Picking up where others left off

[smilypie]

Hi there, I've recently been employed as a junior web developer updating a
website and intranet and i need a lot of help...I mentioned i knew php and
mysql during the interview but i never said i knew cold fusion! Turns out
everything is written in cold fusion. This wouldn't be a problem except its up
to me to figure out how everything is configured. The lady who used to do
everything has left, she didnt leave documentation and can't be
contacted...There's an IT department but they keep referring me back to the
lady who left saying she did everything on her own and was the only one who
knew. The biggest problem here is i dont know what the problem is...let me
explain further:

What i know so far is that the website is hosted on a server to which we ftp
the files across to. The cold fusion queries have sql commands within them,
its connecting to a datasource but i have no idea how it knows which datasource
its connecting to, there must be a file somewhere saying where to connect to
and login info. I dont even know what kind of database is being used, nobody
seems to know, is there somewhere i can find clues as to what this database is,
where to access this database and what passwords to use? The database has some
tables in it already, i can see this from a web admin page (created by the lady
who left) which contains a form that should let me create a table but its
coming up with an error and i can only insert and delete things from tables
that already exist. So that will become a huge problem as days go by...Is there
a special folder somewhere that has information about whats installed?

I'm so lost, any help at all would be appreciated.

[akulla]

Are you hosting the site, or is someone else? If, you are hosting it you need
to get access to ColdFusion Administrator, within that there will be a list of
all your database connections. Otherwise contact your hosting service for the
information. Let me know the answer and we can go from there.

[Stressed_Simon]

ColdFusion connects to the databse via cfquery. For cfquery to know which
database to access uses the datasource attribute, this refers to an entry in
the ColdFusion administrator. It sound like your site is hosted by a 3rd party,
so you must call them and ask where the database is what database, access,
mySQL, MS SQL, etc.

If you need to learn fast then I cannot recommend this book high enough:-
[url]http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321223675/qid=1130253905/sr=8-1/ref=pd[/url]
_ka_1/202-1650291-0385458

Also you will defintely need LiveDocs too:- [url]http://livedocs.macromedia.com/[/url]

HTH

[smilypie]

Thankyou so much for the replies. I'm pretty sure the site is hosted by a third party called adcorp but i can't be 100% certain. I'll give them a call and find out.

~Smily

[Kronin555]

Do an nslookup on the domain name, then do a arin.net lookup on the IP address.
That should give you the owner of the IP block. This might correspond to the
hosting company, or your or their upstream ISP.

[coderWil]

Cold Fusion uses a page called 'Application.cfm'. Usually this page is set up
with global variables for use on the site.

Eg. <cfset allsitedns = "[dnsname]"> might be found there.

In the queries that you are looking at, there should be a parameter called
datasource="[whatever]" The [whatever] will either be the name of the database
connection or the name of a variable. (variables will be indicated by hash
symbols "#[whatever]#".

The way that the Application.cfm page works is that coldfusion will search
every directory until the root looking for the Applicaiton.cfm page, it it
exists, it stops looking and uses that one. (if it doesn't exist, it processes
the pages without it).

I would suggest checking your document root and seeing if the page is in
there. This should be one of the first pages for you to study as it may
contain the answers to many mysteries throughout the site.

Hope this helps,
William

[smilypie]

Kronin i tried your idea, its definitely being hosted by adcorp, I sent them an
email and am waiting for a reply, fingers crossed they get back to me because
it's been a while.

Thanx coderWil! I'll definitely have a look at that page on Monday, i do
remember seeing it when i was snooping around before so its looking good.

~Smily

[smilypie]

CoderWil you rock, i found a whole bunch of useful stuff in the Application.cfm
file. Things are starting to make more sense now. I emailed the hosting company
and they mentioned nobody can add tables except for them on request and our
company doesnt have direct access.