1 Reply Latest reply on Dec 3, 2010 7:54 AM by tomas.kotrbaty

    JSF application randomly crashes

    tomas.kotrbaty

      We have a problem running web application (jsf, richfaces) called "RefCar".
      The operating system is Linux (the devel environment). The same behaviour is on the AIX OS (test and production environment).

       

      I always test the application after application server restart (until it crashes).
      I use the application (clicking, POST data, GET data, ajax requests) and it works normally until something happens and the application crashes. There are errors in the SystemOut.log.

       

      After the error occurs than it shows again and again (even when I restart the web browser) when I want to access the web page. When I restart the application than it works correctly until the error occurs again.

       

      The error occurs in richfaces-ui-3.3.3.Final.jar in the class AbstractExtendedTableRenderer on this command (line 1654):

               writer.writeAttribute(HTML.id_ATTRIBUTE, clientId + ":sepSpan",
                              null);

      But when I compile the class with some logging, it is impossible to write out what is in the "clientId" (I am not joking). Normaly there is an id of the component (line of the header in rich:extendedDataTable), something like this: "j_id_jsp_1478228369_101:j_id_jsp_1478228369_136:j_id_jsp_1478228369_161header:sepSpan".

       

      Sometimes after application server restart the application works correctly and it is impossible to reproduce the error again. When I restart the application server than the error occurs again. So it is very random behaviour.

       

      When I test the application on my local machine (Win XP) on IBM WAS or on Tomcat I never get this error.

       

      For testing I use JMeter and of course it is possible to cause this error by "hand" clicking into the application.

       

      My environment is:

      Linux or AIX, Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 3.6.12, IBM WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment 7.0.0.13

       

      Thanks for any ideas.

      Tomas.

        • 1. Re: JSF application randomly crashes
          tomas.kotrbaty

          Well, IBM has not helped me. They said, that this is a problem of a third party component.

          I am not sure about that, because the first row in the errorstackt is on String object. I have a suspicion on IBM´s JAVA or JIT.

           

          My resolution is to not use the rich:extendedDataTable.

          I have used rich:scrollableDataTable.

          But this has another side effects:

          The beans, that are managing pages with rich:scrollableDataTable needs to be in session scope if I want ordering/sorting working.

          If the bean is in request scope, than the table is graphically sorted, but not sorted in the bean, so selection works bad.

           

          You can see this behaviour also on the demo page !!!

          (today 3.12.2010 http://livedemo.exadel.com/richfaces-demo/richfaces/scrollableDataTable.jsf?c=scrollableDataTable&tab=usage)

           

          I am not happy of that, but that is the life.

          Next time I will do more tests before using some component.

           

          Tomas