Matevž Gačnik's Weblog

This is the content from my Bleeding Edge talk on pub/sub broker design and implementation.

Due to constraints of the project (European Commission, funded by EU) I cannot publicly distribute the implementation code at this time. I plan to do it after the review process is done. It has been advised, that this probably won't be the case.

Specifically, this is:

• A message based pub/sub broker
• Can use typed messages
• Can be extended
• Can communicate with anyone
• Supports push and pull models
• Can call you back
• Service based
• Fast (in memory)
• Is currently fed by the Twitter gardenhose stream, for your pleasure

Anyway, I can discuss the implementation and design decisions, so here's the PPT (in slovene only).

Downloads: Bleeding Edge 2011, PPTs
Demo front-end: Here

During exploration of high availability (HA) features of Windows Server AppFabric Distributed Cache I needed to generate enough load in a short timeframe. You know, to kill a couple of servers.

This is what came out of it.

It's a simple command line tool, allowing you to:

• Add millions of objects of arbitrary size to the cache cluster (using cache.Add())
• Put objects of arbitraty size to cache cluster
• Get objects back
• Remove objects from cache
• Has cluster support
• Has local cache support
• Will list configuration
• Will max out you local processors (using .NET 4 Parallel.For())
• Will perform graceously, even in times of trouble

I talked about this at a recent Users Group meeting, doing a live demo of cache clusters under load.

Typical usage scenario is:

1. Configure a HA cluster
   Remember, 3 nodes minimum, Windows Server 2008 (R2) Enterprise or DataCenter
2. Configure a HA cache
3. Edit App.config, list all available servers
4. Connect to cluster
5. Put a bunch of large objects (generate load)
   Since AppFabric currently supports only partitioned cache type, this will distribute load among all cluster hosts. Thus, all hosts will store 1/N percent of objects.
6. Stop one node
7. Get all objects back
   Since cache is in HA mode, you will get all your objects back, even though a host is down - cluster will redistribute all the missing cache regions to running nodes.

You can download the tool here.

Developer pureness is what we should all strive for.

This is not it:

Conflicting with this:

[c:\NetFx4\versiontester\bin\debug]corflags VersionTester.exe
Microsoft (R) .NET Framework CorFlags Conversion Tool.  Version  3.5.21022.8
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

Version   : v4.0.21006
CLR Header: 2.5
PE        : PE32
CorFlags  : 1
ILONLY    : 1
32BIT     : 0
Signed    : 0

Visual Studio must display version number of 4.0 instead of 4 in RTM. It needs to display major and minor number of the new framework coherently with 2.0, 3.0, 3.5.

Otherwise my compulsive disorder kicks in.

I'm just poking around the new framework, dealing with corflags and CLR Header versions (more on that later), but what I found is the following.

Do a dir *.dll /o:-s in the framework directory. You get this on .NET FX 4.0 beta 2 box:

[c:\windows\microsoft.net\framework64\v4.0.21006]dir *.dll /o:-s

 Volume in drive C is 7  Serial number is 1ED5:8CA5
 Directory of  C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.21006\*.dll

 7.10.2009 3:44   9.833.784  clr.dll
 7.10.2009 2:44   6.072.664  System.ServiceModel.dll
 7.10.2009 2:44   5.251.928  System.Windows.Forms.dll
 7.10.2009 6:04   5.088.584  System.Web.dll
 7.10.2009 5:31   5.086.024  System.Design.dll
 7.10.2009 3:44   4.927.808  mscorlib.dll
 7.10.2009 3:44   3.529.608  Microsoft.VB.Activities.Compiler.dll
 7.10.2009 2:44   3.501.376  System.dll
 7.10.2009 2:44   3.335.000  System.Data.Entity.dll
 7.10.2009 3:44   3.244.360  System.Data.dll
 7.10.2009 2:44   2.145.096  System.XML.dll
 7.10.2009 5:31   1.784.664  System.Web.Extensions.dll
 7.10.2009 2:44   1.711.488  System.Windows.Forms.DataVis.dll
 7.10.2009 5:31   1.697.128  System.Web.DataVis.dll
 7.10.2009 5:31   1.578.352  System.Workflow.ComponentModel.dll
 7.10.2009 3:44   1.540.928  clrjit.dll
 7.10.2009 3:44   1.511.752  mscordacwks.dll
 7.10.2009 3:44   1.454.400  mscordbi.dll
 7.10.2009 2:44   1.339.248  System.Activities.Presentation.dll
 7.10.2009 5:31   1.277.776  Microsoft.Build.dll
 7.10.2009 2:44   1.257.800  System.Core.dll
 7.10.2009 2:44   1.178.448  System.Activities.dll
 7.10.2009 5:31   1.071.464  System.Workflow.Activities.dll
 7.10.2009 5:31   1.041.256  Microsoft.Build.Tasks.v4.0.dll
 7.10.2009 2:44   1.026.920  System.Runtime.Serialization.dll

Funny how many engineer dollars are/were spent on middle tier technologies I love.

Proof: System.ServiceModel.dll is bigger then System.dll, System.Windows.Forms.dll, mscorlib.dll, and System.Data.dll.

We only bow to clr.dll, a new .NET 4.0 Common Language Runtime implementation.