Patch 7 for AR System 7.1 released

OK, not today, but 3 weeks ago. The list of fixes is quite long. But after a little longer look it was not so many for the kind of systems I normally encounter. Most notably was a fix that is supposed to speed up the start of the server when you have big applications, like ITSM. And though still not fast on startup it is faster then the pre patch 7 systems.

In admin tool there is also a performance fix. And I think I have noticed the better performance. But still, when you have 21000+ active links on a server, admin tool just suck, even if I do not have details on. When I use ARGetListActiveLinks() in my own programs I get 21000+ active link names in like under a tenth of a second. It is hard to see exactly how long it take just from output from a console program without real timing, but still alot faster then admin tool. So what does admin tool really do if you only want to list the names that makes it so slow.

Migrator is actually slower then admin tool to handle the list of objects. Try ctrl-a on 21000+ active link and take a coffee brake for 10+ minutes. Actually, making the diff on 21000+ active links goes faster. And still migrator does not always handle the number of fields in a table correctly. So expect to still get currupted tables. I guess it only happens if you only migrate selected fields, not full form. But I do not feel safe in how migrator do things. And the table problem is not corrected by just migrating the form again. You have to force a 'recreate' of the table. Or hack the database.

User tool have lots of fixes that makes you wonder, does user tool really work? And in 7.1 I have seen to many problems to be surprised when I find new once. It is hard to develop anything when the intended client does not follow the rules of the application system.

Mid-Tier is not so much better then user tool. But for some reason I have lately found the web function better then user tool. Even if things like shortcut keys work in the web version of the client.

So far I have not investigated what really make my patch 6 installation make e-mail engine use 100% CPU. Is it the not so update 1.6.0_02 JRE or something else. But on my patch 7 system e-mail engine is running nice with JRE 1.6.0_13. It is just sitting in the background when it should. Have to see what happens when you put some load on the system.

OK, so there you have some sign of life from me. A totally non-scientific observation of the latest patch for AR System 7.1. Hope I have something more interesting to write soon. Some hard facts.

One little thing about ITSM, is it OK for an action to take 8 seconds on a modern application server. OK, it is not a super fast database, but only searching for the active links when opening Incident Manger Console takes 8 seconds if you do not have it cached. Which mean on a development cache server it always takes forever to use the ITSM applications.