Using 2sxc Insights

2sxc 9.31 introduces 2sxc Insights, a deep debugging tool to quickly see what's really in memory, how it got loaded and more. 

What 2sxc Insights is for

When a system is running and you have an unexpected issue, it's often important to look into the running environment without touching anything, because restarting the application could change the issue making it impossible to find out what was originally happening. So 2sxc Insights lets you do things like

1. Look into the memory cache
   1. Look at memory cache specs, like refresh-timestamp, last-update etc.
   2. See exactly what is in the memory cache - this will also help when comparing caches on different servers of a farm.
   3. Read the log of how this cache was built, when parts were replaced/updated and what logic was used at that time.
   4. ...and more to come
2. Perform special operations
   1. Flush an app-cache, to validate that app data caching caused the issue.
   2. ...more to come
3. Browse the entire data
   1. See all content-types and entities, even those that are usually hidden
   2. See internal information like if an entity is built dynamically or from a schema
   3. Quickly serialize an entity to look at the exact data inside
   4. ...and more to come

Accessing 2sxc Insights

Please note that only host-users (super-users) may actually look at 2sxc-insights. This is a security precaution, because these insights really give you access to everything incl. 2sxc data from other portals. 

The most typical access will be through the Manage-All-Apps UI, here:

But this will simply open a browser to the API-Endpoint, which shows the system insights. So if you are running into real issues and may have trouble accessing the insights, you can also type the url manually. The starting point on DNN 7.4.2 is:

• /desktopmodules/2sxc/api/sys/insights/help

Note that the root path will vary a bit, depending on the portals and languages you have. For example, if your root path usually has /en/ in it, your starting point is probably: 

• /en/desktopmodules/2sxc/api/sys/insights/help

Or if you're using DNN 9, which changed the root path to API calls. it would be:

• /api/2sxc/sys/insights/help

It's for Advanced Users

The UI is very, very trivial and unsexy, because we believe that when you access this, you're probably is some kind of trouble and need to be sure you can browse the data without being affected by whatever problem you are experiencing. So the UI is basic, but the tables allow sorting (click on the header) and that should be what you need in these scenarios. 

FAQ

1. When will it be released?
   It will be in 2sxc 9.31, coming out ca. May 20th
2. Why not use DNN Prompt for such operations?
   Because that wouldn't work on DNN 7
3. I see things I don't understand, like Metadata and Permissions
   Don't worry about this - 2sxc has a lot of magic inside most people never heard about. Discover and enjoy!
4. Can I break something?
   No. The interface is read-only, except for a few basic actions like flushing a cache, which won't hurt if you click on it.

Get it now

You can download 2sxc 9.31 as soon as it's released from the GitHub repo.

Love from Switzerland, 
Daniel