CreateObject takes a full minute in ASP

[cwdave]

One of our customers is having trouble with CreateObject of the TeeChart object in ASP. It takes over a full minute. Once it completes, subsequent CreateObjects are fast (even for a different chart in a different report) unless there is no activity for about two minutes, in which case the delay appears again. Is there any logging / debugging option available to us through TeeChart ActiveX that we can supply the customer to try to see why this is occurring? This customer is on 64 bit Windows 2008 Server, if that matters.

[Yeray]

Hi cwdave,

It would we helpful if you (or he/she) could send us a simple example project we can run as-is to reproduce the problem here.
On the other hand, can you run the ASP demo included with the installation? Does it reproduce this delay?

[cwdave]

We cannot reproduce this anywhere other than on this customer's environment. I was going write a simple ASP page that does nothing other than the CreateObject of the TeeChart object with start and end timing to see if this happens in such a case. I'm sure it will, but I'll try it.

[cwdave]

I am attaching a simple ASP I sent the customer and the result they sent back. As before, the first time CreateObject is used it takes over one minute. Running the same ASP after that is fast. If you wait over two minutes before rerunning the ASP then it will again take over one minute. We were able to make this happen consistently on Windows 2008 64 bit. Two customers have already seen this and we saw this in our internal 2008 64 bit environment. Apparently, it takes over a minute to load the OCX, but is then held in memory for subsequent Create Object calls. Apparently after two minutes of no use, garbage collection removes it from memory. This is becoming a very serious issue for our customers. Is there a solution you can come up with?

[cwdave]

Will anyone be able to look at this soon? This is a very serious problem for all our customers moving to 2008 64 bit!

[Yeray]

Hi cwdave,

As I said you by mail, we are investigating this issue and we'll be back to you asap.
I'd like to apologize for the delayed reply too.

[cwdave]

We are getting multiple customers experiencing this issue with Windows 2008 64 bit! Is there any update on when a fix might be available?

[Yeray]

Hi cwdave,

I'd like to apologize for the delay in this issue. I want you to know we haven't forgotten this. We're investigating it and we'll back to you asap.

[Marc]

Hello,

We can't reproduce this on Windows 7 64 bit or WinVista 64. At this moment we don't have a Win2008 64Bit machine on which to test though the other two operating systems are contemporary to it. We've run Win2008 on 32bit servers without seeing this problem.

We're going to need more information. The only behaviour we have seen of this type, ie. delay on first load, has occurred not with the ocx version but rather with the NET version, where the TeeChart assembly authenticode certificate conforms with NET's own checks and is delayed as NET checks the public certificate revocation list (CRL). (there's quite a good description of that here: http://softwareblog.morlok.net/tag/authenticode/). This though, is a NET concern and should not affect ActiveX though we intend to definitively rule it out of the equation by preparing and sending you a non-signcoded ocx so that you can cross-check (checks here were made with or without connection to the Internet so we think it most unlikely that any IIS CLR checks are being run). Please send an email to info@steema.com quoting this thread so that we can confirm the correct email address to which to send the test-version.

Other hypotheses:
- Might it be that your customer[s] servers are running virus or security-checking software that is delaying first load?
- You mention that after a delay of as little as 2 minutes the problem-delay re-occurs. That is very inconsistent with normal expected behaviour for IIS loaded controls in processes. Please make detailed checks of any aspect of IIS configuration that could be cache refreshing. Pay special attention to the settings for the Application pool, if set, to which the virtual share relates, there are several settings there that control timeout and process shutdown delays. Is the pool set for unmanaged code or related to a NET framework release?

We have no further thoughts at the moment, please let us know if you're able to send us more information or results on the CLR test.

Regards,
Marc Meumann

[Yeray]

Hi Dave,

[...] preparing and sending you a non-signcoded ocx so that you can cross-check [...]

I've sent the mentioned ocx to the mail account you have registered in this forums.

[cwdave]

As I stated originally, this happens only on Windows 2008 64 bit. Virus software is not the problem. We turned those off. This is happening consistently on multiple customer sites. We'll try the new OCX version for our upcoming release, but for several reasons, we cannot include it in previous releases, so we do need a fix for this ASAP. As my simple ASP test file showed, nothing related to our own software is involved in this issue.

[Marc]

Hello,

Re. "this happens only on Windows 2008 64 bit"
Yes, that is what we understood. I assume you have tried it on 64 bit Vista and 64 bit Windows 7 and other platforms. Is that correct?

Re. "Virus software is not the problem. We turned those off."
Ok.

Re. "We'll try the new OCX version for our upcoming release"
The ocx we sent you is not a release ocx, it is not intended for upcoming releases. It is a test version (non-production) for you to test on the 64 bit servers that display the problem. We want to know if there might be a problem related to certificate validation. Or is it that your application does not use TeeChart Pro AX v8? !!

Were you able to make checks relating to my other question? ie: "- You mention that after a delay of as little as 2 minutes the problem-delay re-occurs. That is very inconsistent with normal expected behaviour for IIS loaded controls in processes. Please make detailed checks of any aspect of IIS configuration that could be cache refreshing. Pay special attention to the settings for the Application pool, if set, to which the virtual share relates, there are several settings there that control timeout and process shutdown delays. Is the pool set for unmanaged code or related to a NET framework release?"

Regards,
Marc

[cwdave]

Marc,

We did not test on Windows Vista or Windows 7 64 bit because our customers are all using server OS.

We have not yet had time to test the OCX you sent, but we will soon.

We did not check IIS settings as of yet because all our customers who move to 2008 64 bit are reporting this problem, so there are multiple systems seeing this. We also use other 32 bit OCXs and DLLs, not of which are having this problem. So it looks specific to the TeeChart7.ocx. We are not using a .Net version of your product.

[cwdave]

Would it possible to get the TeeChart 7 version of the unsigned test ocx you sent us and not the 8.0 version?

Thanks.

[Pep]

Hi Dave,

I've just sent the latest TeeChart Pro ActiveX version v7.0.1.4 (unsigned) directly to your mail.
Please check if the problem does not happens witht his version and let us know the results.