ColdFusion 8 Enterprise offers a powerful new feature that you may have missed: multiple user access for the ColdFusion Administrator. As opposed to the traditional "one ring to rule them all" single Admin password, this new feature supports separate user names (and corresponding passwords). More important, for each user name you can selectively grant access to different Administrator features, including the new Server Monitor, the Administrator API, and more.

This same multiple user functionality also extends to Remote Development Services (RDS) access, which works with code editors like Dreamweaver, HomeSite+, ColdFusion Studio, and Eclipse with the Adobe ColdFusion Extensions for Eclipse. If RDS is enabled in ColdFusion, authenticated users can access the server using special features within these editors to obtain information from the server. For example, they can determine what data sources exist, query them, build code based on them, and more. RDS also enables access from within the editors to files on the server (even remotely) over HTTP, as an alternative to FTP. Nonetheless, many have long lamented that there has been only one RDS password definable per server, to be shared by all developers. That one password gave full access to all data sources and files on the entire server.

With ColdFusion 8 Enterprise (and the Developer edition), though, these limitations are now lifted. You can, of course, continue to use just one admin and/or one RDS password (or none at all, though that's definitely inappropriate for a production server or any public server). If, however, you're responsible for a ColdFusion server accessed by many people who need Administrator (or Monitor or Admin API) privileges, or you have many developers who need to use RDS, the new multiple user support can be a valuable enhancement. (ColdFusion 8 Standard, it should be noted, continues to offer only a single Administrator and/or RDS password.)

Those who have used ColdFusion for many years may recognize that this is actually a return of functionality that once existed. ColdFusion 4 and 5 offered similar functionality, but that previous implementation relied upon an embedded security product called Netegrity SiteMinder, which was not included as of ColdFusion MX 6. The new multiple user functionality in ColdFusion 8 Enterprise (and the Developer edition) is instead built upon underlying Java security.

This article introduces the new multiple user feature for both the Administrator and RDS. After introducing each topic and showing how to configure it, an example is provided to illustrate its use.

Requirements

In order to make the most of this article, you need the following software and files:

ColdFusion 8

• Try
• Buy

Prerequisite knowledge

Prior experience with the ColdFusion Administrator will be helpful.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License

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