[Pansophy] CFGrid - Strange Error Message (migrating away from CF UI tags)

Tue Oct 10 11:00:15 EDT 2023

Bobby,

I appreciate the information and the encouragement.
It has been on my radar for awhile now and Megan and Matt are working on updating all of our Data Mining code where so much of that stuff is being used.
And I appreciate letting us know what you use for the replacement. I have been researching best practices and learning what I can to make the move.
Funny, I was just reading the deprecated-features page to see what priorities we need to put in place.

Thank You again for the information. Hopefully, we can reach out if we get stuck.

Valerie Bookwalter
Jefferson Lab, ACC
SRF Operations
SRFOPS Software Systems Group
1-757-269-5802 (OFFICE - currently working offsite)

From: Bobby Lawrence <robertl at jlab.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2023 10:54 AM
To: Mike Dickey <mdickey at jlab.org>
Cc: Valerie Bookwalter <bookwalt at jlab.org>; Dana Cochran <cochran at jlab.org>
Subject: RE: CFGrid - Strange Error Message

FYI -
I know you may not want to hear it, but its probably for the best that you guys stop using CFGRID (and most of the CF UI tags).  I know your codebase is littered with it, but its really more of a headache than anything else and basically ties you to Adobe ColdFusion, meaning that you can't ever move to another CFML implementation (like the free, open source one that is so popular: Lucee).

Being tied to Adobe ColdFusion means you are at the mercy of Adobe and have to pay whatever licensing fee's they demand.  For CF2021, Adobe changed the licensing which ended up drastically increasing the cost for a lot of companies and it caused a lot of complaints in the developer community (https://community.adobe.com/t5/coldfusion-discussions/coldfusion-2021-licensing-gone-mad/td-p/13186354).

In addition, Adobe is constantly deprecating their UI tags (https://helpx.adobe.com/coldfusion/deprecated-features.html) and even though CFGRID isn't deprecated yet, it could be in the future.  If/when this happens, none of your CFGRID code will work on the newer ColdFusion version so you wont be able to upgrade.  Then you'll be stuck on the old, unsupported version (something Cybersecurity may not like) until you fix all your code.

I would implore you guys to start moving away from the CF UI tags and start using JQuery.  You may have a little more work to do up front because you have to write a bit more Javascript, but this will make you better developers in the end.
Here is a link to a site which gives you examples of how to replace your CF UI tag with a JQuery equivalent:
https://github.com/cfjedimaster/ColdFusion-UI-the-Right-Way

This one in particular shows you how to use JQuery datatables instead of CFGRID:
https://github.com/cfjedimaster/ColdFusion-UI-the-Right-Way/blob/master/chapters/cfgrid/index.md

From: Bobby Lawrence
Sent: Monday, October 09, 2023 4:52 PM
To: Mike Dickey <mdickey at JLAB.ORG<mailto:mdickey at JLAB.ORG>>
Cc: Valerie Bookwalter <bookwalt at jlab.org<mailto:bookwalt at jlab.org>>
Subject: RE: CFGrid - Strange Error Message

Ok - so I have no idea why, but the problem was the "order by" clause of your "Grade" query in VendorQA.cfc
For whatever reason, when the column names in that clause were prefixed by the 'table name' (really the query name), this ended up adding more columns to the in-memory query result, which then resulted in this strange error.
I changed that clause from:
Order by    P_SNs.Acronym, P_SNs.PONumber, P_SNs.VendorName, P_SNs.partnumber
to:
Order by    Acronym, PONumber, VendorName, partnumber
And the error disappeared.
I'm sure there is a CF bug somewhere that is causing all of this, but without a repeatable test case, we can't really complain to Adobe.

Looks like all this query-of-queries business is caused by the fact that you cannot query between your databases.  Have you guys looked into database links?

From: Mike Dickey <mdickey at jlab.org<mailto:mdickey at jlab.org>>
Sent: Monday, October 09, 2023 2:01 PM
To: Bobby Lawrence <robertl at jlab.org<mailto:robertl at jlab.org>>
Cc: Valerie Bookwalter <bookwalt at jlab.org<mailto:bookwalt at jlab.org>>
Subject: RE: CFGrid - Strange Error Message

Hi Bobby,

Also, I have been using "L2PRD" for testing.  I should return 39 records in Dev.

Mike Dickey
SRF Inventory Technician
Jefferson Lab
12000 Jefferson Ave
Newport News, VA 23606
(757) 269-7755

From: Bobby Lawrence <robertl at jlab.org<mailto:robertl at jlab.org>>
Sent: Monday, October 9, 2023 1:34 PM
To: Mike Dickey <mdickey at jlab.org<mailto:mdickey at jlab.org>>
Cc: Valerie Bookwalter <bookwalt at jlab.org<mailto:bookwalt at jlab.org>>
Subject: RE: CFGrid - Strange Error Message

What is the error you are seeing?  Can you point me to a page where its happening?

From: Mike Dickey <mdickey at jlab.org<mailto:mdickey at jlab.org>>
Sent: Monday, October 09, 2023 12:51 PM
To: Bobby Lawrence <robertl at jlab.org<mailto:robertl at jlab.org>>
Cc: Valerie Bookwalter <bookwalt at jlab.org<mailto:bookwalt at jlab.org>>
Subject: RE: CFGrid - Strange Error Message

Hi Bobby,

Nope, same error.

Mike Dickey
SRF Inventory Technician
Jefferson Lab
12000 Jefferson Ave
Newport News, VA 23606
(757) 269-7755

From: Bobby Lawrence <robertl at jlab.org<mailto:robertl at jlab.org>>
Sent: Monday, October 9, 2023 11:44 AM
To: Mike Dickey <mdickey at jlab.org<mailto:mdickey at jlab.org>>
Cc: Valerie Bookwalter <bookwalt at jlab.org<mailto:bookwalt at jlab.org>>
Subject: RE: CFGrid - Strange Error Message

Ok - should be applied.  Give it a test

From: Mike Dickey <mdickey at jlab.org<mailto:mdickey at jlab.org>>
Sent: Monday, October 09, 2023 11:33 AM
To: Bobby Lawrence <robertl at jlab.org<mailto:robertl at jlab.org>>
Cc: Valerie Bookwalter <bookwalt at jlab.org<mailto:bookwalt at jlab.org>>
Subject: RE: CFGrid - Strange Error Message

Awesome, will do.

Mike Dickey
SRF Inventory Technician
Jefferson Lab
12000 Jefferson Ave
Newport News, VA 23606
(757) 269-7755

From: Bobby Lawrence <robertl at jlab.org<mailto:robertl at jlab.org>>
Sent: Monday, October 9, 2023 11:31 AM
To: Mike Dickey <mdickey at jlab.org<mailto:mdickey at jlab.org>>
Cc: Valerie Bookwalter <bookwalt at jlab.org<mailto:bookwalt at jlab.org>>
Subject: RE: CFGrid - Strange Error Message

We actually had this same problem last year and got the hot fix.  I'll apply it to pansophydev and you can test...

From: Mike Dickey <mdickey at jlab.org<mailto:mdickey at jlab.org>>
Sent: Monday, October 09, 2023 11:23 AM
To: Bobby Lawrence <robertl at jlab.org<mailto:robertl at jlab.org>>
Cc: Valerie Bookwalter <bookwalt at jlab.org<mailto:bookwalt at jlab.org>>
Subject: CFGrid - Strange Error Message

Hi Bobby,

We got a strange error message using a CFGrid with a QoQ.

After doing some Google searching, Valerie & I think we may have found a fix from Adobe.
https://community.adobe.com/t5/coldfusion-discussions/coldfusion-2021-release-and-coldfusion-2018-release-september-updates/m-p/12385986/page/2#M189855

Would you contact cfsup at adobe.com<mailto:cfsup at adobe.com> to see if you can get the fix and install it.

Thanks,

Mike Dickey
SRF Inventory Technician
Jefferson Lab
12000 Jefferson Ave
Newport News, VA 23606
(757) 269-7755

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