MACROMEDIA COLDFUSION STUDIO 4.5-USING COLDFUSION..., Use Manual

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Understanding Development Mappings
Development mappings serve two purposes:
•
To enable server-based processing of pages from within ColdFusion Studio
•
To enable debugging of application code on a remote server via RDS
Mapping for page processing
By default, when you browse a document in the internal or external browser, it is
opened from the local file system or returned via FTP from a remote server. That’s
adequate for checking page content and formatting, but for developing a Web site you
need to see dynamic pages as visitors to the site will actually experience them.
To do this, you can route the documents through a Web server. The server software can
be on the local machine, a network server, or a remote system. So, instead of just
opening the files, an HTTP request for the page is sent to the server. If any server-side
processing is required, such as for CFML, JSP or other scripting, the Web server will
hand off the page to the appropriate server for further processing, then return it to the
browser. This is valuable for previewing applications and site elements in a test
environment before deploying the site.
You establish this routing by associating the physical directories where your files are
stored with the server that processes the files. This association is called a
mapping . A
wide range of Web servers is supported, so you can create multiple mappings and
select a server to use for processing as needed. Consult your server documentation or
provider for the specifics of accessing server directories.
Note that to use server mappings, either Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape
Mozilla NGLayout must be configured as the internal browser.
Mapping for debugging
If you have ColdFusion and ColdFusion Studio on the same machine, you can run the
debugger against files opened from the file system, including mapped network drives.
But if you are working with a remote ColdFusion server via RDS, you need to set a
mapping to that server to run the debugger.
Note
To debug applications from ColdFusion Studio, you need to complete the
procedures in the Debugging ColdFusion Applications chapter, as well.