posts but the forum website is acting strangely. pete

Report · Nov 22, 2008

Sorry about the 3 posts but the forum website is acting strangely. pete

Report · Nov 22, 2008

Ofcourse it is acting strangely, it is written in ColdFusion.

Report · Nov 22, 2008

Hello yogonaise,

Instead of ??????

> Ofcourse it is acting strangely, it is written in ColdFusion.
>

Report · May 27, 2009

I have an idea. Coldfusion 8 has a new setting in the Administrator for MySQL datasources. It is the checkbox field, "Validation query". My idea is that it has something to do with this particular NullPointerException.

To my knowledge, no one yet knows what is responsible for the broken connection. Is it the database driver, the database itself or an external influence such as a firewall? However, we know one thing for sure. When the current connection drops, the driver makes no attempt to get a new connection from the connection pool. That led me to the following hypothesis about how Coldfusion 8 and the MySQL driver work together:

1) if the current connection fails the Validation Query must run

and

2) if the Validation Query fails, no new connection is obtained from the connection pool; instead, an exception is silently thrown.

That could then explain the NullPointerException. By default, the Validation Query field is empty. If, for whatever reason, the database connection is broken then, by my hypothesis, the validation query is run. This fails, for the query is nonexistent. As a result, no new connection is obtained from the connection pool. Instead, an exception is silently thrown.

Report · Sep 16, 2009

Has a solution to this bug been created? I am receiving the same random error when we upgraded to CF8 from CF7. Please help...

Server Product ColdFusion
Version 8,0,1,195765
Edition Standard
Java Version 1.6.0_04
Java Vendor Sun Microsystems Inc.
Java Vendor URL http://java.sun.com/
Java Home C:\ColdFusion8\runtime\jre
Driver SeeFusion (MySQL5) - mysql-connector-java-commercial-5.0.5-bin.jar, seefusion.jar

Report · Feb 25, 2010

I wanted to resurrect this old post because I have a client that is seeing this error on a site and he's tried moving it to CF9 and is getting the same error. It does generally occur on the same query, but it's a pretty simply update statement, the only variable in the query is definitely not null (verified in an error dump), the same code runs fine on many other sites without issue. But we are seeing this on a regular basis:

java.lang.NullPointerException at com.mysql.jdbc.Statement.setMaxRows(Statement.java:2178) at coldfusion.sql.Executive.executeQuery(Executive.java:1267) at coldfusion.sql.Executive.executeQuery(Executive.java:1009) at coldfusion.sql.Executive.executeQuery(Executive.java:940) at coldfusion.sql.SqlImpl.execute(SqlImpl.java:325) at coldfusion.tagext.sql.QueryTag.executeQuery(QueryTag.java:838) at coldfusion.tagext.sql.QueryTag.doEndTag(QueryTag.java:528)

Has anyone found a solution for this?

Report · Feb 25, 2010

Oops, small correction. It does appear the setMaxRows issue was indeed corrected in CF9 and we're now getting the underlying error that caused that one to occur on CF8. We haven't yet figured it out yet but does appear to be something that's causing a null exception...I've got enough information on the exact steps that recreate it so should be able to track it down.

Report · Jun 18, 2010

We're suffering from the same issue; unfortunately none of the suggestions in this thread have done anything for us. I have created a detailed explanation of the symptoms in my blog at http://devbox.computec.de/2010/06/coldfusion-8-and-mysql-5-1-via-jdbc-help-needed/. Is there any news or any other suggestions to get CF8 and MySQL 5.1 to play nice?

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[CF8] java.lang.NullPointerException