Release Notes - Jargon Tunnel Broker - Version 1.3.1 - Dec. 2001 _______________________________________________________________ CONFIDENTIAL - FOR USE BY JARGON SOFTWARE AND ITS CUSTOMERS ONLY NOTES 1. Tracking numbers have the structure [Type][Build].[Issue], where "Type" is: D - Defects or known issues (bugs in implemented features) N - New features (possible new features for review) U - Unimplemented features (features planned, not yet done) L - Limitations in T/Broker (features not planned to be done) "Build" is the build number where the item was added "Issue" is a sequential number within that type/build. Example: D1.1 is the first defect reported in build 1. 2. This list replaces all previous Jargon Tunnel Broker lists. ==================================================== CORRECTIONS AND ENHANCEMENTS INCLUDED IN THIS BUILD: ==================================================== This release includes the following features and corrections: N1.3 (HIGH) SUMMARY: Multiple tunnel brokers on WinNT DETAILS: Provide the ability to configure multiple tunnel brokers in the "jsihttp.ini" file for the jsihttp.dll script so multiple Tunnel Brokers can be run on Windows NT/2000. N1.9 (MEDIUM) SUMMARY: Add timeout value in seconds as jsihttp.ini parameter DETAILS: Add a new parameter to the jsihttp.ini file to control how many seconds the script will wait for the tunnel broker to complete a request before erroring out: TimeoutSeconds=120 //default value N1.10 (MEDIUM) SUMMARY: Add option to display jsihttp.ini values in a browser DETAILS: Another new feature is the ability is to query the script with a web browser for the configuration data. Type in the appropriate data in a web browser URL location box, such as: http://www.abc.com/scripts/jsihttp.dll/ConfigData and it will echo all the configurations from the ini file that were present at startup. This shows how the settings were interpreted by the script. =============================================================== SUGGESTED NEW FEATURES ================================================================ N1.1 (MEDIUM) SUMMARY: Ability to stop a specific Tunnel Broker agent DETAILS: Provide a means in the GUI tunnel broker console and a corresponding DOS/Unix scripts to be able to stop a specific Tunnel Broker agent by its agent number. Needed to be able to free a "hung" agent. N1.2 (HIGH) SUMMARY: Provide date/time stamps in ALL broker & script logs DETAILS: Some of the log and errorlog files from the Tunnel Broker and from the jsihttp scripts show the date/time at the beginning of each set of log entries, but other logs do not. Ones that do not include: jsitrace.log and astrace.log. (Not sure if jsierror.log does or not). This is important for debugging to be able to match up corresponding entries from multiple logs for a given test host event. N1.4 (HIGH) SUMMARY: Allow GUI Control Panel to work with T/B as service DETAILS: If the Tunnel Broker is being run as a Windows NT/2000 service (using the srvany.exe utility from the NT Resource Kit), the Tunnel Broker GUI Control Panel for Windows does not recognize that the Tunnel Broker is already running when the Control Panel is started. Can it check via the Admin Port and see if the Tunnel Broker is running when it starts up, and then display the current status of the agents and enable/disable the appropriate buttons? Can it also stop and start the Tunnel Broker if it is a Windows service being run by "srvany.exe"? N1.5 (HIGH) SUMMARY: Tunnel Broker should default ProcName parameter DETAILS: If a host task does not contain a name/value pair for the ProcName=xxx parameter, with a non-blank value, the Tunnel Broker does not supply a ProcName input parameter to the AppServer procedure, and the jsi/dispatch.i code requires this input parameter. Consequently the program being run by the AppServer agent gets a run-time error due to the missing input parameter. No error is returned to the client. If no ProcName parameter is supplied by the host task, or if a blank value is supplied ("ProcName="), the Tunnel Broker should supply this input parameter (with a blank value) to the AppServer program being run. N1.6 (HIGH) SUMMARY: Add a "StartupDelaySeconds" parameter to tunnel.ini DETAILS: Add a new parameter to the tunnel.ini configuration file, named "StartupDelaySeconds". The value would be an integer number of seconds that the Tunnel Broker would pause at startup, before beginning the process of starting agents and connecting them to the AppServer. This is needed for the situation where the Tunnel Broker is set up as a Windows service that is configured to be started by Windows automatically at boot time. Since the Progress AppServer can also be set up to be started as a service, but takes much longer to complete its startup process (it can be 30 seconds or more), the Tunnel Broker needs to wait until enough time has passed for AppServer to be ready, before attempting to connect Tunnel Broker agents to the AppServer agents. This value can vary by system and will depend on the number of various Progress brokers being started by the Progress AdminServer service. (A better alternative would be if the Tunnel Broker could make sure that each AppServer agent is fully started with a status of "Available" before trying to connect to it. Then the delay parameter would not be needed, if the Tunnel Broker could retry every few seconds until the AppServer was fully up to speed). N1.7 (MEDIUM) SUMMARY: No error message on agent shutdown due to socket error DETAILS: An agent will shut down if it detects that there is something wrong with the underlying socket layer that it uses to communicate with. Currently it will do this without any error message being printed to the log. Need to put some error handling code in that will provide more information about what is happening. N1.8 (MEDIUM) SUMMARY: Display stack trace in error log for "caught" errors DETAILS: When a java runtime error is "caught" the system does not automatically provide a stack trace (as it does for "uncaught" exceptions). With some work we could implement the code that displays a stack trace, which would help us pinpoint the exact place in the code the error occurred. Then this stack trace could be written to the tunnel error log with the error message. N1.11 (MEDIUM) SUMMARY: Show agent numbers in tunnel broker logs DETAILS: The tunnel log shows when a request is finished being serviced but does not tell us what Agent it is completing the request for. If a tunnel agent connection to an appserver agent connection has a problem, being able to match up the agent numbers at each step will help in debugging problems. ================================================================ KNOWN DEFECTS AND PROBLEMS IN EXISTING FEATURES: ================================================================ D1.1 (HIGH) SUMMARY: Tunnel Broker process grows with each host task DETAILS: One customer has monitored the Tunnel Broker processes on a unix system and has submitted reporting samples that show that the memory process size grows during the lifetime of a Tunnel Broker process, apparently with each host task that it handles. Perhaps this is due to a memory leak, with memory being requested and then not released each time a host task is processed? Could this also be related to the way that it uses a new socket each time? D1.2 (HIGH) SUMMARY: Tunnel Broker does not report AppServer failures DETAILS: If a host task is run and the Tunnel Broker tries to pass the request to an AppServer agent which is no longer running or which fails because of a disconnected database (etc), the host task just "ends" quickly from the user's perspective. There should be some kind of error reporting back to the user, stating that the host task failed to run successfully. Ideally it would give more details about the type of error, where possible. D1.3 (MEDIUM) SUMMARY: jsihttp.ini requires "localhost", can't use IP address DETAILS: When the jsihttp.dll script is being run on the same machine as the Tunnel Broker, the jsihttp.ini script requires that the HostName=localhost. It will not work with the IP address of the machine, i.e. HostName=127.0.0.1 etc., but it should. D1.4 (HIGH) SUMMARY: "Busy port" problem requires NT reboot DETAILS: From Tim's list of 11/21/00, I don't have any details (TLD). ====================== UNIMPLEMENTED FEATURES ====================== U1.1 (MEDIUM) SUMMARY: State aware features. DETAILS: U1.2 (MEDIUM) SUMMARY: Better console. DETAILS: U1.3 (MEDIUM) SUMMARY: Web Server plugins vs. CGI DETAILS: U1.4 (MEDIUM) SUMMARY: Installation programs for NT/2000 and unix DETAILS: U1.5 (HIGH) SUMMARY: Configure timeout parameters for Tunnel Broker. DETAILS: U1.6 (MEDIUM) SUMMARY: Run multiple Tunnel Brokers in one WinNT/2000 JRE. DETAILS: U1.7 (MEDIUM) SUMMARY: Use Servlet technology to solve some of these issues. DETAILS: _________________________________________________________________ ** end of readme file - Copyright 2001 Jargon Software Inc. **