Ongoing Stability Issues

jclark58

I continue to struggle with a serious of eratic and inconsistent performance problems with AwareIM on a client site.

These include:

menu items which behave differently at different times.

Form Titles which are the Title from a previously displayed form

Queries which display the fields and results of the previous query.

An email system which complains and then refuses to operate over errors it detects in the content of incomming emails over which I have no control. or complains that there are two sessions running when it is the only entity that accesses that account.

This implementation is running on a VMWare virtual machine under windows server. Notes in the Installation guide indicate that the virtual memory management should be set to "guarunteed" but there is no such setting in the VM the client is using and the client SA refuses to believe that such a setting could/should have any effect on an application process.

Previous queries regarding these matters on this forum have met with little response apart from other users in particular tford and pbrad who seem to be carrying the bulk of the forum support load. Followup questions and prods to support@awareim have not been responded to.

Queries direct to Sun regarding the javamail subssytem would seem to indicate thet maybe an old version is being used and while my query and their response was cc'd to support@awareim.com there has also been no response on this issue.

A quick review of the Problems forum would appear to show that quite a number of users are seeing stability / speed or "ease of configuration" problems with AwareIM.

This situation has become untennable for the client and they are now talking about "different solutions".

Given that an amount on money has passed hands between the client, myself and AwareIM for a system that the client considers is not working I am interested in resolving this situation ASAP and so should AwareIM.

Apologies if this post seems somewhat blunt however the courtesy of a helpful response would be most appreciated.

aware_support

John,

while we sympathize with your ongoing problems, your Aware IM criticism is probably mis-directed. Many clients would testify about the quality of our support. Regarding your problems:

"Guranteed" memory is not a setting. It is a feature of the ISP you are using. If they don't even understand what it is, you better change the provider. If Aware IM is running under conditions when there is not enough memory its behaviour is very likely to be erratic. See more details in the Installation Guide.
Regarding specific problems (e-mail etc). We fix problems according to our own schedule, perception of importance etc. This is how all companies operate. UNLESS you pay for the specific issues that are urgent to you. You don't pay, so we'll address the problems when we see fit.

Apologies for any inconvenience.

jclark58

Thank you, your response has been passed to my client.

The client is not using an ISP as I mentioned they are a professional not for profit organisation runing multiple virtual machines in VMWARE Infrastructure 3.5 on their own servers, as reported to you in a previous post.
The admission that unless AwareIM has enough memory, its performance will be erratic is a dumbfounding claim at best- slow I can understand, but that insufficient memory would cause erratic behaviour implies some form of design problem - in my 30 years of experience in this industry.
I am asking that you advise what setting this product requires to make it stable.
As previously indicated the client will be paying no more money to me or anyone until what they have paid for works. Some of these issues particularly the email situation are ongoing and have been for over a year, and I am not the only one experiencing them.

If I was requesting some special new feature Yes I can understand payment over and above the norm, but no one I know pays for rectification of identified problems in a product that they have already paid for.

You can see my quandry -

Essentially the product needs to be fit for purpose, stable, reliable and do what it is advertised to do. At this point the empirical evidence would suggest that this is at best conditional.

tford

John,

Previous queries regarding these matters on this forum have met with little response apart from other users in particular tford and pbrad who seem to be carrying the bulk of the forum support load.

FYI -- I have made the decision to be active in the forums was a very conscious one to:
1) learn AwareIM inside out by helping others solve their questions

2) to help AwareIM support focus their time/effort on ongoing development of the product

TOm

jclark58

Thanks Tom - Absolutely no disrespect intended in fact the opposite You and pbrad do a Great service. I would like to contribute more as well - merely pointing a few issues over a long period now with AwareIM.

Please dont misinterpret me. I believe that if there is an issue it is best to tackle it on the basis that removal of issues makes products and services better.

Many would just silently go elsewhere.

aware_support

Answering your questions:

So how much memory has been allocated to the Aware IM components?
Maybe, but I am yet to see a program that handles memory issues 100% gracefully in all my 30 years experience in IT. This is not the point, anyway.
Also, memory being a cause of the erratic behaviour is a guess only. We cannot do anything when we are being told that "something works erratically". If you want we can look at the client machine remotely but you will have to pay for this on an hourly basis.
This depends on a lot of factors - there is no silver bullet. Generally, the more memory the better.

jclark58

Nice to hear someone else has been around as long as me

The Virtual machine has 2GB RAM allocated to it out of a total as I recall of something like 32 or 64 GB physical RAM- Scads anyway.

AwareIM components JBOSS, TOMCAT and have either 256M or 512MB allocated each as I recall. I cannot access the Terminal server from where i am presently. I can confirm that later today.

I can understand that if a VM is having memory shared and swapped between different VMs there could be latencies involved, even bugs, that permamently allocating RAM to a VM may avoid. But we could not find a switch in the VMWARE config that would seem to do that. Have you had any experience with this?

Can you comment on the email from Bill ??? at Sun regarding the version of the mail.jar file and whether its config is set in a file that I can access or not? I recall noting it was cc'd to support@awareim.com. Bill seeemed to think earler versions were less tolerant of issues in email formats or that these settings could be altered in config.

jamesagada

I am evaluating AwareIM for lots of things. Is this instability a common issue or is it just as a result of your specific environment?

tford

Hi jamesagada,

No, instability is not a common issue.

I've been using AwareIM for almost 2 years & have spent a lot of time with it. I've found it to be a very stable product.

Tom

ab042

Instability is NOT at all common.

It's a great product. Not sure what maybe causing their issue but we use it with some very large databases and have not had issue like this thread.

jclark58

OK Memory settings are 256MB for TOMCAT and JBOSS
AwareIM server was at 96M and I have increased this to 256M.

Users reported an increase in speed but still saw strange behaviours in menus and queries etc.
I used the system over the weekend but did not see any "interesting" behaviour

Last night I uploaded a new bsv with some changes to doument templates and menus

Users have not seen any issues so far. Will keep you posted.

Is it a possibility that if two users were logged in under the same userid thay they could interact with one anothers sessions?
Any comments on the javamail server issues raised by Sun?

aware_support

Only if they log in from the same machine. If they log in from different machines there shouldn't be any problems.
All there is in that e-mail is that the new version can handle illegal addresses error messages better. But this is not the key to your problems, isn't it?

jclark58

Further to the qustions in my last post - the client has advised me that their problems have returned - it seems after running search queries where there is an attached form.

Problems seen are - as reported previously:

menu items that link to a query, particularly one which has a form attached, behave differently if the query is repeated. Usually displaying the list of available queries rather than the one query that is supposed to run.

2 When a query is selected from the selection dialog and run, then another query is selected from the menu, the results of the first query are displayed.

To add to the confusion I have sat on the phone logged into the application as the same user and done exactly as they have and seen different results. Mine works as advertised where as the client sees the issues.

Could this possibly be a clientside issue with say browser javascript settings or something?

jclark58

All there is in that e-mail is that the new version can handle illegal addresses error messages better. But this is not the key to your problems, isn't it?[/quote]

This may address some of the issues - there are multiple problems - the log messages indicate errors and some were addressed in the email from Sun. I cant access the logs at present to send examples unfortunately.

aware_support

I don't think it's the browser settings. Could be a bug fixed in subsequent versions (you are using a very old version I presume?). Very hard to say without reproducing the problem.

jclark58

Ok the email issues and the variations in menu selection are separate issues. The apparently illogical behaviour of menus and queries are the primary concern.

My questions about browser configs and cookies stem from reports that some users have had problems login in to the database for certain machines but not others - the organisation does also use terminal server on thin workstations and I wondered if there might be situation where OS / machine configurations have been locked down a bit too enthusiastically.

I have a workaround for the Email problem that involves regularly deleting emails that it complains about and restarting the AwareIM server. This is a problem that I would like to get resolved but ut uis not the showstopper.

I monitor the changelogs and havent noticed any fixes to email issues - If there have been changes in this area could you please point them out so that i can add that to my case for moving to a new version.

Understandably the client is refusing to spend any more money on this system and refusing to upgrade to the new version until their issues are resolved even though there are what I think are some compelling new features in V4. I know this is very frustrating but tell me about it.

Client site is using one of the lastest builds in version 3. Can I see tha actual build number via the web without having access to the Control panel?

When I loaded the application into Version 4 most of the forms required rework and other issues being reported at the time made me want to wait. Inadvertently in that time my annual licence renewal feel unexpectedly so I missed out.

I have until 27 Feb to get the issues resolved when I will be meeting with their senior management to explain why they should continue.

At this point I need some further ideas to test as to why the installation might be performing the way that it does.

tford

John,

Can I see tha actual build number via the web without having access to the Control panel?

If you have an "About" in your menu option, it will show the build number.

At this point I need some further ideas to test as to why the installation might be performing the way that it does

Not sure what else to tell you John other than that none of the things you are experiencing are being reported by anyone with current builds. Yes, there is a bit of reworking needed to import a V3 BSV into a V4 BSV, but that's just the way it is.

As a developer that has invested some time previously in learning AwareIM well enough to sell an application to a customer, I would think that you would want to invest in the latest build for yourself to remain current with the product and maybe have the opportunity to develop an application for another customer.

Best of luck to you.
Tom

jclark58

If you have an "About" in your menu option, it will show the build number.

Thanks I'll add that in

Yes, there is a bit of reworking needed to import a V3 BSV into a V4 BSV, but that's just the way it is.

This does become a bit of an issue when all I want to see if one thing has changed but hold all other 'variables' constant. If there are a largegish number of forms - it costs to convert, that someone has to absorb.

As a developer that has invested some time previously in learning AwareIM well enough to sell an application to a customer, I would think that you would want to invest in the latest build for yourself to remain current with the product and maybe have the opportunity to develop an application for another customer.

Yep I agree - "that was last years rationale" - and thats what my partner said. I Did have to opt for the Developer version - 50% of the purchase price each year is a bit of a hit and its a Big Maybe if there are ongoing issues.

tford

John,

its a Big Maybe if there are ongoing issues.

It's clear from the current forum posts that there are not "ongoing issues". An occasional bug, sure .... but not what I would call "ongoing issues".

There are a number of developers like myself that are actively using the latest builds & VERY pleased with the results.

Tom

jclark58

Tom, your defence of the product is not unwarranted, I would not be putting this effort in if I was prepared to write AwareIM off, but the fact remains that I do have some issues that remain unresolved for quite some time now and some of which others have also seen and that AwareIM have agreed (see above posts) they will address but only as they see fit.

It may be also that you are not using the same features in the way that I am or in the same environment that I am. I am merely reporting what I see and trying to get some resolution.

Apart from the email issues, This application was running quite well on a Linux machine but when the client required it to be moved to a virtualised windows environment under VMWARE and accessed under Terminal Server we have been seeing these inconsistent behaviour issues between sessions.

I have in the background requested that the client allow the application to be rehosted on a linux environment but meantime I need to try to resolve the problem at hand but am struggling to get timely positive helpful support.