Python agent v1.12.0.56

Notes

This release of the Python agent removes the experimental label from our Tornado Web and Pyramid support, with support now being enabled by default.

The agent can be installed using easy_install/pip/distribute via the Python Package Index or can be downloaded directory from our download site.

For a list of known issues with the Python agent, see Status of the Python agent.

New features:

• The previously experimental support for the native Tornado Web API has been greatly expanded and is now enabled by default. This is in addition to the tornado.wsgi.WSGIContainer support we previously provided and includes the native Tornado Web API for constructing async applications. Running a limited subset of the native Tornado Web API within a separate WSGI server using the tornado.wsgi.WSGIApplication adapter is also now supported.
• The previously experimental support for the Pyramid web framework has been improved and is now enabled by default.
• When using a DBAPI2 compliant database client, calls to stored procedures via the callproc() method of the database cursor are now tracked. Previously, only calls made to stored procedures by explicitly using a CALL SQL statement were being tracked. All calls to stored procedures currently appear under the category of 'SQL - Other'. A future agent update is planned which will split out calls to stored procedures separately and report them on the databases tab.
• Added instrumentation for automatically wrapping the WSGI application when using the CherryPy WSGI server bundled with the CherryPy framework.
• Added instrumentation for automatically wrapping the WSGI application when using the WSGI server from the Python standard library wsgiref module. Be aware that due to non conformance with the WSGI specification, it is not recommended that the WSGI server from the wsgiref module be used unless using Python 2.7.4 or higher. Issues with older versions of the WSGI server in the wsgiref module will cause incorrect reporting of data. More details are provided in our status of the Python agent.

Bug fixes/Improvements:

• External web calls made using the 'requests' module from a session were not being correctly monitored, resulting in such requests being picked up as being performed by the lower level 'httplib' module and the time taken not being inclusive of the whole request.
• The collection of explain plans by the agent in a background thread when performing a data harvest, was not explicitly performing a rollback. This could result in database proxies such as pgbouncer believing the database connection was now dirty and force closing the connection and ejecting it from the current database connection pool.
• The wrapper used by the agent around wsgi.input passed in the WSGI request environment was preventing non standard WSGI applications directly reaching down to the original socket connection so as to implement extensions such as websockets.
• The object wrapper used in our instrumentation for function traces has been improved so that it will pass type checks performed using builtin Python calls such as isinstance(), isfunction() and isclass(). This addresses issues where the object wrappers could interfere with the correct operation of web frameworks which derived the calling convention to be used when invoking a handler function from the type of the handler. Note that using type() on the wrapper object will still yield its true type, so functions such as isinstance() should always be used where possible.
• The agent could fail on startup when running on a system with a non English locale using a custom date/time format.