Cold fusion 2021 - when i try to add new datasource through administrator page, i'm getting below me

Hi all,

Apologies for ressurecting an old thread, but I'd just like to add a comment to describe the method by which I managed to get the ODBC Client/Server services running correctly, so it may provide assistance to others in the future.

1. In the CF 2021 Administrator, go to 'Package Manager'
2. In Package Manager, expand the 'Installed Packages' section
3. Select the 'ODBC' package and click 'Uninstall'
4. In Package Manager, expand the 'Available Packages' section
5. Select the 'ODBC' package and click 'Install'.

I should add that I haven't used MS Access in many, many years, and I certainly don't advocate using ODBC when a JDBC option is available. The only reason I had to get those services working was to connect to an old legacy system where ODBC was the only option.

Hope this helps someone in the future!

Cheers,

Mike.

What Dave says may indeed get you going, but I won't be surprised if either you don't find the services, or you can't install them.

First, some may notice when installing CF2021 that when you get to the page about installing optional services (like the .NET service, the Solr service, the PDFG service, and indeed the ODBC service), the CF2021 installer curiously grays out the ODBC one, so you can't turn them off or on. But after the install (via the full CF installer) you WILL find the "ColdFusion 2021 ODBC Agent" and Server services are installed--but you can't start them. Nor will they start from the command line.

And I have not found any log in either the slserver54 folder (within CF, used by those services) nor in the CF logs folder that explains what's amiss. Perhaps someone else may have more luck digging for that.

Some more confusion could arise from tnsenthil indicating that they are using CFBuilder. Note that when you install CFBuilder, it also offers an option to install CF (which gets implemented in a CF folder WITHIN CFBuilder rather than the traditional CF folder). And I am pretty sure that installer does NOT even offer to install the external services, like ODBC.

That's why I say that you may not even find the ODBC services (and while you can find SOME such additional installers for CF at the downloads page, the ODBC service has never been offered there. Instead there are blog posts from Adobe over the years showing how to add the ODBC service via some CFML code calling the Admin API.)

Is all this ugly as hell? Yes. Frustrating for those wanting to use ODBC? Yes. And it's clear that you want to use Access in particular--and by default it relies on ODBC. But as Dave and I have discussed with folks in other forum threads in recent weeks, ODBC's time has come and gone (really, before the turn of the century). Starting with CF6 (in 2002), all CF datasources OTHER than Access started using JDBC drivers instead.

And while Adobe provides JDBC drivers for most DBs, they never did for Access. Are there JDBC drivers for Access? Yes there are, and you should really consider that instead. See the discussion in the other post from last month, where BKBK shared news of that and a post he's done in the past on it. He even offered an updated list of steps in a later post in that thread. (I don't know that Adobe will ever bundle that with CF. Really, Access should not be used with a multiuser application server like CF. Folks should be moving to anything else.) But for those who want it, the option is there.

Let us know if any of this gets you going.

This might be a dumb question, but have you installed the ODBC Services as part of your CF install? The Microsoft Access driver that is included from DataDirect (I think that's the vendor) requires them.

Dave Watts, Eidolon LLC