MACROMEDIA COLDFUSION MX 61 - CONFIGURING AND ADMINISTERING COLDFUSION..., Using Manual

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J2EE application servers 33
If your J2EE application server supports enterprise applications, you should install and deploy the
EAR file. For more information, see
“Installing an EAR file or WAR files” on page 39 .
Note: The instructions in this chapter apply to the ColdFusion MX J2EE configuration. The
ColdFusion MX server configuration contains an embedded version of JRun, which uses
ColdFusion-specific JRun configuration options and mappings. For information on installing
ColdFusion MX in the server configuration, see
Chapter 2, “Installing the Server Configuration,”
on page 19 .
Context root
Because the J2EE environment supports multiple, isolated web applications running in a server
instance, J2EE web applications running in a server are each rooted at a unique base URL, called
a
context root (or context path). The J2EE application server uses this initial portion of the URL
(that is, the portion immediately following http:// hostname ) to determine which web application
services an incoming request.
For example, if you are running ColdFusion MX with a context root of cfmx , you display the
ColdFusion MX Administrator using the URL
http://localhost/
cfmx /CFIDE/administrator/index.cfm.
Most J2EE application servers allow one application in each server instance to use / (forward
slash) for the context root. Setting the context root to / for the ColdFusion MX application is
especially useful when serving CFM pages from the web server because it supports the
functionality most similar to previous ColdFusion releases. In addition, the RDS web application
is not required if you use a context root of /.
When you deploy the ColdFusion MX EAR file, it uses the context root specified when you ran
the installation wizard (which copied your specification to the
context-root
element of the
META-INF/application.xml file). When you deploy ColdFusion MX as a WAR file, you use
application-server-specific functionality to define the context root.
Note: Each web application running in a server instance must have a unique context root. The JRun
default web application uses / for a context root so if you want to use / for the ColdFusion MX context
root when deploying on JRun, you must either delete the default-war application or change the
default-war context root by editing the default-ear/META-INF/application.xml file.
Multiple instances
When using the J2EE configuration, you can define multiple server instances on a single
computer, each running ColdFusion MX. Running multiple instances of ColdFusion MX has the
following advantages:
•
Application isolation
You deploy an independent application to each server instance. Each
server instance has separate settings, and because each server instance runs in its own instance
of the JVM, problems encountered by one application have no effect on other applications.
•
Load balancing and failover
You deploy the same application to each server instance and
add the instances to a cluster. The web server connector optimizes performance and stability by
automatically balancing load and by switching requests to another server instance when a
server instance stops running.
For more information on configuring ColdFusion MX on multiple server instances, including
detailed information for configuring multiple server instances when running on JRun 4, see
Configuring and Administering ColdFusion MX .