Our main focus with this release was to resolve a number of know issues and further improve overall performance and scalability. As the name suggests this is a release candidate. We feel we are very close to final however we are offering a release candidate in an effort to catch any problems before final release. At this stage any updates will be minor so I would expect the final release to be available for around the weekend.

As this is not currently final we would not suggest installing into production unless you've performed your own testing and are happy with the product. We will of course still provide complete support if you choose to try the release candidate in production after your own local evaluation.

We have resolved a particularly tricky problem with this release when running within a multi-processor environment. The memory usage for the aspnet_wp (or w3p) process would steadily grow. Initially we thought this was a problem with our code and spent several weeks stepping through our code and running various tests (ACT, CLRProfiler, ADPlus, WinDbg, SOS) to try and identify the problem. We have now resolved this issue and it's not related to our code but how the garbage collector works on a multi-processor machine. However, our research was not in vain as whilst working to identify this problem we've also managed to further improve performance in several other key areas.

We will be posting a resolution to the high memory issue on multi-proc machines within our knowledge base once we've confirmed with a few more customers our solution is addressing the problem. If your having this problem don't hesitate to contact us and we'll detail what to modify. You can even apply this to v4.1.3.

I've provided a list below of the changes, bugs and areas we've focused on with the v4.1.4 release...

Performance & Scalability

• Resolved issue with tracking read forums and topics if you had read lots of forums or topics this was limited by the SQL datatype nVarChar.
  
• Completly revised the internals of how the InstantASP.InstantForum.Components.User / InstantASP.Common.Components.User objects are constructed for better performance and scalability.
  
• You can now associate an unlimited number of member groups to a single user (previously we had a limit again based on the length of the SQL datatype nVarChar) this would generate exceptions if the delimited list of role identities exceeded 4000 characters. This has been completely reworked.
  
• Resolved issue with events where they would not display if user has lots of role associations.
  
• Error handling has been added to all data access code to improve scalability and ensure objects (SQLConnections/FileStreams etc) are always disposed of correctly in the event of any exception.
  
• Greatly reduced overall string concatenation throughout. Reduced number of System.String() objects.
  
• Reduced by half the number of in-memory objects required by the application (InstantASP.Common.Components.*, InstantASP.InstantForum.Components.*, etc)
  
• Reduced the number of items held within the ASP.NET cache to minimize memory usage.
  
• Improved overall performance for several key regular expression methods.
  
• Improved general performance for key areas such as localization, search, synchronization and particularly how the forum / sub forum collection is constructed. This now provides much better performance for larger forums.
  
• Application setting datatables are no longer cached as they are held within singleton objects and only initialized once.
  
• Reworked page compression feature for better performance.
  
• Performed work to ensure objects are promoted up the heap for quicker garbage collection.
  
• General code refactoring and review.

New Features (Unfortunately not many)

• We have now added a central moderation screen which will allow moderators to quickly see all posts awaiting approval in all forums they have been assigned to moderate. The moderation queue is searchable by keyword, username, member group & more.

General Updates

• Updated the paging links to use the full absolute URL to pages as opposed to a doPostBack for each link. This ensures search engine spiders can now go from page to page within the application correctly.
  
• Updated the application to now support medium trust ASP.NET environments. Previously exceptions would be raised due to security restrictions in medium trust hosting environments. This rendered the application virtually unusable in medium trust, this has been resolved.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed issue with forum group links.
  
• Fixed problem with member list where you could see hidden roles if you knew the identity.
  
• Fixed security issue with attachments in private forums.
  
• Fixed issue inline editing of subject where a problem would occur if the title tag was the same as the link text.
  
• Fixed wrong text when deleting skins, also resolved an issue with skin cache not clearing correctly.
  
• Resolved issue with GenericPrincipal not casting to RolePrincipal when integrated with .NET v2.0 login controls and membership API.
  
• Fixed issue where anonymous users would not be tracked if forum activity panel was disabled for anonymous permission set.
  
• Fixed client-side JavaScript issue with spell checker not working under .NET v2.0.
  
• Fixed client-side JavaScript issue with IFCode panelbar on post.aspx when running under .NET v2.0.
  
• Addressed issue with storing lots of user roles within the forms authentication ticket.
  
• Fixed issue where RSS feed date stamp was not localized with current time zone offset and dst settings.

For this release we've performed work to ensure InstantForum.NET will integrate correctly with the .NET v2.0 login controls and membership API. We have prepared a sample project which demonstrates how to integrate the forum with .NET v2.0. This project will be available from within your My.InstantASP area once v4.1.4 is final. If you would like to download the sample in the meantime please don't hesitate to contact us.

From our tests we've actually managed to double the requests per second the InstantForum.NET can achieve under load. You should generally notice quicker response times throughout with this release as a result of our improvements. If you had a heavily populate database with lots of role associations and / or forums and where previously experiencing any problems v4.1.4 will resolve any issues.

Unfortunately there are not many new features within v4.1.4 however please be assured we will be focusing on new features within the forthcoming releases. We have some great ideas.

If your an existing InstantForum.NET customer the InstantForum.NET v4.1.4 Release Candidate will be associated with your My.InstantASP account and should be available for download from your My Licenses page. If for any reason you don't see the v4.1.4 release candidate on your My Licenses page please don't hesitate to contact us and we'll ensure we associate this with your account.

A couple of changes have been made to both the forum files and database schema with this release. You can find information on what has changed and how to move from v4.1.3 to v4.1.4 within our online documentation at http://docs.instantasp.com/InstantForum/default.html?page=v413tov414guide.html

This is also available for download from http://www.instantasp.co.uk/Products/Documentation/Default.aspx with the updated class reference for the v4.1.4 release.

Again if you have any questions before or during the upgrade please don't hesitate to contact us.

As I’m sure many of you are aware by now we have been quietly working away on new product ideas which will compliment both InstantForum.NET and the soon to be released InstantKB.NET v2.0. Because of this work updates have unfortunately been a little slow this year. You will see the results of our development efforts a little later this year and I guarantee you won't be disappointed. We do however realize the need to provide frequent product updates and have taken steps to ensure future product development will not affect minor maintenance releases.

As always I would like to thank everyone for there patience with this release. Thanks to everyone who kindly provided feedback and time during the beta stages this is sincerely appreciated.

If you would like to discuss this release please use this thread...
http://support.instantasp.co.uk/FindPost11351.aspx

P.S. I look forward to bringing you all more information about InstantKB.NET v2.0 very soon


Kindest Regards,

Ryan Healey
Director / Developer

Explore our products...
http://demos.instantasp.co.uk/