Automatic Session Timeout

Recently I was given an assignment to provide a solution to the automatic session timeout. The requirement was that the end user needs to be alerted of the session timeout and inform him to recreate his session to proceed with the application.

I know that all J2EE application servers provides a session timeout value, but the timeout on the server side will not be informed back to the end user. So, I thought of creating a Poll action which receives an ajax request from the browser. The session timeout is got from the database and when the server's last access time reaches more than the seesion time the Poll action explicitly invalidates the session.

Clustering on Oracle 10G AS

Recently I got an opportunity to test and evaluate Oracle 10G AS (10.1.3). I initially deployed Profunds CMS application on it and was trying to set up a cluster.

I installed the 10G AS on 2 nodes and used Multi casting for node discovery. OPMN (Oracle Process Management and Notification Server) was a piece of cake and was immediately able to discover each other.

Within hours Profunds CMS application started running on the cluster. I initially tried the fail over by shutting down one of the OC4J instance and viola I was transparently served from the other node.

But, though the fail over was transparent I lost my session during the process. I was wondering what could have been the reason. I enabled application level clustering using Peer, Multi casting and Persistence. But, none of them helped me. I was keeping on loosing the session though the fail over was happening. At last I founded that I left the tag in my web.xml and that made the trick. Profunds CMS was running clearly on the test cluster. My sessions started replicating without any problems.

My first experience on 10G AS was a great success.

I am now left with setting up a RAC Database and test out the FCF (Fast Connection Fail over). Once I do it I will post that experience.

Profunds CMS gets more orders

Profunds CMS, a Cash Management System of Laser Soft Infosystems, Chennai gets more orders from Indian Public and Private Banks.

The order list includes 7 banks

1) Bank of India - Gone to Production
2) Punjab National Bank - Partially on Production
3) DCB (Development Credit Bank) - on UAT
4) CUB (City Union Bank) - on UAT
5) Axis Bank - Currently using an old version,expected to migrate to the latest version
6) ICICI Bank - Currently using an old version,talks are on to migrate to the latest version.
7) Union Bank of India

Profunds CMS Benchmarking @ IBM Labs, Bangalore

I along with few of my Colleagues were sent to benchmark Profunds CMS (Cash Management System), [a prestigious product of Laser Soft Infosystems Limited, Chennai] at IBM Labs (IBM SSC), Bangalore.

The benchmark was conducted on 2 System p series server both running AIX 5. One server was used for Application Server (IBM Websphere 6.1 Network Deployment) and other was used for Oracle 10G Database server.

Apache JMeter was used to generate load and record the server throughput and response time. Our test case was to login into the Profunds application and put an entry (Entry of Local Clearing Cheques) (approx 30 fields).

Initially we started with 100 concurrent users and slowly we went upto 750 concurrent users. We are overall satisfied with the servers response and throughput. A little percent of error was found when deploying the application on the Cluster setup.

The benchmark started on June 9 2008 (the day I reached Bangalore from Chennai on Shadabathi) and completed on June 13 2008 ( < a week).

I returned back to Chennai on June 14 2008.

The staff at IBM SSC were very cooperative.

I gained good experience with this benchmarking.