I currently have a volttron agent that periodicially downloads some data from the web in the form of a csv. I would like to use the DataPublisher example to take that csv data and push it to pubsub. However, from looking at the code, it seems like the DataPublisher is designed to run once, automatically, as soon as the agent starts up.
So my question them becomes, is there a way to start up the datapublisher from the original agent (which would itself have some sort of timer or loop)? I would then also need to stop it afterwards.
If I can't do this, my alternatives seem to be modifying the datapublisher to work on a schedule, or altering my other agent to publish the data from the csvs to pubsub.
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
The way I would do this is to expose an RPC method on the data publisher that either accepts a filename to publish. When this is called it would change the filename to publish and "start" the publishing of the data. The data publisher agent would always be running so there isn't a true restarting of the publisher.
The other agent (The one the downloaded the data?) would then just need to "kick off" the publishing through the rpc call.
This sounds like a very good feature that could be committed back to the VOLTTRON repository if you saw fit.
Related
Background
We have a PHP App Service and MySQL that is deployed using an Azure Devops Pipeline (YML). The content itself is a PHP site that it packaged up into a single file using Akeeba by an external supplier. The package is a Zip file (which can be deployed as a standard Zip deployment) and inside the Zip file is a huge JPA file. The JPA is essentially the whole web site plus database tables, settings, file renames and a ton of other stuff all rolled into one JPA file. Akeeba essentially unzips the files, copies them to the right places, does all the DB stuff and so on. To kick the process off, we can simply connect to a specific URL (web site + path) and run the PHP which does all the clever unpackaging via a web GUI. But, we want to include this stage in the pipeline instead so that the process is fully automated end to end. Akeeba has a CLI as an alternative to the Web GUI deployment, so it should go like this:
Create web app
Deploy the web site ZIP (zipDeploy)
Use the REST API to access Kudu and run the relevant command (php install.php web.jpa) to unpack the jpa and do the MySQL stuff - this normally takes well over 30 minutes (it is a big site and it has a lot of "stuff" to do - but, it does actually work in the end).
The problem is that the SCM REST API has a hard-coded 230s limit as described here: https://blog.headforcloud.com/2016/11/15/azure-app-service-hard-timeout-limit/
So, the unpack stage keeps throwing "Invoke-RestMethod : 500 - The request timed out" exactly on the 230s mark.
We have tried SCM_COMMAND_IDLE_TIMEOUT and WEBJOBS_IDLE_TIMEOUT but, unsurprisingly, they did not make any difference.
$cmd=#{"command"="php .\site\wwwroot\install.php .\site\wwwroot\web.jpa .\site\wwwroot"}
Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $url -Headers #{"Authorization"="Basic $creds"} -Body (ConvertTo-Json($cmd)) -Method Post -ContentType "application/json" -TimeoutSec 7200
I can think of a few hypothetical ways around it (some quite eccentric):
Find another way to run CLI commands inside the Web App after deployment other than the Kudu REST API. Is there such a thing? I Googled and checked SO but all I found were pointers to the way we do it (or try to do it) now.
Use something like Selenium to click the GUI buttons instead of using the CLI. (I do not know if they would suffer a timeout.)
Instead of running the command via Kudu REST, use the same API to create and deploy a script to the web server, start it and then let the REST API exit whilst the script still runs on the Web App. Essentially, bodge an async call but without the callback and then have the pipeline check in on the site at, say, 5 minute intervals. Clunky.
Extend the 230s limit - but I do not think that Microsoft make this possible.
Make the web site as fast as possible during the deployment in the hope of getting it under the 4-minute mark and then down-scale it. Yuk!
See what the Akeeba JPA unpacking actually does, unpack it pre-deployment and do what the unpackage process does but controlled via the Pipeline. This is potentially a lot of work and would lose the support of the supplier.
Give up on an automated deployment. That would rather defeat much of the purpose of a Devops pipeline.
Try AWS + terraform instead. That's not a approved infrastructure environment, however.
Given that Microsoft understandably do not want long-running API calls hanging around, I understand why the limit exists. However, I would expect therefore there to be a mechanism to interact with an App Service file system via a CLI in another way. Does anyone know how?
The 4 minute idle timeout on the TCP level and this is implemented on the Azure hardware load balancer. This timeout is not configurable and this cannot be changed. One thing I want to mention is that this is idle timeout at the TCP level which means that if the connection is idle only and no data transfer happening, only then this timeout is hit. To provide more info, this will hit if the web application got the request and kept processing the request for > 4minutes without sending any data back.
Resolution
Ideally in a web application, it is not good to keep the underlying HTTP request open and 4 minutes is a decent amount of time. If you have a requirement about background processing within your web application, then the recommended solution is to use Azure WebJobs and have the Azure Webapp interact with the Azure Webjob to notify once the background processing is done (there are many ways that Azure provides like queues triggers etc. and you can choose the method that suits you the best). Azure Webjobs are designed for background processing and you can do as much background processing as you want within them. I am sharing a few articles that talk about webjobs in detail
· http://www.hanselman.com/blog/IntroducingWindowsAzureWebJobs.aspx
· https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/websites-webjobs-resources/
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It totally depends on the app. Message Queue comes to mind. There are a lot of potential solutions and it will be up to you to decide.
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Option #1)
You can change the code to send some sort of header to continue to the client to keep the session open.
A sample is shown here
This shows the HTTP Headers with the Expect 100-continue header:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa287673%28v=vs.71%29.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396
This shows how to add a Header to the collection:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa287502(v=vs.71).aspx
Option #2) Progress bar
This sample shows how to use a progress bar:
https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/d84f4c89-ebbf-44d3-bc4e-43525ae1df45/how-to-increase-progressbar-when-i-running-havey-query-in-sql-server-or-oracle-?forum=csharpgeneral
Option #3) A common practice to keep the connection active for a longer period is to use TCP Keep-alive. Packets are sent when no activity is detected on the connection. By keeping on-going network activity, the idle timeout value is never hit and the connection is maintained for a long period
Option #4) You can also try the option of hosting your application as an IaaS VM instead of a APP SERVICE. This may avoid the ARR timeout issue because its architecture is different and I believe that the time-out is configurable.
mongo change stream with load balancing
Can any one help as how we can achieve mango change stream with load balanceing server..?
we are working on micro service architecture facing issue on production when i go with load balanceing the same code is deployed over the 4 server when i perform any operation on single server the change stream trigger is fired form all the 4 server.
So what i want it should be trigger from same server where the operation are performed
Thanks in advance
Change stream is a database-level concept. Data is inserted/updated/deleted from the database, this produces change events. Any number of subscribers can subscribe to the change events and do whatever they want to do with the changes. Each subscriber is notified of every change event.
A change stream is not meant to inform the application that originated the change of the said change. This is redundant - the application already knows what it did.
Consider rephrasing your question to explain what you are trying to accomplish better.
I currently have a application running that passes data between Asana and Zendesk.
I have webhooks created for all my Project in Asana and all project events are sent to my webhook end point that verifies the request and tries to identify the event and update Zendesk with relevant data depending on the event type (Some events aren't required).
However I have been receiving the following request from the Webhooks just recently:
"events": [
{
"action": "sync_error",
"message": "There was an error with the event queue, which may have resulted in missed events. If you are keeping resources in sync, you may need to manually re-fetch them.",
"created_at": "2017-05-23T16:29:13.994Z"
}
]
Now because I don't poll the API for event updates I react when the events arrive with me, I haven't considered using a Sync key, the docs suggest this is only required when polling for events. Do I need to use one when using Webhooks also?
What am I missing?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
You're correct, you don't need to track a sync key for webhooks - we proactively try to reach out with them when something changes in Asana, and we track the events that haven't yet been delivered across webhooks (essentially, akin to us updating the sync key server-side whenever webhooks have been successfully delivered).
Basically what's happening here is that for some reason, our event queues detect that there's a problem with their internal state. This means that events didn't get recorded, or webhooks didn't get delivered after a long time. Our events and webhooks try to track changes in a best-effort sense, and there are some things that can happen with our production machines that can cause these sorts of issues, like a machine dying at an inopportune time.
Unfortunately, then, the only way to get back to a good state is to do a full scan of the projects you're tracking, which is what is meant by you may need to manually re-fetch them. Basically, a robust implementation of syncing Asana to external resources looks like:
A diff function that, given a particular task and external resource, detects what state is out of date or different between each resource and choose a merge/patch resolution (i.e. "Make Zendesk look like Asana")
Receiving a webhook runs that diff/patch process for that one task in a "live" fashion.
Periodically (on script startup, say, or when webhooks/events are missed and you get an error message like this) update all resources that might have been missed by scanning the entire project and do the diff/patch for every task. This is more expensive, but should be significantly more rare.
Is there anyone using the nice pinoccio from www.pinocc.io ?
I want to use it to post data into an apache couchdb using node.js. So I'm trying to poll data from the pinnocio API, but I'm a little lost:
schedule the polls
do long polls
do a completely different approach
Any ideas are welcome
Pitt
Sure. I wrote the Pinoccio API, here’s how you do it
https://gist.github.com/soldair/c11d6ae6f4bead140838
This example depends on the pinoccio npm module ~0.1.3 so make sure to npm install again to pick up the newest version.
you don't need to poll because pinoccio will send you changes as they happen if you have an open connection to either "stats" or "sync". if you want to poll you can but its not "real time".
sync gives you the current state + streams changes as they happen. so its perfect if you
only need to save the changes to your troop while your script is running. or show the current and last known state on a web page.
The solution that replicates every data point we store is stats. This is the example provided. Stats lets you read everything that has happened to a scout. Digital pins for example are the "digital" report. You can ask for data from a specific point in time or just from the current time (default). Changes to this "digital" report will continue streaming live as they happen, until the "end" time is reached, or if "tail" equals 0 in the options passed to stats.
hope this helps. i tested the script on my local couch and it worked well. you would need to modify it to copy more stats from each scout. I hope that soon you will be able to request multiple reports from multiple scouts in the same stream. i just have some bugs to sort out ;)
You need to look into 2 dimensions:
node.js talking to CouchDB. This is well understood and there are some questions you can find here.
Getting the data from the pinoccio. The API suggests that as long as the connection is open, you get data. So use a short timeout and a loop. You might want to run your own node.js instance for that.
Interesting fact: the CouchDB team seems to work on replacing their internal JS engine with node.js
I'm trying to implement logging mechanism in a Service-Workflow-hybrid application. The requirements for logging is that instead for independent log action, each log must be considered as a detail operation and placed against a parent/master operation. So, it's a parent-child and goes to database table(s). This is the primary reason, NLog failed.
To help understand better, I'm diving in a generic detail. This is how the application flow goes:
Now, the Main entry point of the application (normally called Program.cs) is Platform. It initializes an engine that is capable of listening incoming calls from ISDN lines, VoIP, or web services. The interface is generic, so any call that reaches the Platform triggers OnConnecting(). OnConnecting() is a thread-safe event and can be triggered as many times as system requires.
Within OnConnecting(), a new instance of our custom Workflow manager is launched and the context is a custom object called ProcessingInfo:
new WorkflowManager<ZeProcessingInfo>();
Where, ZeProcessingInfo:
var ZeProcessingInfo = new ProcessingInfo(this, new LogMaster());
As you can see, the ProcessingInfo is composed of Platform itself and a new instance of LogMaster. LogMaster is defined in an independent assembly.
Now this LogMaster is available throughout the WorkflowManager, all the Workflows it launches, all the activities within any running Workflow, and passed on to external code called from within any Activity. Now, when a new LogMaster is initialized, a Master Operation entry is created in the database and this LogMaster object now lives until this call is ended after a series of very serious roller coaster rides through different workflows. Upon every call of OnConnecting(), a new Master Operation is created and maintained.
The LogMaster allows for calling a AddDetail() method that adds new child detail under the internally stored Master Operation (distinguished through a Guid Primary Key). The LogMaster is built upon Entity Framework.
And, I'm able to log under the same Master Operation as many times as I require. But the application requirements are changing and there is a need to log from other assemblies now. There is a Platform Server assembly witch is a Windows Service that acts as a server listening to web service based calls and once a client calls a method, OnConnecting in Platform is triggered.
I need a mechanism to somehow retrieve the related LogMaster object so that I can add detail to the same Master Operation. But Platform Server is the once triggering the OnConnecting() on the Platform and thus, instantiating LogMaster. This creates a redundancy loop.
Also, failure scenarios are being considered as well. If LogMaster fails, need to revert to Event Logging from Database Logging. If Event Logging is failed (or not allowed through unified configuration), need to revert to file-based (XML) logging.
I hope I have given a rough idea. I don't expect code but I need some strategy for a very seamless plug-able configurable logging mechanism that supports Master-Child operations.
Thanks for reading. Any help would be much appreciated.
I've read this question a number of times and it was pretty hard to figure out what was going on. I don't think your diagram helps at all. If your question is about trying to retrieve the master log record when writing child log records then I would forget about trying to create normalised data in the log tables. You will just slow down the transactional system in trying to do so. You want the log/audit records to write as fast as possible and you can later aggregate them when you want to read them.
Create a de-normalised table for the logs entries and use a single Guid in that table to track the session/parent log master. Yes this will be a big table but it will write fast.
As for guaranteed delivery of log messages to a destination, I would try not to create multiple destinations as combining them later will be a nightmare but rather use something like MSMQ to emit the audit logs as fast as possible and have another service pick them up and process them in a guaranteed delivery manner. ETW (Event Logging) is not guaranteed under load and you will not know that it has failed.