Choosing the Right Deployment Option

Macromedia provides three methods for deploying your ColdFusion applications. You have to decide the appropriate method for your configuration and the target environment. For example, if you need to simply back up your current configuration as part of a contingency plan for hardware failure, you might choose to create a ColdFusion archive (.car). This will allow you to re-create the ColdFusion settings and re-deploy any code and other files. Or maybe you are an IS manager who needs the ability to deploy multiple ColdFusion server instances on a departmental IBM WebSphere server. The J2EE archive (.EAR) makes more sense for you. Or perhaps you are an independent developer interested in selling your custom tags or components without having your code reverse-engineered into the original CFML. Then surely you will opt for sourceless deployment. Table 6.6 should help you determine the appropriate deployment option.

Table 6.6. Deployment Options

REQUIREMENTS	COLDFUSION ARCHIVE (.CAR)	J2EE ARCHIVES (.EAR/.WAR)	SOURCELESS DEPLOY
Existing ColdFusion MX Server	x		x
Existing J2EE Application Server		x
Integrate with J2EE Application Server deployment functionality		x
Integrate with the ColdFusion MX 7 multiserver configuration Instance Manager	x
ColdFusion MX Enterprise license for archive creation	x
ColdFusion MX Enterprise license for archive deployment	x	x
Configure within ColdFusion MX Administrator	x	x
Configure from the command line			x
Create archive files	x	x
Deploy a full ColdFusion MX Application server		x
Optionally include ColdFusion MX Administrator	x	x
Optionally include specific ColdFusion Server settings	x
Optionally include specific Data Sources	x	x
Optionally include specific Event Gateways, Scheduled Tasks, Verity Collections, etc.	x
Optionally include files from different server directories	x
Deploy CFML Source Code	x	x
Deploy ColdFusion templates as Java bytecode		x	x