.NET Framework 3.5 SP1 (Service Pack 1) changes to ViewState causes stability issues in Sitecore products
I just received the email below from Sitecore regarding stability issues that .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 (Service Pack 1) is causing with all Sitecore products. I am glad they sent this out. Hopefully the companies using Sitecore products will see it before they install the Service Pack and lose a lot of time with the issues it is causing.
There are a couple questions that come to mind, but the first one is this the only product that will have problems?
If you are using a product that is built on top of ASP.NET you may need to be very careful. The bug described and the issues with it have not been reported specifically yet. It has simply been described as a "bug in the LosFormatter class (System.Web.UI.LosFormatter in System.Web.dll, used to serialize and deserialize an ASP.NET ViewState)."
It would be interesting to know if any other products have problems, if you know of any others let us know, via comments.
My most important question though is, could this have been caught in the Beta cycle? Or is this a bug/change put in place since the last Beta release?
Why change how ViewState is serialized and deserialized anyway? :)
ASP.NET MVC is looking more interesting all the time. Just have to wait for the rest of the marketplace to get it integrated into their products. :)
Here's the email:
Dear Sitecore Enthusiast,
You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the Sitecore Product Issues and Patches mailing list.
On Monday, August 4th, Microsoft released the following service packs: Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and .NET 3.5 SP1.
Sitecore has discovered that these service packs introduce a bug in the LosFormatter class (System.Web.UI.LosFormatter in System.Web.dll, used to serialize and deserialize an ASP.NET ViewState). This bug causes stability issues in Sitecore products. Sitecore has raised this as an urgent priority issue with Microsoft (case number : SRQ080813600454) and is working to help resolve this issue.
In the meantime, PLEASE DO NOT INSTALL .NET 3.5 SP1 and Visual Studio 2008 SP1 on any server running a Sitecore product (including Sitecore WCMS, Intranet Portal, and Foundry) until further notice!
Symptoms associated with installing either of these service packs:
- Memory consumption increases dramatically and single core CPU usage goes up to 100% when opening the Access Viewer or Media Library applications.
- OutOfMemoryExceptions thrown in the Desktop and Content Editor.
- The browser becomes unresponsive when accessing Sitecore.
Please be aware that Microsoft may include this Service Pack as part of the monthly ‘Patch Tuesday’. Please take steps to avoid the automatic installation of these service packs.
Please be aware that the final version of SQL Server 2008 will require .NET 3.5 SP1.
If you have any questions about this issue, please contact Sitecore support.
Best Regards, Sitecore Support Team.
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About dwalker
David Walker has over 15 years experience in application development with over 50% of that employed as a consultant with companies such as: Microsoft, IBM Global Services, Texaco, Winner Communications (ESPN.com), and Bank of Oklahoma. At the age of 14, he began his application development ambitions with a Commodore 64, BASIC, and a 300 baud modem. Even at that early age, he primarily focused on two specific application types: multi-user communities and database applications.
His hunger to learn as much as possible about development lead him through courses such as DBase III, DBase IV, Pascal, C, C++, Java, and several in UNIX. He started his development career first doing heavy processing with Access and VBA, then moved on to VB 3, Oracle, and Delphi. Visual Basic was one environment that remained constant for many years, including his very first .NET projects performed in Visual Basic.NET.
After working several years on very high end internal Corporate applications, the consultant company he was working for, sought out his ideas for actual software products that could be packaged and sold. He had already developed several prototypes of a dynamic portal application, before portals even became popular, so this became the logic decision and he became the Director of Product Development. Under his direction, a team of developers and graphic artists, took a skinning approach before that become popular, and completed the core portal application, and continued on to developer 15+ add-on modules, including things such as: Help Desk Ticket Systems, Change Control, Records Management, Human Resources, and many more applications. Eventually, it spun off into it's own separate company as KnowledgeGEAR, a complete intranet in the box solution.
Having worked as a consultant, he has had a experience with a very wide range of applications and architectures, at one time, even converting several Fox Pro and GW-Basic applications to VB 6 and ASP. His early training of Unix and the C language and years of experience with JavaScript, lead him very quickly to C#, where he has remained focused ever since.
He is the past President of the
Tulsa Developers .NET user group, founder and past President of the
Tulsa SQL Server Group and
Tulsa Java Developers Group, past Vice-President and Director of Membership Services of the
Tulsa SharePoint Interest Group.
He has been the director/chairman of the
TulsaTechFest event since it's inception in 2006. He coordinated the first Tulsa Code Camp and then rebranded it two years in a row as
School of Dev!
He is the founder and director of
NEOTECHCouncil (NorthEast Oklahoma Technology Council).
He was a board member, Vice-President of the Speakers Bureau for
INETA NORAM from June 2007 to June 2009.
He has been an MCP since 2003 and MCAD and MCSD since 2005. He is currently pursuing his MCDBA and then on to MCSE.
He was a Microsoft MVP - ASP/ASP.NET Developer from June 2007 - June 2009.
On June 22, 2009, he joined Microsoft as a ADC (Application Developer Consultant).