Multiple monitor sessions in ASP.NET application

[Tomica]

As a new user I have completed my first round of feature tracking for an ASP.NET application. As per recommended practice, I start the monitor on the global application start event and stop it on application end (typically an IIS recycle). It has been mentioned elsewhere that multiple monitor sessions for this same ASP.NET application might be a problem, perhaps with data loss do to frequent and/or overlapping sessions. (hence controlling it via Global.asax)

Now, this client actually runs the same website in two modes, the current production version and a parallel beta version. Both will be providing tracking at the same time, from the same server, as it is truly the same application and same backend database, just running updated code for a while until it is deemed stable enough to promote, and then we move to the next upgrade cycle.

Will I be losing any data in this scenario?

[Soren]

Hello Thomas,

The previously mentioned issue refers to the fact that if you were to start a new monitor on each new connecting http session, then the created monitors would start degrading your performance, since the monitor is not designed to scale to a large number of instances per process. So for asp.net applications, we recommend that you start and stop the single instance of your IAnalyticsMonitor in the Global.asax class.

Generally speaking, the monitor will send and save data periodically and if you also call Stop on the monitor in the Application_End method of the Global.asax, the "final" data will also be stored to disk and resent on the next start. So in terms of data loss, you should not be concerned as long as the Stop method is called.

For your client, I am not sure if they run the two modes within the same IIS-site/process or in two different sites on the same server and if your issue is with the separation of data from the two modes? If you only need to track data in the "production" mode, you'll need to only call the Start method on the monitor if the application is started in that mode (however you determine that). If the monitor is not started, all tracking calls will be no-op, so you'll only need to create the conditional code in tour Global.asax file.

Don't know if I really answered your question with this. Let me know if you need further information...
 
Regards,
Soren
Telerik

[Laura]

I think this answers my question.

With regard to the sites, both the production and beta run on the same server, but as completely independent processes. Same code posted to both, just the timing differs, usually beta runs for one week earlier, and if no major or unfixed errors, then replaces the older "production code".

There is no need for separate tracking for each, except that when we start tracking of exceptions, we would attempt to collect version information. I do not know how to set version info for the web app, something I will need to research within Visual Studio. It's a "web site" app and not a packaged app, so I don't actually know where to begin, but that's for later, probably an MSDN query.

[Soren]

Hi Laura,

Let me know if you need additional information or guidance for your specific setup and I'll be happy to assist 

Regards,
Soren
Telerik