Mach-II Dashboard Module - Development Helper Application

Well, we've been talking about the dashboard coming for quite some time and we're happy that an alpha version of the dashboard is here!  Kurt and I have been working on an alpha for the past month. We're happy to open up the repository now that we have a simple working version committed. This is the functionality that's currently available:

  • Reload base application or individual modules
  • Reload base ColdSpring bean factory or individual child factories
  • Manage logging
  • Manage caching

Remember this is at an alpha version and there is functionality and features we haven't added yet.  Check out the  Dashboard Home for screenshots and additional information.

By the way, the Dashboard requires the BER or latest nightly of the Mach-II 1.6.0.

How to Install

  1. Download the dashboard code nightly zip.
  1. Unzip the dashboard to your web root.
    1. For example, on Windows the default web root is [DRIVE]:\Inetpub\wwwroot, or if you are using your CFML server's built-in web server, your web root is likely [DRIVE]:\CFusionMX\wwwroot. If you are on a Unix system, your web root will vary.
    2. The end result of this step is that you should have the directory MachIIDashboard (no hyphen) in your web root. Inside this directory you will find the dashboard files.
    3. If you wish to place the core Mach-II Dashboard files in a location that is different from your webroot, just create a mapping called MachIIDashboard in the CFML administrator / control panel that points this mapping to the location where you placed the dashboard files.
  2. Add the dashboard as a module in your Mach-II application configuration file: 
    <modules>
      <module name="dashboard" file="/MachIIDashboard/config/mach-ii_dashboard.xml"/>
    </modules>
  3. Reload your Mach-II application and navigate to: 
    http://www.example.com/index.cfm?go=dashboard:index

2 Comments  |  0 Trackbacks  |  Announcements  |  Send
Posted 9/2/08 @ 12:00 AM by Peter J. Farrell

Comments

interesting, but why it is slow as hell. Any chance to see future release with flex ui (idea mimics coldfusion builtin monitor which has flex ui)?

Posted by mzx at 10/4/08 6:46 AM

I don't know what exactly you are referencing that is slow. We have it deployed on production systems and it works just fine. The only thing that could be slow is reloading your application, however that depends directly on the size of your application and your server configuration (such as having CF debugging with report execution times on -- which affects any CFC based application). Or you could have set Mach-II to reload itself on each request which of course will have a performance hit.

As for mimicking the CF monitor, other than the memory stats, there everything else in the dashboard is Mach-II specific -- giving information on the new caching and logging packages and reloading Mach-II modules or ColdSpring bean factories. Also, you can specific caching functionality such as reaping and flushing a cache. None of that duplicates anything in the CF monitor as the dashboard was built to control Mach-II related functionality. Plus the dashboard is cross platform and works on BD, Railo and Adobe CF. We are also going to offer some clustering administrator in respect to clustering Mach-II applications.

Lastly, we are working to get the dashboard's functionality completely implemented as we are currently at an alpha release level. We'll be considering other UI clients in the future.

Posted by Peter J. Farrell at 10/4/08 11:33 AM