Remote Development Services (RDS) provides a secure connection from ColdFusion Studio to the ColdFusion Server environment. You have to implement RDS security if you want to provide access to data sources using server-based browsing or to run the interactive debugger.
RDS security provides security services in a team-oriented development environment where groups of developers working in ColdFusion Studio require different levels of access to ColdFusion files and data sources. This type of security is helpful to companies with multiple or geographically dispersed development groups, and to ISPs that host ColdFusion development environments.
Developers working in ColdFusion Studio access remotely by opening CFM files or accessing data sources. RDS security authenticates users and grants them access only to the resources assigned to them by a security context and associated user directories.
For example, suppose you are a ColdFusion Server administrator at the Planetary Development Company. You have two development groups: the Saturn team and the Earth team. Each team simultaneously develops separate ColdFusion Web applications.
You want to limit the Saturn team's access from ColdFusion Studio to data source saturn_dsn and the files in the directory c:\development\saturn. The Earth team should be able to access only the data source earth_dsn and the files in the c:\development\earth directory. RDS security allows you to create two different security contexts, one for the Saturn team and one for the Earth team.