Various low level updates

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Various low level updates - 5/5/2011 12:21:38 PM

Eric

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Joined: 10/10/2003
From: Seattle, WA
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I have been a very busy bee over the past month, propping literally thousands of code changes to some low level stuff in the site in the name of better performance, trapping errors and bad user input etc. In the past two days I have done a comprehensive overhaul o two areas in particular:

Sorting: all sorting parameters are now going through a completely rigid filter to shield any bogus input or hacking attempts. The potential downside is that I *might* have broken some valid/legitimate sorting. Please let me know (with the URL preferably) if you see any cases like this.
AutoComplete: I just did a very thorough overhaul of all autocompletion queries. In the process, I tried to make all of the wine-related ones vintage sensitive whereas only some were before. So if you type a 4-digit number the site will treat it as a vintage and also display vintages in the potential completion results. Again, because I tweaked or rewrote dozens of subtle and complex queries, despite testing under the GUI, profile and debugger, I easily could have broken some. BTW, autcompletion is only enabled for logged in users. Please do let me know if you see any glitches.

My top priority continues to be some very low-level database and query optimization for much better performance and scale. Plus some upcoming hardware upgrades. I suspect this will keep me rather busy for about one more month at which point I plan to dig into a very heavy completion phase on the beta website.

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Cheers!
-Eric LeVine

http://twitter.com/cellartracker
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Post #: 1

RE: Various low level updates - 5/17/2011 2:05:39 PM

Eric

Posts: 17317
Joined: 10/10/2003
From: Seattle, WA
Status: offline

I am about to put the site into maintenance mode for about 90 seconds to apply several thousand code changes I have been working on over the past two weeks.The goal is better performance and scale. I have code reviewed and tested until I can;t see straight anymore, but it is almost a certainty that I missed something... Anyway, I appreciate your patience. I will be staring at the error logs as soon as I turn the changes on, so I should know pretty quickly if I missed something...

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-Eric LeVine

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(in reply to Eric)

Post #: 2

RE: Various low level updates - 5/17/2011 2:08:51 PM

Eric

Posts: 17317
Joined: 10/10/2003
From: Seattle, WA
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OK, changes are live...

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-Eric LeVine

http://twitter.com/cellartracker
http://facebook.com/cellartracker

(in reply to Eric)

Post #: 3

RE: Various low level updates - 5/17/2011 3:27:19 PM

Eric

Posts: 17317
Joined: 10/10/2003
From: Seattle, WA
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I caught one error: global searches that included a food pairing tag were hitting a syntax glitch. Fixed.

There is some other performance fallout from the changes that I made. While well intentioned there is a fine balance between minimizing the size of the execution plan cache and forcing very bad execution plans due to wildly divergent underlying search conditions. For the SQL geeks out there, the tension is well described in this excellent article: http://www.sommarskog.se/dyn-search-2008.html
I have handled the worst cases with a couple of targeted forced recompiles, but I have some ideas for how to have the best of both worlds.

All of this SQL performance work is likely peeling an endlessly layered onion with the occasionally VERY spicy layer.

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Cheers!
-Eric LeVine

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Post #: 4

RE: Various low level updates - 5/17/2011 3:38:59 PM

Eric

Posts: 17317
Joined: 10/10/2003
From: Seattle, WA
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Uggh, I had a little glitch deploying the foodtag fix on the guest SQL Server, so a few more people kept hitting it. That is fixed now.

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Cheers!
-Eric LeVine

http://twitter.com/cellartracker
http://facebook.com/cellartracker

(in reply to Eric)

Post #: 5

RE: Various low level updates - 5/17/2011 5:46:59 PM

Eric

Posts: 17317
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From: Seattle, WA
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Bigger ugh. Definitely running into bad plan caching. I think I have a clean solution that will let me have the best of all worlds. I am very glad I deployed this midweek (when things are quietest), so at least I have a little breathing room to sort this out over the next couple of days (versus Saturday and Sunday where traffic rises a LOT).

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Cheers!
-Eric LeVine

http://twitter.com/cellartracker
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(in reply to Eric)

Post #: 6

RE: Various low level updates - 5/17/2011 6:07:59 PM

bretrooks

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Joined: 9/27/2009
From: San Luis Obispo, CA
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I know nothing about SQL, but I'm glad that you do. Thanks for all the work you do, seen and unseen.

Oh, and the vintage specific auto-complete is awesome.

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Post #: 7

RE: Various low level updates - 5/17/2011 7:43:29 PM

Eric

Posts: 17317
Joined: 10/10/2003
From: Seattle, WA
Status: offline

Thanks Bret. Making some progress. I have a little damage control in place right now and hopefully will have the "best of both worlds" solution live late tonight. The crazy thing about this stuff is that I can test and test and test for weeks and think everything will work. But only once I deploy under normal conditions do I know for sure -- things either work great or go sideways in a hurry if they don't scale...

Glad the polished up autocomplete is well received.

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Cheers!
-Eric LeVine

http://twitter.com/cellartracker
http://facebook.com/cellartracker

(in reply to bretrooks)

Post #: 8