Installing Coldfusion 2016 32-bit on Windows 2016

[edesrosi]

I am having issues trying to install Coldfusion 2016 32-bit on Windows 2016.  I can get the executable to run but it completes with errors.  It looks like it only partially installs.  There is nothing in the install error log that is helpful (or I don't understand it). 

We are loading 32-bit because we require 'MS Access with Unicode' for a datasource.  We are migrating Coldfusion 2016 32-bit from Windows 2008 version where it installed fine. Is there something about Windows 2016 where this won't install?  If someone has done this successfully, that would be helpful information.

[Dave Watts]

If you're trying to connect ColdFusion with IIS during the install, IIS isn't going to have any 32-bit application pools configured so you may have problems there. So, I'd recommend you skip that option during the install, then configure an IIS virtual server to have a 32-bit application pool, then use the web server configuration tool to connect to that specific IIS virtual server.

Honestly, I would recommend that you reevaluate your need to use MS Access. It's just going to be a problem for you going forward. You can migrate your data to much more friendly data sources. You could migrate to a free, limited use version of MS SQL Server, or you could migrate to MySQL. Anything would be better than MS Access.

Dave Watts, Eidolon LLC

[kkfin]

There is absolutely no need to give up with MS Access. It is a rock solid software like Exel basically without any real competitors and to have an runtime option is great add on feature. Access can link to SQL Server or Azure SQL Database so you can share same database with ColdFusion and keep your credibility . (Access can also link to Sharepoint lists (not Office365), Dynamic365 and Salesforce). Great software.

[Charlie Arehart]

Kkfn, you may well identify benefits to Access that suit some use cases, but it's really NOT well-suited (nor any longer to be recommended) to running under a mult-user, multi- threaded platform like CF.

Instead, a multi-user, multi-threaded db server is highly recommended. And those are now available free, for production (mysql, postgres, and more, as well as free versions of sql server, oracle and so on), easily installed, and as has been mentioned with tools available to facilitate migration.

I can understand someone arguing they don't want to make the move. Just offering a counterpoint to promoting Access as a choice to consider for a CF deployment, in 2019.

[Dave Watts]

This is a terrible suggestion, kkfn. There's nothing wrong with MS Access itself. Like you said, Access is "great software". I agree. But it is not at all suited for use with ColdFusion. I mean, you can use MS Excel, which like you said is "rock solid", as a datasource but do you think it's suited for ColdFusion?

Access has always been designed to solve a small, well-defined set of problems. It is great for single-user databases, and at least used to be great for building UIs for those databases - I haven't done anything with that for a while. But Access is not great at handling a bunch of concurrent near-simultaneous requests, because it wasn't designed for that. You know what's designed for that? SQL Server. SQL Server has locking to prevent concurrency problems. Access is not great at figuring out how to reduce disk size after a long period of operations, because it wasn't designed for that, so you end up with literally gigantic (multi-terabyte) files with a few hundred records in them after a long-enough period of operation. You know what's designed for that? SQL Server, which has functionality to do exactly this. And any standalone relational database service will also be good for these sorts of problems. MySQL, etc. You don't have to pay money for this functionality. There are free versions of MS SQL, as well as MySQL, Postgres and so on.

I have personally made thousands of dollars fixing these sorts of Access problems. So, Access has been good to me, I guess. But you can avoid these problems entirely by using a tool suitable to the job. Access is not that tool. Oh, and if you're linking Access to SQL Server, you might as well cut out the middleman and just connect directly to SQL Server.

Use the right tool for the job.

Dave Watts, Eidolon LLC

[kkfin]

Oh Boy.

[jpullam]

Does this mean that we must still install ColdFusion 2016 in 32-bit in order to support Microsoft Access databases? I know this was the case when I ran CF 10 but had assumed that this restriction would have been eliminated by now.

If you must go 32 bit, is there a current article that says what to do for CF and IIS? The one I used to count on is no longer available.

It was "ColdFusion Home - ColdFusion "

[Dave Watts]

I seem to recall finding some ways to set up 64-bit CF to work with MS Access, so I'd try one of those first. You can find them by searching "coldfusion 64 bit microsoft access" or something like that. Here's one that looks likely to work.

create data source for microsoft access on 64 bit server and ColdFusion 16

If you do go with a 32-bit CF install, you'll need to set up 32-bit application pools in IIS. I'd recommend that you skip the IIS configuration part during the install, then do this yourself with wsconfig.exe after you've set up the 32-bit application pools. This might help with that.

IIS7 – Running 32-bit and 64-bit ASP.NET versions at the same time on different worker processes – R...

My overall recommendation to move from Access to a standalone DB engine still stands, though.

Dave Watts, Eidolon LLC

[jpullam]

Thanx a lot for pointing me to that posting. I had been using different search terms and missed it entirely. Problem now solved with a 64 bit Access install.