Stunnel connection with MX6.1

[rich@tcaprint.com]

Hey Gang-

I'm currently onsite with a client who is running CFMX6.1 with a remote DSN
connection to a SQL Server 2000 database. The client's system is in the U.K.
and the connection from CF to the SQL Server is required to be encrypted, so
they have a slightly older version of Stunnel set up to handle this.

Most everything appears to be running normally except that occassionally, but
fairly regularly, ColdFusion stops responding and hangs. Through some testing I
can see that the data set being returned to ColdFusion from SQL Server appears
to freeze and nothing will get returned. I then tried a small query tool called
SQLConn32, which is a simple little tool that runs outside of the ColdFusion
space and requests/returns queries from any datasource. Requests are also
hanging when I use that tool.

So if you can answer any or all of the following questions, I'll treat you to
a virtual beer;

The last time this app worked properly was in CF5.0. When it was upgraded to
MX6.1 the query fuzziness started to occur. Does anyone have or can you point
me to any details about the changes made to ColdFusion that would affect
datasets and queries when Macromedia upgraded CF to MX? (i.e., JDBC drivers,
etc.)

This app is running a CFMX6.1 server with a remote DB connection to SQL Server
2000 that's encrytped with Stunnel. Does anyone have any experience/tales using
this or a similar setup?

When ColdFusion is installed, does it install it's own version of ODBC/JDBC
drivers or does it modify the existing drivers? (Or does it not touch the
existing ODBC configuration??) I verified that MDAC 2.8 is currently on the
system.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Rich Leach

[Brontojoris]

I experience similar issues with connecting to a SQL 2000 server via openSSH.
My solution is to restart tomcat. Not a great solution, but since this is only
running on my PowerBook, for local development, I can put up with it.

From what I can gather, the SSH tunnel times out after a certain period of
inactivity, and disconnects. For some reason, Coldfusion is not picking up the
broken connection or reporting an error.

You may wish to experiment with the connection pooling and caching settings of
the CF Admin panel.

[rich@tcaprint.com]

ahh, I didn't think it would be the SSH timing out.... and yes, so far all
we've been able to do is restart but it's becoming a problem that ColdFusion is
not able to catch it. We may have to experiment with a batch script or
something along those lines....

What driver are you using to connect to SQL Server? Due to port constraints we
have to use ODBC Sockets instead of the standard SQL Server driver, and I was
questioning the driver's ability to handle the connection.

Rich

[rich@tcaprint.com]

here's an update: it looks like the Stunnel is either timing out or outright
failing, so we're now looking at possibly reconfiguring the Stunnel
client/server and/or looking at getting ColdFusion to at least recognize the
connection failure.... not sure how to do that to meet our needs, but that's
what we're working on at the moment....

rich

[Brontojoris]

I'm using the standard SQL Server driver that ships with ColdFusion. I setup my
datasources to point to localhost:1433. The SSH tunnel grabs anything going to
port 1433 and redirects it to the SQL Server.

I think Coldfusion hanging might be related to this technote:
[url]http://www.macromedia.com/go/tn_18772[/url]