Asynchronous Events

The latest release of The Server Framework, which is due later this month, adds support for Visual Studio 2013 and Windows 8.1 as well as a host of other major changes.

As we first mentioned here, release 6.6 of The Server Framework removes support for Visual Studio .Net (2002) and Visual Studio .Net (2003). The 2002 compiler is no longer supported by Microsoft and the 2003 compiler becomes unsupported in October this year. To be honest, I’m very pleased to see the back of them. Hopefully most users of the framework are using at least Visual Studio 2005, if you’re not, get in touch now.

We have a new client profile available here for a new Chinese client who uses The Server Framework to build servers for its GIS applications for the Oil and Gas industry.

We have a new client profile available here for a new client who selected The Server Framework to build the servers for its iOS and Android games.

Release 6.6 of The Server Framework includes some breaking changes to both the IService, IServiceCallbacks and IShutdownService interfaces. Many functions now return an ServiceTools::ExitCode, either directly or by value, which allows you to fine tune the exit code returned from your service under failure conditions. This exit code is reported to the Service Control Manager (SCM) when your service shuts down and also returned from the exe if you run the service as a normal exe.

Another performance improvement in the forthcoming 6.6 release is due to a change in our default choice for locking primitives on most platforms. Note that the perf improvement is small and, according to our testing, it doesn’t materialise on all hardware (though there’s no performance degradation seen). The change is to switch from using CRITICAL_SECTION objects to using Slim Reader Writer Locks in exclusive (write) mode. You can read about the differences between these two locks in Kenny Kerr’s MSDN article here.

I’ve been working on a “big” new release for some time, too long actually. It has steadily been accumulating new features for over a year but the arrival of my second son in July last year and masses of client work has meant that it has repeatedly been pushed on the back burner. Well, no more, Release 6.6 is now in the final stages of development and testing (so I won’t be adding more new features) and hopefully will see a release in Q2

Version 6.5.9 of The Server Framework was released today. This release contains one bug fix for write sequencing bug which has been present in The Server Framework since at least release 5.0 but which, thankfully, is very unlikely to occur. It also contains a bug fix for the TCP flow control filter, some bug fixes for the WebSocket code, hardening of the WebSocket code to help it resist denial of service attacks and a small amount of new functionality in several other libraries.

Version 6.5.8 of The Server Framework was released today. This release contains one bug fix for a bug which has been present in The Server Framework since at least release 5.0 and one change to work around a bug in Windows 8 and Server 2012. If you plan to use AcceptEx() on Windows 8 or Server 2012 or you have connections which run for a long period of time, use sequenced sockets and issue more than 2,147,483,647 writes on a socket then you need this release.

I’ve just found and fixed a bug which has been present in The Server Framework from the very beginning. The problem affects connections which are “sequenced” and which have had more than 2,147,483,647 writes performed on them. The observant amongst you will be thinking that it’s a counter wrap bug and you’d be correct. The annoying thing for me is that the code in question has unit tests which explicitly test for correct operation when the sequence number wraps; the tests pass but the bug is still there.