TechNote (Archived)

ColdFusion MX 6.1 and MX 7: Data source issues with neo-query.xml

Issue

Occasionally, ColdFusion MX may fail to cleanly restart. Instead, the error "DataSource service is unavailable" will display in ColdFusion pages that you attempt to browse.

Reason

The problem occurs due to corruption of the neo-query.xml file, where data source information is stored. This file is located in the following locations:

cf_root\lib for standalone configurations
jrun_root\servers\serverName-ear\serverName-war\WEB-INF\cfusion\lib for MultiServer configurations

This file is backed up with every restart of ColdFusion but often the backup can also be corrupt.

There are a number of known causes for neo-query.xml file corruption. These include hard shutdowns of ColdFusion MX due to OutOfMemory conditions on the computer. Hard shutdowns can also be caused by Java Virtual Machine (JVM) crashes.

Macromedia has also seen corruption caused by applications that try to manipulate the neo-query.xml file directly. This occurs because ColdFusion does not anticipate others writing directly to the file, so simultaneous writes can occur, corrupting the file. This does not happen with ColdFusion MX 7 when using the adminAPI.

There are also suspected causes of neo-query.xml corruption. It is suspected that special characters added to a data source property can cause the problem. Also, carriage returns and line feeds that can be added in the multi-line text fields of the ColdFusion MX Administrator may cause the problem. These issues do not reliably reproduce the problem, however.

Solution

Currently, the only sure workaround is to regularly save a backup of the neo-query.xml file outside of thecf_root\lib directory. If ColdFusion fails to restart, restore your latest backup XML file.