Is there a free trial for adobe coldfusion?

[Pierre5FB7]

Hi,

I wanted to try coldfusion for a project for a customer, also I downloaded and installed coldfusion trial for linux. But when  I start eclipse/coldfusion I got the following error message:

"Standard Edition trial expired. Only the ColdFusion Builder Express Edition features are available now." It was supposed to be a 30 days trial not a 0 day 🙂

ColdfusionBuilder start but of course not remote server and other stuffs needed for evaluation. I'm a little disapointed

[Dave Watts]

Did you put in a serial number? You shouldn't do that if you want the trial version. Did you have a previous version of CF installed already? I don't see why that would cause a problem, but it potentially could I guess.

Dave Watts, Eidolon LLC

[Pierre5FB7]

Thanks Dave, but I haven't  any serial number or previous installed version.

A friend told me that I would try CF for a development I wanted to discover it.

[Charlie Arehart]

Pierre, it's critical that we distinguish CF and CF Builder (CFB). The former is an application server, the latter is an IDE. Since you mention both,a nd may well want to use both, let me clarify things.

First, one could install CFB on its own (and perhaps connect to a CF server on another machine), and one could install CF on its own (and perhaps use some other editor to work with CFML code), but my point is that they are separate. One can of course install BOTH CFB and CF on the same machine, and finally, CFB 2016 and above even offers the OPTION to install CF AS WELL AS CFB (which I've found is more confusing than helpful for most people, as they often end up having TWO CF's on one machine and not realize it, and get confused because they're not sure which they're using, and further confused by various instructions on the web that don't consider this possibilty of the CF within CFB).

Anyway, just clarifying these things to level-set the discussion and because you mention "CF" in the title and your opening sentence.

As for the message you are seeing, that is in fact ONLY about CFB. It has NOTHING to do with CF itself.

To be clear, if you install CFB and don't put in a valid CFB license key, yes you SHOULD get a 60 day trial of CFB.  After those 60 days, if you have not put in a valid CFB license key, it would revert to what they call the Express edition, and yes you'd see that message. 

FWIW, if one installs CF and doesn't put in a valid CF license key, then that gets you a 30 day trial of CF--and after those 30 days if you don't put in a key, it reverst to what is called the Developer edition (and that would be indicated on the CF Admin and in some other places).

So if every one installs either product and sees that they "immediately" get either the Express edition of CFB or the Developer edition of CF, that should mean that a prior installation of either product HAD been on the machine and the trial HAD ended, and so one would NOT be able to "get another trial". I realize you may say "there's no way, no one ever installed CFB on this machine".

But putting all that aside, note that the "error message" is instead just a notice. It doesn't mean you "won't work". Yes, it has limited functionality. Maybe you don't even need it. You mention "remote server and other stuffs needed for evaluation". First, are you SURE that what you want to use ni CFB "won't work"? There ARE aspects of CFB that will work FINE even with a "remote" server in the Express edition of CFB. Try it, before getting too concerned about this situation.

And second, again, note that we are talking about CFB here, not CF. If you had really meant that you were installing "CF" on the machine to evaluate it, you can. NOTHING about CF is in any way limited or affected by the CFB running on the machine, or whether you use CFB to edit or even "run" the code. Again, CF and CFB are entirely separate products.

Let us know if that helps, or if you feel there is still a problem you must overcome.

One other thing: I have not heard of this as a known bug (to have it start immediately in the Express edition", but it could well be a known bug. Have you used the Help menu in CFBuilder to apply any available CFB updates? Try that also, before responding.

[Pierre5FB7]

Many Thanks Charlie for your detailed answer.

You are right it was confusing to me to be able to get a trial version of CFBuilder without CF.

As the tomcat server is included and may be run , I expected the same for RDS and other part of CF until I understand how it works with your answer.

In fact I tried to follow the CF training available on youtube and in the step "02 Configuring your work environment ## 02 Installing Coldfusion Builder" it is told that CF server will be installed and useable for the 60 days trial and when I started I get the error that I have reported.

I guess that the case for the OSX and windows version not for the Linux version.

[Pierre5FB7]

BTW I forgotten to say that there is no update

[Charlie Arehart]

There is no difference about the trial period in Linux vs win/Mac.

Again, CFB has a 60-day trial, and CF has 30-day trial. And both products work after their trials, with limitations that most would not notice.

If you're getting that message about cfb, then it would seem a prior instalation had been done. If you feel you did not, what do you need in CFB that is not working that you want? 

[Pierre5FB7 · Accepted solution]

Oups, I entered a long response 2 days ago and I don't see it 😞 perhaps a problem of "post"

Just few words to confirm that it is the first time I install CFB and as it's my own workstation (Linuxmint) no one else may have do any installation.

Now eclipse/CFB/tomcat are working correctly, it's just RDS which is not useable and so I am not able to follow the tutorial because I am stuck at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPs2IQBL56w&list=PL3iywAijqFoUD31CQBLsHvJn4WAonNA7r&index=19

Do I have to re-intall CFB?

Thanks in advance for your hep.

[Dave Watts · Accepted solution]

You shouldn't have to reinstall CF Builder, I think. The way RDS works is that your RDS client (CF Builder) sends an HTTP request to your web server for /CFIDE/Main/ide.cfm (which is a file that doesn't actually exist), your web server sees it's a .cfm request and sends it to your CF server, and your CF server identifies this as a special request and sends it to another servlet for processing. So, here are the things that could be wrong:

- your CF server has RDS disabled

- your web server isn't sending the request to CF for some reason (this used to be common with older versions of IIS on Windows but probably isn't an issue here)

I would guess it's the first thing, so I would look for that option in the CF Administrator and enable it - I'm not 100% sure where it is, but it's in there and you can find it in the documentation.

Dave Watts, Eidolon LLC

[Pierre5FB7]

Many Thanks Dave,

I was obsessed by the evaluation expiration message and didn't check the RDS access within the CF configuration.

Now it's working and I may continue the tutorial 🙂