Quick post on how to set up a datasource in the Coldfusion Administrator. First you’ll want to open the Coldfusion Administrator. I’m going to assume that you will be doing this locally since if you don’t have a datasource you’ve probably are just at the beginning stages of development. As such let’s open the admin.

Working locally it is likely that you will use the following link http://localhost:8500/CFIDE/administrator/index.cfm for Coldfusion 8 and http://127.0.0.1:8500/CFIDE/administrator/index.cfm for Coldfusion 9. Remember though if you have multiple versions of the Coldfusion server running on your machine the port number may not be 8500. Instead as ports are used Coldfusion will increment the port number by 1 until reaching the next available port. So for example if you had Coldfusion 8 running, and are now running Coldfusion 9 as well your port number is most likely 8501. Nonetheless, if this is the case, my guess is that your not reading this article.

Once into the administrator click on ‘Data Sources’ under the ‘Data & Services’ tab on the left.

Data Sources menu in Coldfusion 9 Administrator

Next create a name for your datasource.  This can be whatever you want it to be.  This is the label that will represent the connection setup between Coldfusion and this particular database.  You will also need to select a driver from the drop-down.  In my case I’m using MySql 5 so I’ll choose ‘MySql 4/5′ from the drop-down.  You will choose whatever is appropriate for your particular database.

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