PicLan-IP v 2.0.0.128

PicLan-IP version 2.0.0.128 is a major relesae that addresses a number of areas.  This document describes chages in version 2.0.0.125 thru 2.0.0.128.

New Authorization Codes

Version 2.0.0.125 and later requires new authorization codes. Please email modular software at upgrade@modsoft.com to get a new code.  Please include your current PicLan-IP serial number.

The on-line activation code application is being updated for version 2.0.0.125 and should be available for the new release within the next few days.

mv/Web Generator

Session states are now locked during execution.

This change was necessary to deal with situations of users reposting forms while the web server was still busy processing a previous request. With the new logic in place, the first form post will be processed and any duplication requests will mearly return the result page from the first request.

Connection Blocks

Allocating connection control block zero

An ongoing timing bug involving deleting connection block number zero has had some defensive programming applied.  The TCP/IP buffer layer will no longer allocate block zero.  This will hopefully make this bug less likely to reappear.

V 2.0.0.128:  The underlying bug (or at least one of them) was finally discovered.  Regardless, the defensive programming practice of not using handle 0 is maintained in this (and future) releases.

Global Error Pages

A new feature providing for global error pages has been added.

The file WWW.CTRL,LOCAL.PAGES has been added that creates local content web pages that can be accessed from any virtual web server.

If you specify a URL path that begins with an ampersand '&', then the web server will use the WWW.CTRL,LOCAL.PAGES file instead of the file specified in the HTTP LISTEN=... line of the PLIP.CTRL CONFIG item.

This feature is also used to generate busy pages for mv/Web applications when a web repost hits a locked state.

mvBase 1.3 Support

Version 2.0.0.125 adds support for version 1.3 of General Automation's mvBase platform.

EMAIL Performance

Version 2.0.0.128 has a number of changes designed to improve the performance of the email sub-system, particularily for customer generating a large number of outbound mail transactions:

• DNS processing has been enhanced to support full caching of MX and A records
• Mail database operations have been enhanced for faster processing when the mail queue is large
• Inverted cross-reference lists have been replaced with Smart-Tree BTREE indexes
• Outbound TCP/IP network connections have been recoded as non-blocking operations.

Outbound Connection Performance

With versions prior to 2.0.0.128 on hosted platforms, outbound network connections were coded as blocking sockets.  This would cause the communications engine to stall when making outbound network connections until those connections completed.  This did not impact most users as inbound connections like SMTP/POP3 receive and HTTP server functions do not make outbound connections.  Sending email and HTTP client functions do use outbound connections and users with large amounts of outbound email were impacted by this issue.  It should be noted that this only effects hosted (Win95/98/NT and Unix) PicLan-IP platforms and native PicLan-IP platforms do not encounter this issue.

Version 2.0.0.128 no longer uses blocking connections for outbound TCP/IP connections.  This makes PicLan-IP much more robust for large email, HTTP client, and outbound sockets applications.