Disable RDS in Coldfusion MX

Whenever we install a software, we hardly bothers to look at each of the presented options/components to decide which one to select or deselect and either we select whatever it prompts for or we opt not to deselect the default selected components. Later if you really use the software, you come across many bottlenecks in the performance because of the laxity you exercised during installation. The same I experienced when I installed Coldfusion and later I had to uninstall RDS because of secrity breach on the machine because of RDS installtion.

If you use Macromedia Dreamweaver MX or Macromedia HomeSite+ to develop your applications, you can access a remote ColdFusion MX 7 server using HTTP. However, you must configure Remote Development Services (RDS) in your integrated development environment (IDE), and RDS must be enabled in ColdFusion MX 7. Using RDS, IDE users can securely access remote files and data sources, build SQL queries from these data sources, and debug CFML code.

Note: The ColdFusion Report Builder uses RDS for the Query Builder and for charting support.

However, for security reasons, Macromedia recommends that you disable RDS on a production server. To disable it, you must disable the RDSServlet mapping.

To disable the RDSServlet mapping:

1. Back up the web.xml file.

   This file is in the cf_root\wwwroot\WEB-INF directory in Windows and in the cf_root/wwwroot/WEB-INF directory on UNIX. In the multiserver and J2EE configurations, this file is under cf_webapp_root/WEB-INF.

2. Open the original web.xml file for editing.
3. Comment out the RDSServlet mapping, as the following example shows: <!-- <servlet-mapping id="macromedia_mapping_9"> <servlet-name>RDSServlet</servlet-name> <url-pattern>/CFIDE/main/ide.cfm</url-pattern> </servlet-mapping> -->
4. Save the file.
5. Restart ColdFusion MX 7.

   RDS is disabled on the ColdFusion MX 7 server.

For more information, see Starting and stopping services for Windows, or Managing the process for UNIX.