User Guide

Troubleshooting Common Problems 195
Troubleshooting Common Problems
The following section describes a few common problems that you might encounter
and ways to resolve them.
ODBC data source configuration
Problem: ODBC driver manager cannot make a connection to the database.
Connection errors include problems with the location of files, network connections,
and database client library configuration.
Verify that you can connect to the database by clicking the Verify button on the
ODBC Data Sources page of the ColdFusion Administrator. If you are unable to make
a simple connection from that page, you might need to consult your database
administrator to help solve the problem.
Problem: Data source does not exist or name is incorrectly specified.
Create data sources before you refer to them in your application source files. Also,
check the spelling of the data source name.
HTTP/URL
Problem: ColdFusion cannot correctly decode the contents of your form
submission.
The method attribute in forms sent to the ColdFusion Server must be Post, for
example:
<form action="test.cfm" method="Post">
Problem: The browser complains when you include spaces in URLs.
URLs cannot have embedded spaces. Use a plus sign (+) wherever you want to
include a space. ColdFusion correctly translates the + sign into a space.
A common scenario in which this error occurs is when you dynamically generate
your URL from database text fields that have embedded spaces. To avoid this
problem, include only numeric values in the dynamically generated portion of URLs.
Or, you can use the URLEncodedFormat function, which automatically replaces
spaces with + signs.
CFML syntax errors
Problem: You get an error message you do not understand.
Make sure all your CFML tags have matching end tags where appropriate. It is a
common error to omit the end tag for the cfquery, cfoutput, cftable, or cfif tag.
When developing pages in ColdFusion Studio, use the Tag Completion feature,
which adds an closing tag each time you create an opening tag.