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Alchemi v.1.0 (beta) Release Notes
July 5, 2005
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Changes from v0.8.0:
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- The Manager and Executor can both now run in two modes:
- as a normal desktop application
- as a windows service
- The Service mode includes a GUI Service controller, which looks exactly like
the desktop application version. This can be used to start/stop the service and
change the settings for the Manager/Executor. The Services are configured to
startup automatically by default. This can be changed using the standard Windows
Service Control Manager.
Note: The Executor works only in the dedicated-mode while running as a service.
- The Manager and Executor have advanced logging capabilities enabling easier
reporting of errors. The logging is enabled by default, and uses the log4net
APIs. This includes detailed debug information which is useful while tracking
possible bugs. The logging settings cab ne changed using the
Alchemi.Manager.exe.config for the Manager and the Alchemi.Executor.exe.config
file for the Executor. The Manager produces the log file: alchemi-manager.log
while the Executor logs its information in alchemi-executor.log.
- The Manager and Executor have the capability to automatically update
themselves. The update process is actuated manually by the user via the "Help >
Check for updates" menu option. This begins the update process with the
Manager/Executor checking for updates from a predefined location. The update
process is described in detail in the documentation.
- The Executor can now detect if a Manager is disconnected and this launches a
seperate thread to try and connect to the manager again.
- The Executor Heart-beat and other additional connection settings (such as
those which define parameters for actions when a Manager is disconnected) are
configurable through the Executor form.
- The GApplication now cleans up files properly after completion.
- A new constructor in the GApplication class defines if it can be re-used. By
default a GApplication is only single use.
- Added a new method to ThreadCollection to enable removing threads from the
application. This API feature is under review, and is not guaranteed to remain
unchanged in the stable v.1.0.
- The Alchemi console interface is improved with a lot of new features including
job-submission and graphical views for grid-applications and executor
statistics.
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BUG-FIXES:
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- On Non-dedicated executor disconnect finished threads were reset. In v.1.0
threads are reset only if they are not already finished/dead.
- Due to an error in the way the number of completed threads are counted and
maintained, the Application_Finish event used to be called before all threads
were actually completed. This lead to various problems including loss of some
threads. In v.1.0, the thread count is maintained in the database and the
correct count is always maintained. Hence the Application_Finish would be called
at the right time.
- The Executor used to carry the context of all previously loaded AppDomains
(one for each grid-application) and this caused memory/performance issues. The
Executor now recieves the new "CleanUp" event from the GApplication, and unloads
AppDomains so that the overhead is avoided as soon as an application finishes.
- A thread that is relinquished by an Executor and it has already been aborted,
the Manager used to reschedule it. This issue has been fixed in v.1.0. and the
Manager verifies threads and re-schedules only those which are not already
aborted.
- When the same GApplication is used multiple times containing a large number of
grid threads, synchronization problems appeared due to different threads
accessing/modifying the list of grid-threads. This is fixed in v.1.0 as the
code-block that accesses/modifies the thread-collection is now synchronized.
Furthermore, a GApplication is now clearly defined as either single-use
(default) or multi-use. Only multi-use GApplications can be used more than once,
and threads can be added to it after the first set of threads are completed.
- The Manager/Executor status-area which shows the recently logged messages is
limited in length. Due to this, after a certain number of messages, the
text-area didnot show any new information. This is fixed now, with the text-area
always showing only the last 10 lines of logged messages. Older messages can be
found in the log files: (alchemi-manager.log, alchemi-executor.log).
- The Alchemi Console used to stop abruptly on unhandled errors. This has been
fixed to have a catch-all-errors handler which provides the default
error-handling mechanism and graceful exit from unexpected situations.
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Breaking Changes:
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- A new namespace Alchemi.Core.Owner has been introduced and the following
classes have been re-arranged to be part of this namespace:
- ApplicationState
- EmbeddedFileDependency
- FileDependency
- FileDepenedencyCollection
- GApplication
- GConnection
- GConnectionDialog
- GConnectionDialogForm
- GJob
- GThread
- ModuleDependency
- ThreadCollection
- ThreadIdentifier
- ThreadState
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