Hi all,

 

Just wanted to let you know that when using SQL Server as a backend
using pyodbc you might end up with deadlocks in the database. At least
when using your server as a CAS provider. Using mysql doesn't give this
problem, other platforms I haven't tried. 

 

The solution is simple. Use  driver_args = dict(autocommit=True) in the
DAL constructor. 

 

Explanation: 

Autocommit is de default connection on MS SQL server (they name it
implicit transactions=0 when you check the trace of a session). PyODBC
on the other hand wants to be compatible with the Python DB Api (1) to
switches to the implicit transaction. And that can cause a major problem
when you get only a tiny bit more than a little load. I've used the
solution as a CAS server for our departmental wiki with only 25 users
and no problem occurred. But when we used the CAS for roughly 2000
people I got hammered by the deadlock. So when no implicit transactions
were used there were no locks that were opened for a while and hence, no
deadlock appears. 

 

Extra help while testing: 

Another one I want to give to you all is that the internal web2py
testing browser is very basic. And it will perform in a lot of cases.
But in my case it didn't because of the CAS (redirecting back and forth
resulted in broken sessions). So I started to use selenium (2) to
automate a few Chrome browsers to login an logout of the system. This
way I was able to stress test the machine a little with a script of only
a few lines of code (3).

 

Thanks to all who have contributed to the web2py framework, it's
awesome!

 

With kind regards, 

Remco Boerma

 

(1):
http://code.google.com/p/pyodbc/wiki/FAQs#Connecting_fails_with_an_error
_about_SQL_ATTR_AUTOCOMMIT
<http://code.google.com/p/pyodbc/wiki/FAQs#Connecting_fails_with_an_erro
r_about_SQL_ATTR_AUTOCOMMIT> 
ODBC drivers always start with autocommit turned on, but the Python DB
API specification <http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0249.html>  requires
it to be turned off. After a connection is made, pyodbc first attempts
to turn off autocommit before returning the connection. If the driver
does not support transactions, such as the Microsoft Excel driver, you
will see an error like the following:

If you set the autocommit keyword to True, pyodbc will not attempt any
changes to the connection since it will already have autocommit turned
on:

 

(2):

http://seleniumhq.org/ <http://seleniumhq.org/> 

Selenium automates browsers. That's it. What you do with that power is
entirely up to you. Primarily it is for automating web applications for
testing purposes, but is certainly not limited to just that. Boring
web-based administration tasks can (and should!) also be automated as
well.

 

Selenium has the support of some of the largest browser vendors who have
taken (or are taking) steps to make Selenium a native part of their
browser. It is also the core technology in countless other browser
automation tools, APIs and frameworks. 

 

(3):

from selenium import webdriver

from selenium.common.exceptions import TimeoutException

from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait # available
since 2.4.0

import time

webdriver.chrome.driver = 'f:/seleniumdrivers/chromedriver.exe'

webdriver.chrome.binary =
r'C:\portableapps\GoogleChromePortable\App\Chrome-bin\chrome.exe'

 

driver = webdriver.Chrome()

for x in range(100):

    print '---------------- run',x

    # open with fake login

 
driver.get("https://myserver/casconsumer/user/login?_next=/casconsumer";)

 
driver.get("https://myserver/casconsumer/user/logout?_next=/casconsumer";
)

 

driver.quit()

 

 

Remco Boerma - Database Administrator & Software Developer

ROC Drenthecollege - www.drenthecollege.nl - 088 188 4693 

r.boe...@drenthecollege.nl - http://twitter.com/RemcoBoerma

 

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