[OpenSTA-devel] Re: Duration of the viewstate encoding

[Daniel S. <da...@Op...>]

Thierry Boullet wrote:
> I made some measurements of the duration of the viewstate encoding 
> because I noted that it is not negligible and that it can disturb
> the tests.

Yet again Thierry - fantastic work, it's much appreciated.
Just a few comments.

> I used 3 versions of OpenSTA :
>   OSTA142 : Release 1.4.2
>   OSTA143 : Release 1.4.3
>   MYOSTA  : based on release 1.4.3 and built with VC++ 6 SP6,
>             Platform SDK February 2003, CodeMax 2.1.0.22,
>             OmniORB 3.0.4, SizeCBar 2.44, STLPort 4.6 and
>             ucd-snmp 4.2.6.

It was always my intention that the very first thing we do after
getting 1.4.3 out was to get a build done with an updated build
setup.  To this end I've just done putting this environment together:
  VC++ 6sp6
  Latest Platform SDK - Windows Server 2003sp1
  CodeMax 2.1.0.24 - difficult to get very few changes from 2.1.0.22
  OmniOrb 3.0.5 - not sure if worth the update - want to look at 4.0
  SizeCBar 2.44
  STLPort 4.6.2
  net-snmp 4.2.6 - want to look at 5.x

Your environment looks like it's +ve proof that we can make this work
and the results ...

[snip results]

> The version MYOSTA is almost twice faster than Releases 1.4.2/1.4.3.

As if having a build environment that was easy to get hold of wasn't
enough of a reason to update... real speed improvements are awesome!

> The differences seem to be the PSDK and STLport.

That would be my thought too... I suspected we'd get some
improvements but your results are a real pleasent surprise.

> It would be interesting to confirm these results in order to use
> the versions of the products which improve the speed of OpenSTA.

Once I get my build going I'll be sure to post some similar test
results...  Could you provide the viewstate strings for others
to download?

> In any event I think that it is necessary to add an SCL command
> which encode a string to the format "x-www-form-urlencoded".

I posted about just this thing to the Users list the other day:
  http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=11768133

> This coding is typical to provide variables to a POST request
> (viewstate or others).
> I think that a native command would be much faster than a SCL
> subroutine.

And is very commonly required...

> I can develop this functionality.  I would wish to know if somebody
> knows the method to add a new SCL command or if other possibilities
> can be considered.

When I first saw this post I immediately thought ofthe write up by
Charlie...  and then he posted it.   Good to see that you're still
around Charlie and thanks for posting your write up.

If you read my other posting though I'd rather not add a new command
to SCL though - I think that FORMAT can be extended to provide this
(and other) functionality in a flexible and clean way.

Your thoughts.  I'd really like to see this done for the next release
as I believe it can provide very useful fuctionality and increased
speed...

Cheers
/dan
-- 
Daniel Sutcliffe <Da...@Op...>
  OpenSTA part-time caretaker - http://OpenSTA.org/