OS X talking to Windows with Sockets
Found an unusual compatibility problem last week
when using Sockets to communicate between OS X and Windows. The bottom line is
if you have a java application on OS X that does some high volume TCP/IP socket
communications to a Windows service, then you had better be using OS X Leopard
to get the best performance ... about 9X better.
Introduction
Last week I completed a feature on a WebObjects application. I develop on OS X Leopard using a Mac Pro. One aspect of the feature involves connecting to a Windows machine running mailing address correction and geocoding software, which BTW is the Mailroom Toolkit Architect product from Satori Software . In any case, the logic for each mailing address consists of creating a XML request, opening a java.net.Socket to the Mailroom service running on Windows machine, writing the request, reading the XML response, closing the Socket and parsing the response. This logic runs in a loop while processing a list of mailing addresses.
The Problem
On my Leopard development machine, I ran the Mailroom Architect service in Windows on a Parallels Virtual Machine. For a test of 1000 records, the processing time was about 7 seconds which is perfectly acceptable. When I deployed the application to PowerPC XServes running Mac OS X Tiger, the 1000 record test was taking 65 seconds, over 9 time slower! I use Shark for profiling in development, but I had a little trouble getting it working on the deployment machine*, so I opted to just do process of elimination.
The Source of the Problem
We discovered that the problem manifested only when OS X Tiger (latest 10.4.11 with all updates) used the service on native Windows. It did not matter whether we ran Windows XP or Windows 2003 server on a PC or natively on an intel Mac. Interestingly, the slow socket problem was not present when OS X Tiger accessed the service when the service was hosted in a Parallels Virtual Windows machine on any intel Mac.
The Solution
The solution was to simply upgrade the XServes to OS X Leopard. The socket performance 1000-address test was back to 7 seconds on Leopard 10.5.3 fresh install and 10.5.5 with all latest updates. So if you have a java app running on OS X Tiger that does high volume socket communications with a Windows box, you should see a 9-fold performance gain by upgrading to Leopard.
* Simply adding -agentlib:Shark to the instance Additional Arguments in WOMonitor was not enough to get Shark to "see" the app and I really did not feel like wasting time getting Shark running since with or without Shark profile info, the problem still existed only on OS X Tiger.
Last week I completed a feature on a WebObjects application. I develop on OS X Leopard using a Mac Pro. One aspect of the feature involves connecting to a Windows machine running mailing address correction and geocoding software, which BTW is the Mailroom Toolkit Architect product from Satori Software . In any case, the logic for each mailing address consists of creating a XML request, opening a java.net.Socket to the Mailroom service running on Windows machine, writing the request, reading the XML response, closing the Socket and parsing the response. This logic runs in a loop while processing a list of mailing addresses.
The Problem
On my Leopard development machine, I ran the Mailroom Architect service in Windows on a Parallels Virtual Machine. For a test of 1000 records, the processing time was about 7 seconds which is perfectly acceptable. When I deployed the application to PowerPC XServes running Mac OS X Tiger, the 1000 record test was taking 65 seconds, over 9 time slower! I use Shark for profiling in development, but I had a little trouble getting it working on the deployment machine*, so I opted to just do process of elimination.
The Source of the Problem
We discovered that the problem manifested only when OS X Tiger (latest 10.4.11 with all updates) used the service on native Windows. It did not matter whether we ran Windows XP or Windows 2003 server on a PC or natively on an intel Mac. Interestingly, the slow socket problem was not present when OS X Tiger accessed the service when the service was hosted in a Parallels Virtual Windows machine on any intel Mac.
The Solution
The solution was to simply upgrade the XServes to OS X Leopard. The socket performance 1000-address test was back to 7 seconds on Leopard 10.5.3 fresh install and 10.5.5 with all latest updates. So if you have a java app running on OS X Tiger that does high volume socket communications with a Windows box, you should see a 9-fold performance gain by upgrading to Leopard.
* Simply adding -agentlib:Shark to the instance Additional Arguments in WOMonitor was not enough to get Shark to "see" the app and I really did not feel like wasting time getting Shark running since with or without Shark profile info, the problem still existed only on OS X Tiger.
Posted: Thursday - December 04, 2008 at 08:28 AM
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Published On: Dec 29, 2008 02:27 PM
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Published On: Dec 29, 2008 02:27 PM