At the 2009 UGM, we announced that Euclid would release ClearVantage 7 S in the first quarter of 2010. The official date has now been set for Monday March 22^nd, 2010. So what is CV7 S? The “S” stands for Speed – CV7 S has been optimized to provide outstanding responsiveness, especially in environments where the ClearVantage data repository is hosted offsite (for example, at Rackspace, where many of Euclid’s clients currently host their database and web servers). However, if your system is hosted on site, you will also notice a marked increase in performance.

 

So how did we increase the speed? The major challenge that CV7 S addresses is that which is faced by all remotely hosted line of business applications: Internet latency. Many internet users equate performance to their broadband speed – for example, they will state that “I have 3 megabytes per second” bandwidth. Bandwidth as a measure of speed generally works well when downloading large files and content-heavy web pages, which is a pretty typical scenario for consumer-oriented internet browsing. However, advanced line of business applications require frequent user interaction and therefore tend to make smaller but more frequent requests for information.  For the techies out there, it is very similar to the use of AJAX programming (which Euclid utilizes extensively for its web applications) in web site development: instead of downloading large web pages in one fell swoop, which can be very slow when there is a high level of interactivity, AJAX allows small pieces to be downloaded and uploaded as needed, significantly improving the user experience. This is where latency plays a major role: Latency is the time it takes to complete a round trip call (regardless of how much data is being passed) from the user’s machine to the server and then back to the user’s machine. When downloading say a 20mb video, 1000ms (one second) latency is almost imperceptible because the file being downloaded is large and therefore the latency makes up a small portion of the total transfer time. However, to continue with the AJAX example, if a page has 16 pieces being loaded separately, even if each section contains a small amount of data, loading each piece requires 1 second, leading to a 16 second load time. However, this is still preferable to multiple “post-backs” of large web pages, especially since that 3mb connection at the office is often shared with 20 or even 50 other users (some downloading 20mb videos!).

 

Another non-technical way of looking at your broadband capacity versus latency is like this: Your broadband capacity is like a tractor trailer - the more "megabytes per second", the bigger the trailer. Latency is like the road that the truck travels on. Overall performance is determined just as much (or more) by the roads (latency) than by the size of the container. If the tractor trailer has to take a lot of back, bumpy roads, some cargo may be lost and the trip will take a long time.

 

To address the latency issue, CV 7 S introduces three new innovations. The first is server-side and client-side caching, which minimizes the requests going between the smart client application (ClearVantage Desktop) and the server (ClearVantage Application Server). For example, instead of continuously loading the available member types, states, countries, member classifications, and the dozens of other reference values needed to populate a notebook’s drop down visual controls, CV 7 S creates a cache of all of these values the first time a user logs in. The client cache is then updated by checking with the CV 7 application server to see if anything has been changed. A cache is also maintained on the server to minimize database requests – further improving performance. The second innovation is how data is sent between ClearVantage Desktop and the application server. Now, when a request is made, the results are compressed by the server before they are sent to the client. Result sets are also bundled. For example, when opening an individual notebook with many tabs, instead of making a request to get the data for each tab separately (which can result in slow response times when there is latency in the connection), a single request is sent to the application server (e.g., “get_notebook_data”) and then all the data needed for the request is returned in a compressed and “nested” xml file. This reduces both the number of requests (e.g., from a dozen or so down to one) and the amount of the data going back and forth – a double performance boost. The final innovation introduced in CV 7S is background threading. This allows requests to be run in a separate thread (a major performance boost, especially when combined with a multi-core CPU). Hence, instead of there being a lag while data is being requested and returned, the user can continue to work as the request is being processed.

 

OK – that was a lot of techno speak. What does it mean? It means that with CV 7 S you will notice a significant increase in performance and a reduction in lag time, especially when connecting remotely. For example, I frequently connect to ClearVantage from my home PC via our company VPN. There is quite a bit of latency in my home VPN connection. With CV 7, there is a significant delay upon login – up to a minute and a half. Once connected, CV 7 runs well, but the login is slow. With CV 7 S my login time (which includes launching the application) is 10 seconds or less – which is about the same amount of time it takes for my Google home page to load.  Once I am logged in, I cannot tell the difference between being in the office with a 1 gig/second local connection and using my somewhat slow home remote VPN connection.

 

ClearVantage 7 S further opens the door for Euclid’s new and existing clients to host ClearVantage offsite. However, if you make the decision to host remotely, be sure that you select a hosting company that provides a reasonably fast (low latency) connection from your office to their facility. Most reputable hosting companies provide and guarantee this – as it is extremely important, for no matter how optimized an application is, it cannot operate effectively on a poor connection. For example, we recently had a client who attempted to host ClearVantage at a partner of theirs. Well, there was a 6000 millisecond delay and a high data loss rate between their office and their partners’! Every request took at least 6 seconds to complete – which is, for lack of a better word, insane. A good performance measure to shoot for is a maximum of 40ms latency, which many ISPs will provide and possibly surpass (one of our clients that is hosted by MindShift has a 0ms second latency, which is almost like having a local network connection).

 

ClearVantage 7 S is one of the many upgrades and new products planned for 2010. In addition to the speed enhancements, ClearVantage 7 S has many new features that we will be writing about shortly. If you are interested in upgrading to CV 7 S (the license upgrade is free with a current maintenance agreement), please contact your customer representative soon to get on the upgrade schedule. If you recently upgraded to CV 7, the upgrade to 7 S will be fast and easy.

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