AppOffline.htm mystery

if you create a file named AppOffline.htm in the root directory of the web site user will be redirected to the page. This is useful when we upload something in PROD. We can create a file named AppOffline.htm specifying “site is upgrading………. Please wait for few mins….”, copy it in the root directory of web site and then we can modify PROD files.

So when we need to update the live site content for few moments then we can put the file in the root directory and the site will be offline. Any user trying to access any url of the site will get the appoffline.htm file.. Then when update will be done then the file can be deleted to bring the site online.

Destructor, Finalizer, Dispose

The three terms Destructor, Finalizar and Dispose are a bit confusing in dot net. May be you have heard of Finalizer and Dispose but not of Destructor. If your code uses resources that need to released then you can implement IDisposable interface. Then in Dispose method you can clear the resources. But the dispose method is not called automatically rather the user will have to call it explicitly. But if user forgets to call dispose method then how you'll release the resource? Here the Finalizer comes into play. If you implement Finalizer interface then the GC will call the finalize method when the GC will try to reclaim the memory occupied by your object. So Finalize your ensure that you cleaning code will run as GC will call it automatically. But then what about destructor? Actually destructor is just finalizer. In C++ destructor will be called when the object will go out of scope but in C# the desctructor will be called by GC (just like finalizer). So desctructor and finalizer is the same in a sense. In VB.NET there's no destructor but only Finalizer.

Finalizer is costly process and increase the object's generation by 1. When GC runs and try to collect the object and find the object has finalize method, then GC run the finalize method. And after that the GC will not collect the memory rather upgrade the object's generation by 1. So if the object in GEN 0 has finalize method called then the object will be not be reclaimed in this GC call rather the object's generation will be upgraded to GEN 1. So this will keep the object long time in memory. The object memory may be collected next time when the GC will run.

The best design is to include both dispose and finalize in the object which need to clear resources. But if user calls dispose method then we don't need to run the finalize method as the resources are already cleared in dispose method. In that case we can suppress the finalize method by calling GC.SuppressFinalize method. When this method will be called in dispose method the finalizer will not be called thus reclaiming the memory on one single GC run. But if user does not call dispose method then finalizer will be called by GC. For details follow the link:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/b1yfkh5e(vs.71).aspx

CLR Profile

Few days ago I was looking to find if I can spy may dot net application to get what's doing CLR under the hood. Then I had found an amazing tool, CLR profiler. I think most people doesn't know about it or are not used to with it. I have found the tool amazing for identifying some issues like memory leak. There are two versions of CLR profiler: for .net version 1.1 and version 2.0.

With this tool we can easily find the following three issues:

1. Is our application allocating too much memory?

2. Which objects are staying in memory too much time?

3. If we are holding memory but not relasing properly.

Page Method (Web Service methods in aspx page)

Page method is web service method added to aspx page rather than in asmx page. Sometimes we just want a web service functionality for a single page and we don't want to use any separate web service for the shake of complexity. We need such web service like functionality when use ajax. For example when we use dynamic populate control from ajax control toolkit we need to populate data dynamically. In that case the populate control needs data from web service but if we don't want to introduce web service for keeping our system simple we can implement the code for web service in the aspx page. To declare a page method web service use the following script in the aspx page.

<head runat="server">

<script runat="server">

    [System.Web.Services.WebMethod()]

    [System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptMethod()]

    public static string Test()

    {

        return "sohel rana";

    }

</script>

    <title>Page Title</title>

</head>

You can also declare the web service method in code behind file. In that case the method will be public and static and should be marked with WebMethod attribute as shown below

    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

    {

 

    }

 

    [System.Web.Services.WebMethod()]

    [System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptMethod()]

    public static string Test()

    {

        return "your data";

    }

Now we need to know how we'll call this page methods using javascript. There are two ways to call the page mehtod Test. One is call via PageMethods and another is to use ajax control toolkit's built-in feature. To use PageMethods you need to set the ScriptManager's EnablePageMethods to true as shown below.

<asp:ScriptManager ID="ScriptManager1" runat="server" EnablePageMethods="true" />

This will generate a PageMethods javascript object with which we can call the Test method as shown below:

    <script type="text/javascript">

        function CallWebServiceMethod() {

            PageMethods.Test(complete);

        }

        function complete(val) {

            alert(val);

        }

    </script>

<input type="button" value="Click" onclick="CallWebServiceMethod()" />

 

The second option will be to use Ajax Control Toolkit's built-in feature. Obviously this option will be available if you are using Ajax Control Toolkit. For example in the following code snippet the Dynamic Populate extender control will call the service method Test and on completion of invocation of Test method the control will update the panel with id p1.

 

            <cc1:DynamicPopulateExtender ID="dpe" runat="server" ServiceMethod="Test" TargetControlID="p1">

            </cc1:DynamicPopulateExtender>

        <asp:Panel ID="p1" runat="server"></asp:Panel>

But my personal opinion is that may be the Page method should not use as I'm skeptical about the performance. May be I need to dig more on performance.