We issued a press release earlier this morning announcing the adoption of FileCatalyst Webmail by Artificial Mind & Movement, Canada’s largest independent game developer.

The release can be found here:
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/artificial-mind–movement-chooses-filecatalyst-to-accelerate-file-transfers-87104902.html

…or at the bottom of this blog post, here.

The announcement is exciting for us on a few different levels:

• A2M came to us with an understanding of the problem. When someone knows exactly what they want to fix, and your product delivers, it is tremendously satisfying.
• The Game Development industry is of particular interest to us, not only because a few of us love gaming, but because we have seen the need for improved file transfer throughout the game development workflow for quite a while. It’s a great validation when world-class game development companies like A2M understand your vision.
• We are champions of improved file transfer. Our competitors are, too. Whenever anyone understands the very real problems with TCP-based transfer, our sphere has already benefited. Be that as it may, we are pleased that after thorough evaluations of various file transfer solutions, Artificial Mind & Movement chose FileCatalyst.

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FileCatalyst will be at GDC in booth #3008. Swing by for a visit! Whether or not you’re currently looking to upgrade your file transfer technology, we’d be happy to explain how our technology works and how it might benefit you. See you there!

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SAN FRANCISCO, March 9 /PRNewswire/ – Unlimi-Tech Software, the pioneer in accelerated file transfers, is pleased to announce the selection of FileCatalyst Webmail by Artificial Mind & Movement. FileCatalyst Webmail allows Artificial Mind & Movement to manage and transfer game development files internally and globally, including game-supporting multimedia files and raw and binary game code.

FileCatalyst(R) acceleration technology is completely software-based, and is designed to overcome network performance bottlenecks to maximize use of available bandwidth. This technology is packaged into FileCatalyst Webmail, a solution which allows users to send files of any size to anywhere in the world, using only the recipient’s email address and their own web browser.

As the largest independent game developer in Canada, Artificial Mind & Movement must enable efficient collaboration with its developers, artists, testers and publishers. With the massive increase in rich media in today’s video games, moving content as quickly as possible between various international locations has become a huge priority that cannot be accomplished using traditional methods such as FTP.

“Transferring a large volume of files to publishers located all over the world, combined with the burden of managing multiple FTP sites and accounts, was becoming a challenge for both production and IT departments”, says Stephane Magnan, Information Technology Director. “We evaluated several file transfer solutions and came to the conclusion that FileCatalyst provides the best combination of performance and features. FileCatalyst’s ease of use, self-service, and effortless management helped tremendously in removing deadline pressures.”

With online storage, file tracking, user groups, APIs, and integration with Microsoft Outlook(TM), FileCatalyst Webmail provides an ideal solution for game development companies to collaborate on large files over any distance.

“We are pleased to be one of the integral applications deployed by Artificial Mind & Movement” said Chris Bailey, CEO of Unlimi-Tech Software. “The gaming industry is experiencing huge issues relating to delivery of the massive amounts of content in today’s games. FileCatalyst allows game development companies to minimize file transfer times, improving productivity across the game development workflow.”

About Artificial Mind & Movement

Based in Montreal, Quebec, Artificial Mind & Movement is Canada’s largest independent game developer, employing 450 talented people in Montreal, Quebec and Santiago, Chile. Since 1992, the company has developed 120 titles across every game platform, including its highly-stylized third person shooter WET(TM). The Artificial Mind & Movement studios work with the industry’s top publishers and licensors, including Activision Blizzard, Bethesda, Disney, Electronic Arts, Fox, Konami, LucasArts, Viacom and Warner. Artificial Mind & Movement is committed to producing unparalleled game experiences with original or licensed Intellectual Properties.

About Unlimi-Tech Software

Located in Ottawa, Canada, Unlimi-Tech Software is the creator of FileCatalyst(R), the world’s leading file transfer solution. Founded in 2000, the company has more than nine hundred commercial and government clients. FileCatalyst technology is a software-based solution designed to accelerate and optimize file transfers across global networks. FileCatalyst is immune to the effects that latency and packet loss have on traditional file transfer methods like FTP, HTTP or CIFS. FileCatalyst addresses these issues for enterprise WAN, satellite and wireless communications, media and content providers, and government and military organizations.

For more information, stop by booth #3008 at the GDC conference, or visit the FileCatalyst website at http://www.filecatalyst.com

Having recently implemented a database connection pooling in our web applications, I want to share some of the issues we stumbled upon during the implementation.

• Clean up your database calls Make sure that you close your ResultSet and the database connection after every call to the database or you risk to fill-up your connection pool with dozens of active unused connections. When working with only a single connection it’s easy to conveniently “forget” to close a ResultSet or a connection, so the next method can just re-use the same resource. In a pool, any connection could potentially be a newly allocated resource which you might have to initialize.
• Optimize and minimize your SQL calls Use specialized queries when appropriate. Make sure that you don’t initialize an entire object if you only need a handful of fields for a given function. Initializing an entire object might require a number of SQL calls, which can be minimized with a single specialized query. Avoid SQL calls that retrieve large lists of data, use limits whenever possible.
• Don’t expect a connection pool to solve all your database performance problems
  A connection pool is not a magic pill and is not always the best design decision. In most cases an application with well designed and optimized SQL calls will work just fine without a connection pool. In fact a database connection pools introduce their own operational limits (such as the maximum connections allowed) and add complexity to your application. On a positive side, implementing a connection pool will help you identify and expose any short falls in your exiting database design.
• Consider using existing open source database connection pool project Although implementing your own connection pool object is not rocket science, you should consider using an open source project if you can. Most open source connection projects will provide you with dozens of fine-tune settings to optimize your pool. When implementing your own pool, it will be difficult to consider all the settings that might be required to fine-tune your pool. Also most open source pool projects will provide you nice GUI widgets to show the status of the pool within your own application.
  We used Proxool http://proxool.sourceforge.net/index.html because of the comprehensive support for web applications built-in to Proxool.

• Don’t just assume that it works … Load Test! Once your pool is implemented, make sure that you test your application under a heavy load. Watch how your pool behaves and try to determine some benchmarks. Excessive number of active connections in your pool during load testing will tell you that you need to improve your SQL calls. Make sure that the number of active connections returns to the minimum after each load test.

In conclusion, database connection pool can be useful in some applications but should not be treated as a must have requirement in every situation. Just like any other feature in your application, implementing a database connection pool should be approached with a proper design and implementation plan.

Tags: connection, database, pool, sql

FileCatalyst Webmail and Workflow have had a new major upgrade, bringing our ground breaking web applications up to version 4.4

Our new Outlook™ Plugin for FileCatalyst Webmail is now officially released. The plugin integrates directly into Outlook for Windows, allowing people to send large files without leaving their email client. Transfers are still tracked by the Webmail application as before; the only difference is the mechanism for initiating the transfer. Click the image to see full-size.

Here are some of the other key features and improvements:

• Ability to automatically create XML file containing all the Job details in Workflow.
• Java API, ability to submit jobs programatically from any third party Java Application
• Temporary accounts, designated users can now “invite others” to the system, this triggers an invitation sent via email and the new account is set to automatically expire after a predefined number of days.
• Ability to specify when a User Account expires. Once expired, the user will no longer be able to login to the application.
• Automatic deletion of expired user accounts (for both temp and regular users)
• New user status added – “File Area only no job entry”, when a user is in this status they will not have the ability to submit jobs. Only access to file area and group folders will be available to the user.
• Added Database Connection Pooling
• Return first order form found for the user instead of default order form for HotFolder/Plugin/API submissions.
• Capture FTP logs when uploading links, PDF and XML files
• In case of error during upload of PDF, XML or file links, added wait and retry functionality
• In Webmail, simplified the download links sent to the recipients, new links look like: http://myserver.demo/GET/JOBID this helps to by-pass some phishing/SPAM filters
• Improved logging when re-ordering a job
• New filter on user list, allows admins to filter the user list by user status, full access, job entry only, temp user, admin etc…
• Fix installers to work with Windows7 and 64 bit systems.
• Improved performance of many SQL database calls

For download and install instructions, please contact your FileCatalyst representative. For more information about these products, visit http://www.filecatalyst.com/products/

We recommend that all clients upgrade to the latest version as soon as possible.

FileCatalyst Direct 2.7.5 is a minor release with a few small improvements and additions. It is a recommended upgrade.

New to FileCatalyst 2.7.5:

• Ability to enable/disable masquerade address bypass for local connections.
• HotFolder PostURL now sends full status info for each file
• Ability to hide Upload and Cancel buttons in Upload applet
• Automatically revert to single stream TCP if multi-stream fails
• Added JavaScript method to remove individual file from queue (affects Upload applet)
• Added ability to switch To/From fields for email alerts
• Browse dialog for Download Applet on Mac uses native look and feel
• Fixed: Incorrect error messages in 2-way applet

Happy Holidays from Unlimi-Tech!

Leading into the holidays and the New Year, we wanted to send out a note to all of our customers to thank them for their patronage, and to briefly recap 2009.

In this past year we have continued innovate and grow. We experienced record growth this year, in terms of worldwide adoption of our FileCatalyst software and also in terms of increasing staff to develop groundbreaking features and provide our clients with the same level of personalized and expert support that they are accustomed to. We are poised to continue this growth into 2010. Much of the credit goes to the hard work and determination by our staff; however, nothing would be possible without our growing base of loyal customers.

As with any business, we owe everything to our clients. We feel that this is particularly true in software development, because it goes beyond sales. Having strong relationships with customers who are eager to share their observations and suggestions leads to improvements in our products that might not otherwise be in place! When the creativity and enthusiasm of your customer base matches with that of your employees, great things can happen.

Throughout 2009, we released several major new features including full official release of our SDK, the first iteration of our Outlook Plugin, and cloud deployment through our Amazon AMIs. Under the hood, we have continued to boost performance of the FileCatalyst core, reaching multiple Gbps speeds even with high latency and packet loss. We have added almost 100 new features to our client and server applications, almost all in direct response to customer feedback.

We continue to receive wonderful (and much appreciated) comments on our technical and pre-sales support as well. Our staff is really just doing what seems natural: providing answers in a friendly and clear way, being available for honest-to-goodness phone conversations and web meetings, and being dedicated to finding the answers if they’re not immediately obvious. We’ve come to take it as a real point of pride that our customers consider our support to be above and beyond what they have come to expect from other companies. So a big thank you to everyone who is so thoughtful and encouraging when providing those kinds of comments– it fuels us to work even harder for you!

On behalf of everyone here at Unlimi-Tech, Happy Holidays! We are look forward to continuing to serve you in 2010!