So get this: That problem I had with ColdFusion 5 and Oracle9? Well, at this point the work around may be what we call a "gateway" solution. That means we have CF5 post search parameters via HTTP (using the CFHTTP tag) to a ColdFusion MX 7 server, which actually does the search on the Oracle database (MX and Oracle like each other fine). The CFMX code then takes the resultsets from the Oracle reference cursor and outputs them as WDDX XML. So, that WDDX gets deserialized on the CF5 box and voila! the CF5 box has its data to play with.
Unreal. Don't worry, this sort of gymnastics is just as ridiculous as you think it is (almost as ridiculous as the fact we're still using CF5). The thing is, it's likely to end up in production...