We're pleased to be working with VEXIS Systems Inc. again to extend the high performance pluggable server platform that we built for them back in 2008 using The Server Framework. Later, we extended the server to support the hosting of managed plugins with our CLR Hosting Option Pack and some custom development.

This time around we're adding more new functionality to make it easier for them to integrate with external systems.

Version 6.6.1 of The Server Framework was released today.

This release is a minor bug fix release mainly for several bugs in the 6.6 version's OpenSSL code, see the release notes here, for full details of all changes.

All clients using version 6.6 of the OpenSSL Option Pack are advised to upgrade to this release.

• Bug fix to JetByteTools::OpenSSL::CAsyncConnector so that we spot failures in the SSL allocation functions due to low memory situations and throw exceptions if we fail to create the SSL objects.
• Bug fix to CAsyncConnector and CStreamSocketConnectionFilter so that we notify the connector when an outbound connection fails. This allows the connector to correctly release the socket reference that it takes in its constructor.
• Bug fix to CAsyncConnector::Read() to prevent leak of buffers.
• Bug fix to the allocation and creation of JetByteTools::IO::CNonPooledBuffer which was failing to force the correct alignment. See the JETBYTE_IO_IBUFFER_ALIGNMENT_REQUIREMENT changes in version 6.6 for more details
• Bug fix to TLockableObjectTracksLockingThread::IsLockedByThisThread() to correct a casting bug that prevents some configurations from building.
• Bug fix to CTimeChangeNotificationMonitor which fires the timer callback immediately if the delay timer cannot be set and which also prevents the timer callback from being fired continually once it has been fired once (assuming a delay timer is used).
• Bug fix to CDirectoryChangeMonitor() to ensure that multiple shutdown attempts do not access deleted data.

• Added IO::CTimeChangeAwareRotatingAsyncFileLog, which is a rotating async file log which includes a CTimeChangeNotificationMonitor.
• Added IStreamSocket::SetKeepAlive() and IStreamSocket::DisableKeepAlive()
• Added IFilterDatagramSocketConnections::FilterConnectionClosed() and IFilterStreamSocketConnections::FilterConnectionClosed() which are called, when expected, after a call to FilterConnectionClosure().
• Added a conditional overload constructor to Socket::CException which can provide more detail on the socket that generated the exception if socket identifiers are enabled.
• Added an overload to Win32::CException() constructor that takes std::string.
• Added TExpandableBuffer::Swap().
• Added IConfiguration::GetUnsignedShortValue().
• Added IQueueTimers::SetTimerWithRefCountedUserData(), CancelTimerWithRefCountedUserData(), and DestroyTimerWithRefCountedUserData() which all implement the operations using the correct 'AddRef()/Release()' pattern.

• We now use IQueueTimers::SetTimerWithRefCountedUserData() and the other helper functions for reference counted user data where appropriate.
• CStreamSocketBroadcastableConnectionCollection::Broadcast() is now const.

I've just found and fixed a bug in version 6.6 of the OpenSSL Option Pack which relates to how we deal with outbound connection establishment errors. Changes in 6.6 mean that the OpenSSL 'connector' holds a reference to the socket whilst the SSL connection is active. The bug prevents connections which fail to be established from closing and causes a socket leak.

Note that this is ONLY for outbound (client) connections that you establish with The Server Framework. Inbound connections to servers are unaffected.

This fix will be included in release 6.6.1 which will be released later this month. If you need the fix sooner then please get in touch.

We're pleased to be extending the M2M server that we developed for this client back in February last year.

They're adding lots of interesting new functionality. Should be fun!

2014 already. Where does the time go?

We're still very busy with work for our Industrial Control Client but since they needed to get us SC level security clearance for this project if we told you any more we'd have to kill you...

Our work for online gaming clients is diversifying a bit as the project we've been working on for our secretive Online Gaming Company matures into a solid cloud-based SAS gaming server and we start to work more with the recent influx of Korean games companies that are now using The Server Framework.

All of our clients are always great for driving changes into The Server Framework and now that we have the big release from 2013 bedded in we're expecting to put out several smaller releases this year. The focus is still on adding functionality and improving performance so that it's easier than ever to build high performance clients and servers.

And, of course, we're still very interested in getting involved with new client projects and building even more high performance server systems.

We've released new versions of both our Lock Inversion Detector, LID and our Lock Inversion Analyser, LIA today.

This release fixes a problem when running LIA against an executable which has been compiled with Frame Pointer Omission enabled. This causes some call stacks to be reported as zero length and we were failing to treat these correctly which led to a vast number of duplicate lock sequences being created. Also a bug has been fixed in LIA which caused it to fail to use symbol paths supplied on the command line when looking up symbols.

We've also added several new command line switches to LIA to enable you to ignore inversions that occur in specific dlls, limit the number of lock inversions reported, ignore stack frames which are shorter than a configurable length and force slower but more reliable call stack collection to be used.

All customers are being contacted via email with details of how to obtain the latest release of LIA and you can download the latest version of LID from here (if you've already registered for the updates mailing list then simply reply to the email notification and we'll send you the latest version).

Do continue to get in touch with comments and suggestions and any problems that you have.

We have a new client profile available here for a client who uses The Server Framework in their Printer presence and print job transfer system.

They use both the OpenSSL Option Pack and the SSPI Option Pack in their product. The ease of adding security and authentication which can communicate with a disparate selection of clients is one of the strong points of developing with The Server Framework.