Blog

This year we are back at Velocity Conference San Jose – You can visit us at booth #812 we will be showing off the latest FusionReactor developments and features to help developers fix problems faster! To celebrate this we are giving away a free ticket for Velocity Conference, San Jose, California.

The Prize is for one Bronze 2-Day Pass which Includes:
– All sessions (Wed & Thu)
– All keynote and plenary presentations
– Sponsor Pavilion and all events held there– All on-site networking events
– Lunch (Wed & Thu)

To enter the draw:
1) Start a trial of FusionReactor and send us a screenshot of your activation Menu / About Page. Send the screenshot to sales@fusion-reactor.com, the version must be FusionReactor 7.2.3 or higher.

We will be announcing the winner on, Friday 1st June, this will give the winner enough time to organize flights and accommodation.

If you do not win, please do not worry you can still save 25% on the entry price by using our Discount Code: FusionReactor25

Why debugging in production is so tempting?

In one of my first jobs, one of the tasks I had was to fix a bug which used to occur from time to time in a very complex production system. That is easy! – I thought. I will reproduce the same situation in my development environment, find the broken line, implement a quick fix and it’s done! However, it turned out that reproducing exactly the same scenario which occurred in production, was not possible – so after some time, I gave up this idea. I was forced to spend days analyzing logs and trying to correlate many different events, to come up with an idea of what might have happened.   Soon, I realized that it’s as tedious as looking for a needle in a haystack.  A couple of fruitless days later, I came to the conclusion that I would need to add more logging here and there and wait a couple of days or even months to see if the bug occurred again. Then I thought that hunting bugs in production is somehow crude, compared to the sophisticated tools we have when developing an application. You’re implementing a new feature and seeing that the result of what your service returned is not what you had expected? You just put a few breakpoints in and click the Debug button! A few moments later, you know exactly what happened.  Wouldn’t it be awesome to do the same in a production environment?

Why debugging in production is so hard?

Wait a second! – you might have thought. But don’t we have the remote debugging features in most of the modern IDEs? Couldn’t we just connect to the running production application and debug it as we do from our local environment?   While it’s possible, another problem arises: most of our business applications handle many requests per second. There is no easy way to control breakpoints firing everywhere when your application is being remotely debugged.   As you can imagine, we don’t want to block all of our users from using our application when we decide to debug it. More often than not, we also can’t just force our application to reproduce the bug which happened yesterday – sometimes the only way to do it is to wait until it occurs again to one of our users. Thus, keeping a remote debug session in production, without a strict control of how breakpoints fire, is like putting landmines in the forest and inviting our users to run through it.

A better and above all – safer way

FusionReactor is an Application Performance Monitor, which comes with many advanced capabilities which you wouldn’t normally expect to find in monitoring solution.   One of these, is the production debugger, designed to allow you to get low-level debug information from your production runtime environment – without affecting performance and without the issues and obstacles you would have with a traditional debugger.

One of the main issues, you would be faced with, using a traditional debugger – is that, once a breakpoint is set, it would fire for any thread which crosses that point in the code.   FusionReactor overcomes this, by having a range of techniques to control the way a breakpoint should fire.   For example, it can limit the number of times (threads) that a given breakpoint will trigger – which solves the problem of impacting too many users.   Need more ways to control it ? We can even configure a breakpoint to fire for a user from a specific IP address (session), or when a specific variable matches a value or when a specific exception takes place !   However, what if a breakpoint triggers at night when nobody from our team is watching?  The folks at FusionReactor have thought of this and the product allows you to define thread pause timeouts so if you would not intercept a paused thread within a specific time then the debugger will release the lock and allow thread execution to continue. When used with the thread limits this reduces the possible impact to one thread only – and only for n seconds, minutes or hours…

Another great benefit, is that FusionReactor can send out an email with the stack-trace and variables at the point that the trigger fires. This gives you a very flexible and unobtrusive way to get notified with plenty of information to make debugging easier than ever before.  It’s a LOT better and simpler than adding debug/log file code into your production applications!   For one thing – you don’t have to remember to remove the debug code in your production application !

If that’s not enough to convince you that debugging in production doesn’t have to be cumbersome, FusionReactor is shipped with a fully integrated IDE-style debugger which runs directly in your browser – no need to install additional fat clients to start remote debugging.   Everything is built in and ready to go.

Summary

What I described here is not a vision of the future it’s available now and it’s safe, secure and simple to use.   The alternative is (of course) good old log files, which we all know have their limitations.   I don’t see any reason to spend countless hours digging through log files hoping to find the needle in the haystack – using logs are “archaic techniques” and I think maybe it’s time to finally start using tools for the 21st century 😉

INTERGRAL SOFTWARE END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT (“EULA”)

THE FOLLOWING EULA APPLIES TO FUSIONREACTOR VERSION 7 AND ITS MINOR/MICRO UPDATES ONLY

IMPORTANT: CAREFULLY READ THE FOLLOWING LICENSE AGREEMENT. THIS
END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT (“EULA”) IS A LEGAL AGREEMENT BETWEEN
YOU (EITHER AN INDIVIDUAL OR, IF PURCHASED OR OTHERWISE ACQUIRED
BY OR FOR AN ENTITY, AN ENTITY) AND INTERGRAL. YOU ACCEPT AND
AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT BY SELECTING THE
“ACCEPT” OPTION OR DOWNLOADING THE SOFTWARE OR BY INSTALLING,
USING, OR COPYING THE SOFTWARE. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO BE BOUND
BY THESE TERMS THEN DO NOT INSTALL, COPY, DOWNLOAD OR OTHERWISE
USE THE SOFTWARE. THIS EULA SHALL APPLY ONLY TO THE SOFTWARE
SUPPLIED BY INTERGRAL HEREWITH REGARDLESS OF WHETHER OTHER
SOFTWARE IS REFERRED TO OR DESCRIBED HEREIN.

Definitions

“INTERGRAL” means INTERGRAL Information Solutions GmbH and its
licensors, if any.

“Developer Version” means a version or edition of the Software to
be used only for design, development and evaluation purposes.

“Free Version” means a version or edition of the Software that
may have limited features, and may stop operating after a given
amount of time.

“Trial Version” means a version or edition of the Software to be
used only for review, demonstration and evaluation purposes. The
Trial Version may have limited features, and may stop operating
after a given amount of time.

“Full Version” means a version or edition of the Software that is
not a Developer Version nor a Trial Version of the Software nor a
Free Version of the Software.

“Accessible Code” means source code that is unprotected and
accessible.

“Protected Code” means any source code that is protected against
access by INTERGRAL or a third party and is not accessible under
this EULA.

“Fees” mean all fees and expenses payable by the Licensee to
INTERGRAL in acquiring the Software and as applicable any
Subscription or User Licenses.

“Software” means only the INTERGRAL software and third party
software programs, in each case, supplied by INTERGRAL together
with this EULA, including its Accessible Code and Protected Code
and any corresponding documentation, online or electronic
documentation, printed materials, and associated media. Any
updates to such Software that you are entitled to receive and
that have been provided to you by INTERGRAL shall also mean
Software for purposes of this Agreement.

License Grant
The Software is subject to the terms and conditions of this
Agreement. INTERGRAL hereby grants, and you accept, the right and
license to install and use the Software provided that you do not
use, copy, or install the Software on more than the number of
computers permitted by license, or permit the use, copying, or
installation by more users on more computers than the number
permitted by the license.

You may make one copy of the Software in machine-readable form
solely for backup purposes. You must reproduce on any such copy
all copyright notices and any other proprietary legends on the
original copy of the Software.

The Software is protected by copyright laws and international
copyright treaties, as well as other intellectual property laws
and treaties. INTERGRAL reserves all intellectual property
rights, including copyrights and trademark rights. Your license
rights under this EULA are non-exclusive.

License Restrictions

Restrictions on Use
Other than as expressly set forth above, you may not make or
distribute copies of the Software, or electronically transfer the
Software from one computer to another or over a network.

You may not decompile, “reverse-engineer”, disassemble, or
otherwise attempt to derive the source code for the Software.

You may not use the database portion of the Software in
connection with any software other than the Software.

You shall not (A) in the aggregate, install or use more than one
copy of the Trial Version of the Software, (B) download the Trial
Version of the Software under more than one username, (C) alter
the contents of a hard drive or computer system to enable the use
of the Trial Version of the Software for an aggregate period in
excess of the trial period for one license to such Trial Version,
(D) disclose the results of software performance benchmarks
obtained using the Trial Version to any third party without
INTERGRAL’s prior written consent, (E) use the Trial Version for
any application deployment or ultimate production purpose, or (F)
use the Trial Version of the Software for a purpose other than
the sole purpose of determining whether to purchase a license to
a Full Version or a Developer Version of the software; provided,
however, notwithstanding the foregoing, you are strictly
prohibited from installing or using the Trial Version of the
Software for any commercial training purpose.

You shall not use the Developer Version for any application
deployment in a live or stand-by production environment or
staging environment, in each case, including, without limitation,
in any environment accessed by application end- users, including,
but not limited to, servers, workstations, kiosks, and mobile
computers.

You shall not use the Software to develop any application having
the same primary function as the Software.

Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement you must at
all times ensure that the Software is not used for rental,
timesharing, subscription service, hosting, outsourcing, or as
part of a service or consulting practice to a third-party,
without first obtaining the express written consent of INTERGRAL.

Restrictions on Alteration
You may not alter, merge, adapt, translate or modify the Software
or create any derivative work of the Software or its accompanying
documentation. Derivative works include but are not limited to
translations. You may not alter any files or libraries in any
portion of the Software. You may not reproduce the database
portion or create any tables or reports relating to the database
portion.

Restrictions on Copying
You may not copy any part of the Software except to the extent
that licensed use inherently demands the creation of a temporary
copy stored in computer memory and not permanently affixed on
storage medium. You may make one archival copy which must be
stored on a medium other than a computer hard drive.

Restrictions on Transfer
Without first obtaining the express written consent of INTERGRAL,
you may not assign your rights and obligations under this
Agreement, or redistribute, encumber, sell, rent, lease,
sublicense, or otherwise transfer your rights to the Software.
You may not sell or transfer any Software purchased under a
volume discount. You may not sell or transfer any Trial Version
or Free Version of the Software.

Permitted Fixes
Notwithstanding anything else in this EULA but subject to the
terms and conditions contained herein, the Licensee is permitted
to modify the Accessible Code in the Software to develop bug
fixes, customizations or additional features solely for their
internal purposes of using the Software.

Upgrades
If this copy of the Software is an upgrade from an earlier
version of the Software, it is provided to you on a license
exchange basis. You agree by your installation and use of this
copy of the Software to voluntarily terminate your EULA with
respect to such prior license to the Software and that you will
not continue to install or use such prior license of the Software
or transfer it to another person or entity.

Ownership
The foregoing grants of rights give you limited license to use
the Software. Except as expressly provided in this Agreement,
INTERGRAL remain the owner of all right, title and interest in
the Software. All rights not specifically granted in this EULA
are reserved by INTERGRAL.

Fees
The Licensee must pay all Fees by their due date. Failure to pay
Fees by the due date will result in the immediate termination of
the licenses granted under this EULA.

You are responsible for reviewing the Software’s website for
changes in the fees, including, but not limited to, subscription
fees and payment terms.

TERMINATION
Without prejudice to any other rights and in addition to any
other termination rights in this EULA, INTERGRAL may terminate
this EULA if the Licensee fails to comply with the terms and
conditions of this EULA. Immediately upon termination of a
license granted under this EULA, the Licensee must at its own
cost remove all copies of the Software including all Accessible
Code from its computer systems and provide INTERGRAL with written
certification that it has destroyed all copies of the Software
including all Accessible Code in its possession, custody or
control.

LIMITED WARRANTY AND DISCLAIMER
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW IN THE
JURISDICTION IN WHICH THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED, INTERGRAL
PROVIDES THE SOFTWARE AS IS AND WITH ALL FAULTS, AND EXCEPT
OTHERWISE EXPRESSLY CONTAINED IN THE EULA, HEREBY DISCLAIM ALL
OTHER WARRANTIES AND CONDITIONS, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR
STATUTORY.

INTERGRAL MAKES NO WARRANTY THAT THE SOFTWARE WILL MEET YOUR
REQUIREMENTS OR OPERATE UNDER YOUR SPECIFIC CONDITIONS OF USE.
INTERGRAL MAKES NO WARRANTY THAT OPERATION OF THE SOFTWARE WILL
BE SECURE, ERROR FREE, OR FREE FROM INTERRUPTION. YOU MUST
DETERMINE WHETHER THE SOFTWARE SUFFICIENTLY MEETS YOUR
REQUIREMENTS FOR SECURITY AND UNINTERRUPTABILITY. YOU BEAR SOLE
RESPONSIBILITY AND ALL LIABILITY FOR ANY LOSS INCURRED DUE TO
FAILURE OF THE SOFTWARE TO MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS. INTERGRAL WILL
NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, BE RESPONSIBLE OR LIABLE FOR THE
LOSS OF DATA ON ANY COMPUTER OR INFORMATION STORAGE DEVICE.
INTERGRAL DISCLAIM ALL OTHER WARRANTIES AND REPRESENTATIONS,
WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING THE WARRANTIES
OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE
SOFTWARE IS NOT DESIGNED, INTENDED OR LICENSED FOR USE IN
HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS REQUIRING FAIL- SAFE CONTROLS, INCLUDING
WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE DESIGN, CONSTRUCTION, MAINTENANCE OR
OPERATION OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES, AIRCRAFT NAVIGATION OR
COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL, AND LIFE SUPPORT OR
WEAPONS SYSTEMS. INTERGRAL SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS ANY EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED WARRANTY OF FITNESS FOR SUCH PURPOSES.

INTERGRAL PROVIDES NO REMEDIES OR WARRANTIES, WHETHER EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, FOR THE TRIAL VERSION AND THE FREE VERSION OF THE
SOFTWARE. THE TRIAL VERSION AND THE FREE VERSION OF THE SOFTWARE
ARE PROVIDED “AS IS” AND WITH ALL FAULTS AND HEREBY DISCLAIM ALL
OTHER WARRANTIES AND CONDITIONS, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR
STATUTORY.

UNLESS OTHERWISE EXPLICITLY AGREED TO IN WRITING BY INTERGRAL,
INTERGRAL MAKES NO OTHER WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN FACT
OR IN LAW, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES
OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OTHER THAN
AS SET FORTH IN THIS AGREEMENT OR IN THE LIMITED WARRANTY
DOCUMENTS PROVIDED WITH THE SOFTWARE.

IF APPLICABLE LAW REQUIRES ANY WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE
SOFTWARE, ALL SUCH WARRANTIES ARE LIMITED IN DURATION TO THIRTY
(30) DAYS FROM THE DATE OF DELIVERY.

NO ORAL OR WRITTEN INFORMATION OR ADVICE GIVEN BY INTERGRAL, ITS
DEALERS, DISTRIBUTORS, AGENTS OR EMPLOYEES SHALL CREATE A
WARRANTY OR IN ANY WAY INCREASE THE SCOPE OF ANY WARRANTY
PROVIDED HEREIN.

LIMITED REMEDY
YOUR REMEDY FOR A BREACH OF THIS AGREEMENT OR OF ANY WARRANTY
INCLUDED IN THIS AGREEMENT IS THE CORRECTION OR REPLACEMENT OF
THE SOFTWARE. SELECTION OF WHETHER TO CORRECT OR REPLACE SHALL BE
SOLELY AT THE DISCRETION OF INTERGRAL. INTERGRAL RESERVES THE
RIGHT TO SUBSTITUTE A FUNCTIONALLY EQUIVALENT COPY OF THE
SOFTWARE AS A REPLACEMENT. IF INTERGRAL IS UNABLE TO PROVIDE A
REPLACEMENT OR SUBSTITUTE SOFTWARE OR CORRECTIONS TO THE
SOFTWARE, YOUR SOLE ALTERNATE REMEDY SHALL BE A REFUND OF THE
PURCHASE PRICE FOR THE SOFTWARE EXCLUSIVE OF ANY COSTS FOR
SHIPPING AND HANDLING.

ANY CLAIM MUST BE MADE WITHIN THE APPLICABLE WARRANTY PERIOD. ALL
WARRANTIES COVER ONLY DEFECTS ARISING UNDER NORMAL USE AND DO NOT
INCLUDE MALFUNCTIONS OR FAILURE RESULTING FROM MISUSE, ABUSE,
NEGLECT, ALTERATION, MISAPPLICATION, PROBLEMS WITH DATA NETWORKS,
PROBLEMS WITH ELECTRICAL POWER, ACTS OF NATURE, UNUSUAL
TEMPERATURES OR HUMIDITY, IMPROPER INSTALLATION, DAMAGE TO MEDIA
OR DAMAGE DETERMINED BY INTERGRAL TO HAVE BEEN CAUSED BY YOU. ALL
LIMITED WARRANTIES ON THE SOFTWARE ARE GRANTED ONLY TO YOU AND
ARE NON- TRANSFERABLE.

YOU AGREE TO INDEMNIFY AND HOLD INTERGRAL HARMLESS FROM ALL
CLAIMS, JUDGMENTS, LIABILITIES, EXPENSES, OR COSTS ARISING FROM
YOUR BREACH OF THIS AGREEMENT AND/OR ACTS OR OMISSIONS. THIS
REMEDY IS THE SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE REMEDY AVAILABLE TO YOU FOR
BREACH OF EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE
SOFTWARE AND RELATED DOCUMENTATION.

LIMITATION OF LIABILITY
UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHALL INTERGRAL, ITS DIRECTORS, OFFICERS,
EMPLOYEES AND AGENTS BE LIABLE TO YOU OR ANY OTHER PARTY FOR
INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, PUNITIVE, OR
EXEMPLARY DAMAGES OF ANY KIND (INCLUDING LOST REVENUES OR PROFITS
OR LOSS OF BUSINESS) RESULTING FROM THIS AGREEMENT, OR FROM THE
FURNISHING, PERFORMANCE, INSTALLATION, OR USE OF THE SOFTWARE,
WHETHER DUE TO A BREACH OF CONTRACT, BREACH OF WARRANTY, OR THE
NEGLIGENCE OF INTERGRAL OR ANY OTHER PARTY, EVEN IF INTERGRAL IS
ADVISED BEFOREHAND OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. TO THE
EXTENT THAT THE APPLICABLE JURISDICTION LIMITS INTERGRAL’S
ABILITY TO DISCLAIM ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES, THIS DISCLAIMER SHALL
BE EFFECTIVE TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED. INTERGRAL’S
LIABILITY UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT, IN ANY EVENT, EXCEED THE
LICENSE FEES YOU PAID FOR THE SOFTWARE, IF ANY.

Indemnification
To the maximum extent permitted by law, you agree to defend,
indemnify and hold harmless INTERGRAL, its directors, officers,
employees and agents from and against any and all claims,
actions, suits or proceedings, as well as any and all losses,
liabilities, damages, costs and expenses (including reasonable
attorneys fees) arising out of or accruing from (a) your use of
the Software, (b) any application you develop on the Software
that infringes any copyright, trademark, trade secret, trade
dress, patent or other intellectual property right of any person
or defames any person or violates their rights of publicity or
privacy, and (c) any non- compliance by you with this License
Agreement.

Confidentiality
The Software contains trade secrets and proprietary know-how that
belong to INTERGRAL and it is being made available to you in
strict confidence. ANY USE OR DISCLOSURE OF THE SOFTWARE, OR OF
ITS ALGORITHMS, PROTOCOLS OR INTERFACES, OTHER THAN IN STRICT
ACCORDANCE WITH THIS LICENSE AGREEMENT, MAY BE ACTIONABLE AS A
VIOLATION OF OUR TRADE SECRET RIGHTS.

Publicity Rights
Licensee grants INTERGRAL the right to include Licensee as a
customer in Software promotional material. Licensee can deny
INTERGRAL this right at any time by submitting a written request
via email to SALES@INTERGRAL.COM, requesting to be excluded from
Software promotional material. Requests made after purchasing may
take thirty (30) calendar days to process.

Use of Decompiler
The Software includes decompiling functionality (“Decompiler”)
that enables reproducing source code from the original binary
code. You hereby acknowledge that the binary code and source code
may be protected by copyright, trademark and other laws
which may prohibit you from decompiling them and/or using
Decompiler. Before using Decompiler, you should make sure that
the decompilation is not prohibited by any applicable license
agreement of the application and/or original binary code
(except to the extent that you may be expressly permitted
under applicable law) or that you have obtained permission to
decompile the code from the copyright owner. Using Decompiler is
entirely optional. INTERGRAL does neither encourage nor condone
the use of the Decompiler and disclaims any liability for your
use of Decompiler in violation of applicable laws.

Use of Debugger
The Software includes debugging functionality (“Debugger”)
that enables debugging programs that may contain binary code,
source code and intellectual property protected by copyright,
trademark, patent and other laws which may prohibit you
from debugging them and/or using Debugger. Before using Debugger,
you should make sure that debugging is not prohibited by any
applicable license agreement of the program and/or original
binary code (except to the extent that you may be expressly
permitted under applicable law), or by other protecting laws,
or that you have obtained permission to debug the program from all
legal protection owner(s). Using Debugger is entirely optional.
INTERGRAL does neither encourage nor condone the use of the
Debugger and disclaims any liability for your use of Debugger
in violation of applicable laws.

FusionReactor Cloud Service
Use of the FusionReactor Cloud Service is governed by the terms
and conditions that accompanies or is included with the
FusionReactor Cloud Service. By accepting this EULA, you are also
accepting the additional terms and conditions when using the
Software with the FusionReactor Cloud Service.

Third Party Software
Any software provided along with the Software that is associated
with a separate license agreement is licensed to you under the
terms of that license agreement. This license does not apply to
those portions of the Software. Copies of these third party
licenses are included in all copies of the Software. By accepting
this EULA, you are also accepting the additional terms.

RESTRICTIONS
United States: If the Software is acquired by the Licensee in the
United States, the Licensee acknowledges: (a) the Software is
subject to U.S. export jurisdiction and agrees to comply with all
applicable international and national laws that apply to the
Software, including the U.S. Export Administration Regulations,
as well as end-user, end- use, and destination restrictions
issued by U.S. and other governments and notwithstanding the
above; and (b) the provisions of the USA Uniform Computer
Information Transaction Act do not apply to this EULA.

CONSENT TO COLLECT AND USE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
You acknowledge and agree that we may collect, transfer, process
and store certain information (“Information”) collected by the
Software, including but not limited to:

(i) IP addresses of the system on which Software is installed;
(ii) MAC Addresses of the system on which Software is installed;
(iii) Email addresses configured for use with the Software;
(iv) Information about the system on which Software is installed,
for example: OS version; processor architecture;
operational status;
(v) Information about the application software on which Software
is installed, for example: application software version;
application software configuration; JVM configuration;
operational status;
(vi) Information regarding how you are using the Software,
for example: version of the Software; statistical information
about the Software; configuration of the Software.

INTERGRAL and its Data Processors may use Information subject to
applicable laws in order to license and bill for the Software and
services, improve its products and services or to provide
products or services (if any) to you. Such uses include, but are
not limited to:

(a) licensing and billing for the Software and services usage;
(b) administering the functionality of the Software and services;
(c) to improve, update or upgrade the Software and services;
(d) improving, developing and enhancing the products and
services of INTERGRAL;
(e) provide product support, products and services to you;
(f) complying with applicable laws or regulations.

INTERGRAL will not intentionally use Information to personally
identify the owner or user of the Software without your knowledge
or consent.

Any use of Information will be in accordance with the privacy
policies of INTERGRAL.

Information may be processed, stored or transferred to INTERGRAL
and its Data Processors which may be located in countries
outside of your country of residence.

INTERGRAL will use reasonable efforts to take appropriate
technical and organizational measures to prevent unauthorized
access to or disclosure of Information, but does not warrant it
will eliminate all risk of misuse of Information.

General: The export of the Software from the country of original
purchase may be subject to control or restriction by applicable
local law. Licensee is solely responsible for determining the
existence and application of any such law to any proposed export
and for obtaining any needed authorization. Licensee agrees not
to export the Software from any country in violation of
applicable legal restrictions on such export.

Governing Law, Jurisdiction and Costs
This EULA is governed by the laws of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany
without regard to Baden-Wuerttemberg’s conflict or choice of law
provisions. Exclusive jurisdiction and place of performance is
Boeblingen, Germany, as long as permitted by applicable law. The
United Nations Convention for the International Sale of Goods
shall not apply.

Changes to the License Agreement
INTERGRAL may make changes to the License Agreement as it
distributes new versions of the Software. When these changes are
made, INTERGRAL will make a new version of the License Agreement
available on the website where the Software is made available.

Entire Agreement and Severability
This EULA is the entire agreement between INTERGRAL and you, and
supersedes all prior or contemporaneous agreements or
understandings, whether oral or written any other communications
or advertising with respect to the Software; this EULA may be
modified only by written agreement signed by authorized
representatives of both you and INTERGRAL. No INTERGRAL dealer or
agent is authorized to make any amendment to this EULA.

If any provision of this EULA shall be held to be invalid or
unenforceable, the remainder of this EULA shall remain in full
force and effect and an enforceable term will be substituted
reflecting our intent as closely as possible. All rights not
expressly granted in this agreement are retained by INTERGRAL.
To the extent any express or implied restrictions are not
permitted by applicable laws, these express or implied
restrictions shall remain in force and effect to the maximum
extent permitted by such applicable laws. The failure or delay of
INTERGRAL to exercise any of its rights under this EULA or upon
any breach of this EULA shall not be deemed a waiver of those
rights or of the breach. You agree that any varying or additional
terms contained in any purchase order or other written notification
or document issued by you in relation to the Software licensed
hereunder shall be of no effect.

INTERGRAL and other trademarks contained in the Software are
trademarks or registered trademarks of INTERGRAL Information
Solutions GmbH. Third party trademarks, trade names, product
names and logos may be the trademarks or registered trademarks of
their respective owners. You may not remove or alter any
trademark, trade names, product names, logo, copyright or other
proprietary notices, legends, symbols or labels in the Software.
This EULA does not authorize you to use INTERGRAL’s or its
licensors’ names or any of their respective trademarks.

The buffer pool space is located outside of the garbage collector-managed memory. It’s a way to allocate native off-heap memory.  What’s the benefit of using buffer pools? To answer this question, let’s firstly learn what byte buffers are.

Byte Buffer

Non-Direct Buffer

java.nio package comes with the Bytebuffer class. It allows us to allocate both direct and non-direct byte buffers. Their is nothing special about non-direct byte buffers – they are an implementation of HeapByteBuffer created by ByteBuffer.allocate() and ByteBuffer.wrap() factory methods. As the name of the class suggests, these are on-heap byte buffers. Wouldn’t it be easier to allocate all the buffers on the Java heap space then?   Why would anyone need to allocate something in a native memory? To answer this question, we need to understand how operating systems perform I/O operations.   Any read or write instructions are executed on memory areas which are contiguous sequence of bytes. So does byte[] occupy a contiguous space on the heap? While technically it makes sense, the JVM specification does not have such guarantees. What’s more interesting, the specification doesn’t even guarantee that heap space will be contiguous itself! Although it seems to be rather unlikely that JVM will place a one-dimensional array of primitives in different places in memory, byte array from Java heap space cannot be used in native I/O operations directly. It has to be copied to a native memory before every I/O, which of course, leads to obvious inefficiencies. For this reason, a direct buffer was introduced.

Direct Buffer

A direct buffer is a chunk of native memory shared with Java from which you can perform a direct read.

An instance of DirectByteBuffer can be created using the ByteBuffer.allocateDirect() factory method. Byte buffers are the most efficient way to perform I/O operations and thus, they are used in many libraries and frameworks – for example in Netty.

Memory Mapped Buffer

A direct byte buffer may also be created by mapping a region of a file directly into memory. In other words, we can load a region of a file to a particular native memory region that can be accessed later.  As you can imagine, it can give a significant performance boost if we have the requirement to read the content of a file multiple times. Thanks to memory mapped files, subsequent reads will use the content of the file from the memory, instead of loading the data from the disc every time it’s needed. MappedByteBuffer can be created via the FileChannel.map() method.

An additional advantage of memory mapped files, is that the OS can flush the buffer directly to the disk when the system is shutting down. Moreover, the OS can lock a mapped portion of the file from other processes on the machine.

Allocation is Expensive

One of the problems with direct buffers is that it’s expensive to allocate them. Regardless of the size of the buffer, calling Buffer.allocateDirect() is a relatively slow operation. It is therefore more efficient to either use direct buffers for large and long-lived buffers or create one large buffer, slice off portions on demand, and return them to be re-used when they are no longer needed.   A potential problem with slicing may occur when slices are not always the same size. The initial large byte buffer can become fragmented when allocating and freeing objects of different size.  Unlike Java heap, direct byte buffer cannot be compacted, because it’s not a target for the garbage collector.

Monitoring the Usage of Buffer Pools

If you’re interested in the amount of direct or mapped byte buffers used by your application, then you can easily monitor them using FusionReactor.   FusionReactor provides a break-down of all the different memory spaces.   Simply navigate to Resources and then Direct – Buffer Pools.

By default, the Direct Buffer Pool graph is displayed. You can switch to the Mapped Buffer Pool by clicking on a drop-down in the top right corner. Java will grow those pools as required so the fact that Direct Memory Used covers Direct Capacity on the graph above, means that all buffer memory allocated so far is in use.

Please note – you can limit the amount of direct byte buffer space that an application can allocate, by using -XX:MaxDirectMemorySize=N flag.   Although this is possible, you would need a very good reason to do so.

If you ever had some serious issues with the performance of your Java application, most probably you know how valuable thread profiling can be. But do you know which profiler you should use?

There are two basic techniques used by profilers – sampling and instrumentation.

Sampling Profilers

A sampling profiler involves periodically asking the JVM for the current point of execution of all currently alive (active) threads. This type of profiler carries the least amount of overhead. This is important because introducing heavy measurement/instrumentation into the application can change the performance characteristics significantly.  Using a sampling technique, we get a snapshot of the next stack trace when the timer fires. So the profiler looks at each thread and determines which method the thread is executing at that moment. As there are gaps between consecutive measurements, sampling profiler achieves a trade-off between the level of accuracy obtained vs the overhead involved in actually taking the measurement, This is illustrated in the following figure:

As you can see, the thread spent most of its time in save method and a little bit in read method. If the sampling happens only when the thread is in a save method (more probable as this method dominates), the profiler will report that the thread spent 100% of its time in save method, which is of course not accurate.

A rather logical way to minimize this sampling error is to reduce the time interval between sampling and increase the profiling time. However, as we discussed earlier, this solution might impact the performance characteristics of the application, so a balance is the key.

Instrumented Profilers

Instrumented profilers introduce a much larger performance overhead into the application. This method usually involves injecting bytecode into the classes for the purpose of profiling.  This approach involves a higher performance impact, but generates a more accurate measurement when compared to the result from the sampling profiler. Another problem which may arise as a result of the way an instrumented profiler modifies the bytecode is the following; as you may know, JIT compiler inlines small methods. Because the instrumentation introduced by the profiler, some small methods might not be eligible to be in-lined anymore. It can have a serious impact on application performance. If you decide to use instrumented profilers, make sure that you instrument only a small section of the code.

Production Code Profiler in FusionReactor

Profiling in a development environment is easy. However, it might not be enough. When dealing with production data, we are exposed to a different scale and thus, we might observe different bottlenecks in our application. That’s why profiling in production is so important. As already mentioned, both sampling and instrumented profilers have their pros and cons. If you want to profile in a production environment, a low overhead sampling profiler seems to be a better choice. FusionReactor’s Production Code Profiler will help you identify bottlenecks in your production environment with a very low sampling overhead. The really cool thing about this profiler is that it can be configured in a way that it will automatically profile your application if it detects a long-running request or thread. What is a long-running request? It’s up to you to define, but 3 seconds is the default value. If you monitor some sort of latency-sensitive application, then you might want to decrease this value. Similarly, if your application performs some time-consuming computations, then most probably you don’t want to be notified all the time and increasing Minimum Transaction Time will be necessary. Taking a stacktrace snapshot takes as little as 1 ms per sample. With a default sampling rate of 200 ms, you can usually get some meaningful results from just 5 samples.

FusionReactor’s thread profiling output looks like this:

On the left-hand side, you can see the percentage of time the particular method took. On the right -hand side, time in seconds is shown. As you can see in the output, logging in lowCostSearchEngineClient class can be a potential bottleneck in this application. Thanks to the bundled de-compiler, you can instantly check the method by simply clicking on it.

It’s not always easy to pinpoint a performance issue in a running application, but profilers are usually good estimators. Sampling profilers such as FusionReactor’s Profiler, are perfect tools to use them in a production environment.

We are thrilled to announce that for the second year in a row FusionReactor has been accredited with the “FeeFo Gold Trusted Merchant” 2018 award!

Feefo is an independent feedback service that are dedicated to collecting trusted reviews. The Gold Trusted Merchant award is only given to businesses that have an average positive Service Rating of between 95% and 100%.

The whole FusionReactor team would like to thank everyone who filled out feedback for us – we really appreciate it!

The award shows that FusionReactor is a leading tool for Java Application Performance monitoring & Degugging – designed to help Developers and Devops improve their applications and get to the root of the problem as fast as possible.

Using the Feefo feedback service has been a fantastic way for us to see how FusionReactor is being utilized by our customers. As well as highlighting any issues they may be facing. We always aim to provide the best possible service for our customers.

You can read more about our Customer reviews here: https://www.fusion-reactor.com/customer-reviews/
And see some interviews with our customers: https://www.fusion-reactor.com/customers/

“The Trusted Service award is a recognized symbol of trust – helping customers click with confidence.”. From everyone on the FusionReactor team thank you and have a great year!

Intergral GmbH Makers of FusionReactor Java Application Monitor Wins Feefo Review Feedback Reward

In this video Brad Wood of Ortus Solutions introduces you to FusionReactor Cloud and Docker Swarm

“We’ve made a new screencast that shows an introduction to FusionReactor Cloud, a new way to monitor any number of servers in a consolidated interface that can scale up and down with your infrastructure. Not only do new servers automatically register and deregister themselves with the Cloud dashboard, but it supports a pay-for-what-you-use model that prevents you from locking into a specific number of licenses.

This is a great fit for deployments like Docker Swarm where you can scale your service up and down from day to day. In this demo, I’ll show you how to add FusionReactor cloud easily into any CommandBox-based server and show how to deploy it to a Docker Swarm on our Ortus Docker image and then play around with it.” Brad Wood, Ortus Solutions (Follow him on Twitter)

The FusionReactor Blog was selected as one of the Top 30 ColdFusion Blogs by FeedSpot. The whole FusionReactor team are proud to be part of this list.

Have a look at some of the other top ColdFusion blogs featured in the list.

We also got this cool badge for being featured in the top 30 :

The FusionTeam will once again be PLATINUM sponsors of this great event – make sure you join us and the Adobe ColdFusion Team in Las Vegas!

We will be showing off the new major release of FusionReactor, which is FR 7 as well as FusionReactor CLOUD.

To celebrate this, we are giving away a free ticket for the Adobe ColdFusion Summit.

The Prize is for one ColdFusion Summit registration which Includes:
– Admission to all keynote and breakout sessions
– Sponsor Pavilion.
– Attendee appreciation event
– Conference meals.

There are Two ways to enter the draw:

1) ON TWITTER : Retweet this tweet and follow us it is that simple! If you are already following us then just retweet this.

OR (You can do both to double your chances of winning).

2) ON FACEBOOK : Just Like us on Facebook – and share this post with your friends

The winner will be announced on : Friday 27th October

If you do not win, or you just want to sign up right away, you can get a reduced price ticket for just $249 by using our registration code: CF17OFFER249 when you purchase a ticket here

FR7 represents a massive step forward for FusionReactor, includes 20 completely new core features and around 100 major improvements and bug fixes. Our primary goals for this release have been to enhance the array of system, application and JVM metrics available, as well as build upon and extend the core functionality within FR Ultimate Edition.

Our mission is to provide developers, DevOps and I.T. professionals unparalleled depth of insight, transparency and interpretation into what applications are doing at the point where things are going wrong! Why? So, that they can isolate issues and performance problems faster than with any other tool.

FR7 has significantly increased the array of supported metrics available. Ranging from complete JMX MBean metrics, to enhanced framework (ColdFusion and Java) support to NoSQL data stores and current streaming platforms, such as Apache Kafka™.

The other major focus of this release has been to enhance FR Ultimate Edition – which adds a completely new definition to the meaning of application monitoring. FR Ultimate combines the most useful components and features from the most used error detection and performance analysis tools available to developers: the code debugger, application profiler and with the launch of FR7, the memory profiler. These tools can all be used safely, securely and most importantly with MINIMAL OVERHEAD in your production environment.

The complexity of today’s distributed, service based, containerized, ephemeral environments, combined with unprecedented quantities of data means that re-producing production issues is virtually impossible. The error detection features built into FR Ultimate completely change how issues would be investigated, removing the need to try and reproduce defects in a test environment or scouring through log files in the hope of finding a clue. FR Ultimate enables you to interact with issues as they unfold, directly in production. It is the only product on the market which offers such capabilities.

The whole team is extremely proud of FusionReactor 7 and we hope that you enjoy using it and that it continues to be your #1 tool to monitor, detect issues and protect your applications and servers.

David Tattersall

CEO Intergral – makers of FusionReactor