Specific Tuning Techniques (ColdFusion Administrator Settings)

After you've made decisions about the operating system and Web server, you can turn your attention to tuning the ColdFusion application server. There are a number of knobs to turn to optimize the performance of the ColdFusion server, as described in the following subsections.

Saving Class Files

ColdFusion compiles .cfm (and other ColdFusion) files into Java bytecode, which is read upon execution. By default code is compiled in memory and not saved to disk. However, on production systems (where code does not change) they may be a performance gain by checking the "Save class files" option.

Another important option is "Trusted Cache". If this box is checked, the ColdFusion Application Server trusts that the CFML code of the template being requested has not changed. If changes are made to templates, the changes are ignored until the Trusted Cache box is unchecked and the particular templates are browsed. After that, Trusted Cache can be turned on again.

TIP

If Trusted Cache is being used and a substantial number of templates are changed, every template has to be browsed before the Trusted Cache option can be turned on again. In that case, it might be easiest to cycle the ColdFusion services to clear all cached pages.

Simultaneous Requests

In ColdFusion Administrator's Server Settings group, the Settings option contains Limit Simultaneous Request to x Tunable. This setting determines the number of listener threads the ColdFusion Application Server sets up to receive Web server requests. When all the threads are busy, new requests are queued.

There is no rule of thumb for setting this option optimally. Only testing under load can determine the best setting for any given configuration.

NOTE

This option is only applicable to the standalone ColdFusion. The J2EE editions require that the underlying J2EE server be tuned to manage requests.