An interesting issue cropped up today which involved taking a trip back in time to look at our old issue tracking software. Back in 2004 we were using a Windows client/server based system which had a MS SQL back-end. From day 1 employees are trained to track track and track again. Emails, calls, suggestions – it all gets tracked. Added to that, most new employees – even senior engineers – get started on support duties. This gets them familiar with their environments, customers and our software – plus familiarity with tracking everything. This means we have a LOT of knowledge built up in our ticket-base.
One of our products at this time (used by some of the worlds largest corporations – HP, Philips, etc) was called “Tornado” – this evolved into a product called ShareDox ( http://www.sharedox.com ). The product is a knowledge management solution built on ColdFusion technology.
At the time there were no monitoring tools and thus this led to the now leading monitoring solution – FusionReactor ( http://www.fusion-reactor.com ). So, during the upgrade process to CFMX 6.1 with one of our customers, we started seeing huge CPU usage, hanging threads and various other nasties. At the time this was all quite serious and a major thorn in our sides. Eventually (I believe with some help from our CTO but don’t quote me on that – this was several years ago!) this got resolved and all was calm again. Until today!
Fast-forward 6 years, a move to JIRA and some changes in our business focus – ie our old tracking system is just a distant memory. I started working with a client and getting very distinct feelings of de-ja-vu… CFMX6.1, MS-SQL DB, high CPU, multiple failures per day, hanging threads – essentially a whole heap of stability issues.
Now, I knew I’d seen this before. I knew it was something to do with problematic DB drivers. What I couldn’t remember is how to solve the issue. As you can imagine from a company that’s been doing ColdFusion consulting for over ten years that brought back a lot of issues. A little bit of date filtering and some extra keywords and… result #1 of #5 “ColdFusion MX 6.1: Updated DataDirect drivers for 100% CPU utilization and other issues”.
Of course there are many questions here… why is the customer still on CFMX6.1 amongst others. However, my real point is that tracking is your saviour. In a consulting company like ours we’re truly able to assist more rapidly to a huge variety of issues because generally – we’ve seen it all before. It’s very common for us to have identified, resolved and documented the problem you’re having. This allows us to give you the best value for money on your consulting investment.
If knowledge is power and the key to results – you want us on your team! For all your consulting needs – whether issues from 2004 or today, we can help, contact us now.