OpenWGA 7.0 - Updating to OpenWGA 7.0

OpenWGA 7.0 comes with an optional optimization feature which you may want to enable if the prerequisites are given.

In OpenWGA Admin Client, Menu "Configuration > Basic Settings" under section "Caches" you will find a new checkbox option:

The option "Design file cache: Do not expect background changes" is an optimization which can be used to improve multithreading behaviour and reduce disk I/O of the OpenWGA installation. It is disabled by default (though the screenshot shows it already enabled).

You may enable it if the design directories and their contents on this OpenWGA server are only modified by using OpenWGA developer studio's design synchronisation. Do not enable it if design directory resources are modified by some other tasks like direct editing on disk or custom synchronisations.

In that case do the following:

• Click button "Edit" to the top left
• Enable the checkbox after option "Design file cache: Do not expect background changes" and click Button "save"
• In order to be effective on all apps and designs the OpenWGA server needs to be restarted after changing this option
  

Some background information about this setting:

When reading design resources from OpenWGA design directories the server normally checks if the file has been modified on disk. If it has not been changed the server may rely on a cache of that design resource that was stored in the "Design files cache". However this check on each and every resource influences performance in a negative way as it produces disk I/O and also forces the file system layer to synchronize those checks across requests, actually only permitting one check at one time. This check is very fast and may not have an impact on systems with low traffic but may have a substantial impact on systems with high multithreaded traffic.

On most productive OpenWGA installations the resources in design directories are never directly modified on disk without OpenWGA being involved. The normal way to update design directories is the design synchronisation with OpenWGA developer studio of which the OpenWGA server is in direct control and is able to recognize what design resources change when it occurs. So the regular check for changed disk files on reading a design resource is actually not necessary most of the time. By enabling the new option you instruct OpenWGA server to bypass it and rely on the design file cache without a check.

If you ever really need to modify some design resource directly on disk, using some non-OpenWGA functionality, then you can manually clear the design file cache of those web applications that use these resource to enforce them being re-read from disk. In the web app configuration in OpenWGA admin client on section "Design configuration" find the "Design" actions button on the top right, click to reveal the actions menu and choose "Clear design cache":