- We host a site that started off nicely in ColdFusion (4.5 -> 5) but has the misfortune to have been added to in whatever language the latest contract programmer liked. (We keep it available and do remedial programming; another firm has the contract for routine programming of major modules.) Thus although the initial functionality (and most of the admin services) are handled by ColdFusion (5), it also provides functionality using ASP, Java Servlets, and Java Server Pages. The most fragile portions of the site are the ones relying on specific java configurations. (Yes, there are several.) Installing yet another java environment has the potential to kill the whole thing.
- I'm not anxious to spearhead a transition to CFMX. I'd like Java to settle down to where frequent updates aren't needed for the infrastructure. And, I'd like JDBC to become a bit more mature before I have to rely on it for the portions of the application that have been rock solid (via CF 5 and ODBC) thus far. =Marty=

A new project just landed on my desk. This is not a maintenance project; it's brand new, start from scratch, development. The client asked me to build a site in ColdFusion 5. It's my fourth project in the past year that's based on a legacy version of CF. I could have saved the client both time and money by building it in CFMX, since I have a lot of the functionality pre-built as ColdFusion Components. But CFCs don't work in CF5, so those pre-built components are pretty useless. There's no better time to upgrade than right now; in this article I thought I'd show you the process I'd take when upgrading a server from CF5 to CFMX7.