Report Compilation Error in CF 2021 Update 2

[MarkAtCU]

After installing Update 2 for ColdFusion 2021, calls to cfreport with a .cfr template are erroring out with "Report compilation error." I can't see any other details. These reports have been working flawlessly for years. Any ideas how to resolve this?

[Priyank Shrivastava. · Accepted solution]

Hi @MarkAtCU 

You can reach out to our team for patch. cfsup@adobe.com

[MarkAtCU · Accepted solution]

ColdFusion support provided quick help with a patch that resolved this issue.

[AShepherd85]

What was the solution? We are running into the same and still waiting on a reply from CF support..

[Exquisite_outfit16B6]

Support sent me a link to a hotfix file.

[cld007]

I am in a similar situation only I am testing an upgarde from CF10 to CF2021(Trial).  I wrote to support a few days ago and still haven't heard from them.  Could it be that because I am running a Trial that I am not given priority (always go back to be last in queue)???!!!

[Charlie Arehart]

No, that would not be the reason. I have never known Adobe to actbthat way. First, did you send to the cfsup@adobe.com address, or some other? And did you simply try again?

You could also add a comment at that tracker ticket, asking them to upload the hotfix jar. If I can get it, I will do that. 

[cld007]

Yes, that is the address I sent my message along with a reference/link to this thread explaining I was getting the same message while running a .cfr on a fresh CF2021-Trial install. I also mentionned I was upgrading from CF 10…

I haven’t try sending it again; perhaps I should.

Thanks,

Claude

[dcbs58733066]

Can you post the link where the hotfix is that takes care of this error? I too am having the issue after upgrading from v2018 to v2021. These reports have worked for years, but now having the report compilation error message.

[cld007]

As stated above, your best bet is to reach out to Adobe's Support team for patch at cfsup@adobe.com

That is how I got the necessary .jar file to fix it.Once applied, everything worked fine. Carefull however that the fix is not part of any other patch that you will install down the road (based on my experience).  So, if you install another patch from Adobe, you will have to reinstall the CFReport fix again after a new patch is installed.

Claude

[Charlie Arehart]

For those who haven't noticed, the update technote for CF2021 update 5 indicates that the fix for this problem was included (CF-421239). That is good news...

...but I just had someone running update 5 who found that the problem remained, until they added the hotfix jar discussed above. Once they did (and restarted CF), then the error went away. That absolutely should not have been necessary. I will report it to Adobe, but I wanted to go ahead and share it here also, in case others experience the problem even with update 5.

And I would share the hotfix jar here, but the forum software here won't let us share a .jar (nor does it allow a zip). And we can't even rename it as txt file. The s/w checks the upload and complains if a txt file is binary.

So if you are either not yet on update 5, or have this problem even AFTER applying update 5, ask Adobe (via cfsup@adobe.com) to share with you hf202100-4212391.jar. Then place that in the cfusion/lib/updates folder (not removing any that is there), and restart CF. (I have a blog post with more on applying such special hotfixes from Adobe.)

Am I saying that anyone running update 5 SHOULD apply this special hotfix? Well, no. If you find that your cfreport code runs fine on update 5, then don't bother with this. I'm just saying that someone DID find they needed to add it still. (I confirmed that they did have update 5 properly installed: no errors, with the chf jar for update 5 properly in that lib/updates fodler already.) If you end up in this spot (after applying update 5), and you reach out to Adobe, perhaps they will explain (to you, or to us here) whether this is a wider problem.

[Dave Watts]

About sharing files here: I wouldn't do it, but there's no technical reason why you couldn't convert them to base64 before uploading them. Then, whoever downloads it will have to convert from base64 back to binary. This is a reliable way to send binary files as text, because base64 is literally just text.

Dave Watts, Eidolon LLC

[Charlie Arehart]

For those who may STILL find the problem happening (even after CF2021 update 11 in Oct 2023), I'll add here a clarification that I made back then on the tracker ticket for the bug (https://tracker.adobe.com/#/view/CF-4212391😞

Since the jar links offered there STILL fails to download, I had offered the jar as a new folder in the cfmlrepo.com site, specifically here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1gvFPswr4_pDbohSsKKr6YzjAYJDEcm6G 

[MarkAtCU]

Yep, I'm still doing this. There are two patches that I apply after every update--I really can't believe I still have to do that. I re-apply this one and another one that fixes a query of queries issue. How can there be patches that never get re-integrated into the trunk?

[Ben D W]

Old thread I know,... but I'm working through new clean installs and had to apply this hotfix for cfreport to work. Can you tell me where to find the query of queries fix you apply as well? probably going to run into issues there as well.

Thanks in advance.

[MarkAtCU]

@Ben D WI would suggest you reach out to Adobe support using the cfsup@adobe.com address. I have the jars, but I don't think I'm technically supposed to share them. (@Charlie Arehart any thoughts on that?). Here is the other support ticket that notes the QoQ issue - https://community.adobe.com/t5/coldfusion-discussions/query-of-query-order-by-column-index-giving-er...

[Ben D W]

Thanks! I’ll check that out

[Charlie Arehart]

I'm not aware of any prohibition on sharing them...but always make sure it's even needed. Often a later update incorporates the fix...and I do think both the cfreport and qoq bugs (needing hotfixes) were resolved in update 11 in Oct. I'm not at a computer to prove it. 

[Ben D W]

I don't know enough to dive into the hotfix code to confirm what was changed, but in my case I was at update 12 and unable to run reports. Getting the hotfix solved the issue.

[Charlie Arehart]

Thanks for confirming. There have been a couple of report issues then, it seems. But glad yours is solved--and now more people may find this solution.

As for digging into a jar, well, they're just zips, so digging in can be interesting (though I wasn't proposing it). But often there's just one or more class files, and while one could decompile those (caveat below), you're left with Java source that's often hard to decipher. Such hotfixes expand on/modify classes already built into cf, and trying to understand all that is beyond the interest of all but the most intrepid adventurers. 🙂 It's also technically a violation of the EULA, which is perhaps why we hear so little discussion of it. 

[AviationJunkie]

Is this possibly happening in 2018?  I know it's not supported at this date, but when I try to run a CFR I get a 404.  We only run these in the Summer.  Last year it was fine, this year 404.  But the files are exactly where we would expect them.  Not updated since 2015.

[Priyank Shrivastava.]

@AviationJunkie  Can you please share the screenshot of the error.

[AviationJunkie]

Turns out, years ago, our host gave us admin permissions to run cfr.  Sometime this year, someone found those permissions and removed them.  So we had to upgrade to VPS hosting.

We had no idea until an admin contacted us.