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 Chart images not rendering fine. |
| Posted by Jaideep on Oct-08-2013 07:10 |
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Hi,
We just came across a very peculiar thing. Our chart application on a Windows Server 2008 box has chart images showing up with random lines,as if there is an image rendering issue.
To narrow down the issue, we ran the chartdirector sample application on the same box, and saw that the sample charts have the same issue.
I am attaching a snapshot. It seems like the images are not being rendered correctly, and then they change on every refresh, sometimes with extra lines, or with text not coming out correctly. Can you help figure out the issue ?
thanks,
Jaideep.
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| Re: Chart images not rendering fine. |
| Posted by Jaideep on Oct-08-2013 23:39 |
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| Here is the sample image from the chartdirector application itself.
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| Re: Chart images not rendering fine. |
| Posted by Peter Kwan on Oct-09-2013 01:17 |
|
As Jaideep,
If I remembered correctly, your company has been using ChartDirector for many years in a large number of servers. Does the problem you mentioned specific to a particular Windows 2008 server, and is it reproducible on other Windows 2008 servers?
Random lines can be an issue with rendering. However, for the bar chart, it seems the position of the first white bar is incorrect, and this is harder to explain in terms of rendering.
I am guessing, may be it is a corruption issue. For example, the ChartDirector DLL in file or in memory cache is corrupted, or the .NET system is somewhat corrupted and produce random floating point computation errors. Another possibility is that a third party program is directly interfering with the execution of the code (eg. the third party program may be trying to monitor code execution for the purpose of auditing the code or profiling the code or analyzing the memory usage, etc) and somehow it produces errors.
As a first step to diagnose the problem, have you tried to shutdown and restart the server. This can remove memory DLL cache corruption if any.
You mentioned the problem also occurs in the sample code. Is it possible to take the a few exact image outputs of the sample code (not the screen shot) and send them to me for analysis? To take the exact image, simply right click on the image and choose (Save Picture As) to save the image as a file. Because I can run the sample code in my machine as well, I can compare it with your images to see if there is any image formatting issues. (The screen shot in your message seems to be processed or encoded by some third party tools, and is not the original image from ChartDirector, so it is hard to analyse it.)
Regards
Peter Kwan |
| Re: Chart images not rendering fine. |
| Posted by Jaideep on Oct-09-2013 04:53 |
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Peter,
Thanks for the response. I am attaching a couple of images from the sample application for your reference.
thanks,
Jaideep.
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| Re: Chart images not rendering fine. |
| Posted by Jaideep on Oct-10-2013 22:22 |
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Peter,
Do you have any update for us? This is a high priority issue for one of our customers and we are stuck because there is no good way for us to debug this issue on our end.
Please let me know if you have any good ideas.
thanks,
Jaideep. |
| Re: Chart images not rendering fine. |
| Posted by Peter Kwan on Oct-11-2013 01:08 |
|
Hi Jaideep,
Sorry for the late reply. We have done a lot of testing and analysis, but we are unable to reproduce the problem or determine exactly what may have cause this problem.
Our analysis is that the problem occurs randomly and occurs in many places. It does not seem to be a purely rendering issue. I would suspect it only occurs on that single server. Are you able to reproduce it in your own server?
Due to the random and widespread nature of the issue, and that it occurs even with the sample code, and that it is hard to reproduce on other Window 2008 machines, we suspect it is a "systematic" issue affecting the .NET system (I assume you are using ChartDirector for .NET), and not just an issue with certain lines of code. It may be triggered by certain .NET features used by ChartDirector, but not commonly used by other programs. One such feature is accessing system GUI functions when running in IIS. (Server side ASP.NET scripts generally does not need to have a GUI, as IIS and the scripts are supposed to run at the background on the server side. However, ChartDirector needs to use GUI functions to access fonts. GUI functions can internally go very deep into hardware - as many GUI functions can be hardware accelerated, sometimes with third party graphics cards and drivers.)
If you are using some older versions of ChartDirector, another possibility could be due to .NET 1.x compatibility. For compatibility reasons, old versions of ChartDirector is compiled in .NET 1.x. In theory, it should work with later .NET versions, as .NET is supposed to be backwards compatible with itself. I am not sure which version of ChartDirector you are using, but you may try to use the latest version instead to see if it makes any difference. To do this, please download the latest version of ChartDirector from our web site (which is a zip file), extract the "netchartdir.dll", and use it to replace the existing "netchartdir.dll" on the Windows 2008 server. Then check the sample code again to see if the issue still occurs. Please also try the diagnostic script "cdinfo.aspx" to confirm if it is using the latest version of ChartDirector (5.1.1).
If you have not yet tried to reset the server, you may consider to try this method. This is to clear any memory corruption. (I know this may not be possible in a live server.)
Yet another test you may try is to compile the Windows Forms sample code that comes with ChartDirector, and download it to the server, and see if it can run normally there as a desktop application. This may give us some clue to see if the issue only occurs in ASP.NET or in background applications, or is more widespread.
Regards
Peter Kwan |
| Re: Chart images not rendering fine. |
| Posted by Jaideep on Oct-11-2013 01:26 |
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Thanks for the update Peter. I appreciate you looking into this.
We have been looking at things that might be different on those couple of servers too, and have managed to narrow it down to a third party tool called 'Quest Foglight Agent Host for Microsoft .NET'.
As per the description - ?Quest's Foglight .NET cartridge technology solutions enable companies to adaptively manage .NET service levels through proactive monitoring and real-time diagnostics.?
This service seems to be conflicting with the chart rendering. Turning it off resolves the rendering issue, but that is something that the customer cannot do for the long term. Is this something you can look at ?
thanks,
Jaideep. |
| Re: Chart images not rendering fine. |
| Posted by Peter Kwan on Oct-11-2013 22:48 |
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Hi Jaideep,
As mentioned in one of my earlier message, the problem can be caused by a third party program that can interfere with the execution of the other code, such as tools for auditing, profiling, analyzing, controlling other code's execution. As ?Quest's Foglight .NET cartridge technology solutions" is this kind of tools, it is possible it may have caused the issue. You may consider to report this issue to Quest (now become Dell), as it seems to be easily reproducible.
I will try to see if I can reproduce the problem. (From my understanding, the Quest system is a kind of enterprise management system, and the Foglight Agent is probably a part of the system. I am not sure if it is easy to install such system for testing.) Would you mind to clarify the exact "Quest Foglight Agent Host for .NET" version that your client is using? From Quest's web site, it seems they latest version (5.9) is a complete rewrite of the code and is different from their previous version (5.6).
Regards
Peter Kwan |
| Re: Chart images not rendering fine. |
| Posted by Jaideep on Oct-12-2013 03:41 |
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Peter,
Thanks for looking into this.
They are on version 5.9.2 and it indeed is this Foglight Agent which seems to be causing these rendering issues.
Can you let me know if you find anything obvious in your tests.
thanks,
Jaideep. |
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