Re: Transactions

Kevin Brown wrote:
> On Saturday 18 March 2006 12:31, Florian G. Pflug wrote:
>>>I've been creating a databased application with PostgreSQL for a while
>>>now and have loved it, though we just recently stumbled on an interesting
>>>bug.
>>>
>>>I have a particular dialog which can do all kinds of incredibly
>>>complicated things to the database.  Of course I didn't want to have to
>>>write the "undo it to the database" code, nor did I want to force the
>>>user into being screwed with a stray click.
>>>
>>>So when the dialog opens, it executes a BEGIN, and then based on whether
>>>they clicked ok or cancel on the dialog, it'd COMMIT or ROLLBACK.  This
>>>worked fine for me in testing, but now that I have two people using this
>>>app simulatneously, if they both click on ok at the same time, postgres
>>>seemingly deadlocks.  My setup is such that I have n ruby clients talking
>>>with DRb to another ruby process on the server, which then does all the
>>>communication to postgres.  Each user has his/her own database
>>>connection.
>>
>>What ruby database library are you using?
>
> The C extension.
>
>>Since ruby doesn't use native threads, but instead implements it's own
>>threads (purely in user-space), one thread can block your whole app - e.g,
>>if the thread tries to read from a socket where not data is available, and
>>therefor the kernel puts the process to sleep until data becomes available.
>>
>>For the "normal" read() and write() operations exposed to the ruby
>>programming this is solved internally by ruby (it checks the
>>filedescriptions state, and only reads if the read won't block). But
>>extensions, especially the ones talking over the network, like the postgres
>>client, can still cause this problem. In the "raw" postgres client
>>extension for ruby, you'll find two methods that can execute a query -
>>query() and query_async(). query() will block the _whole_ ruby interpreter
>>until query results are available, while query_async() will block only the
>>thread that executed the query.
>
>
> Yes, but my question is why is the query unable to complete.
Well, see below ;-)

>>This one-thread-blocks-all behaviour can lead to "interesting" dead-locks.
>>Assume, for example, the following situation, with A and B being two ruby
>>threads. A1) update table where id=1
>>B1) update table where id=1
>>-----
>>B2) commit
>>A2) commit
>>
>>Now, the query B1 will block until A2 is executed (because the record is
>>already locked). But if B1 blocks, and you used query() instead of
>>query_async(), then the _whole_ ruby interpreter is blocked, and therefor
>>A2 will never be executed. Bingo! you got a deadlock, and postgres has no
>>chance to ever detect this.
>
>
> So what you're saying is that my commits and rollbacks should be async,
> correct?
No, you should always use _async(), and never, ever use query() or exec()
in a multi-threaded app.

>>Of course, not using threads makes the problem even worse - the only
>>solution is to use the _async() functions. DBI lets you set a flag (forgot
>>it's name) that forces DBD::Pg to use the _async() functions - if you don't
>>use DBI just replace all calls to query() and exec() with query_async() and
>>exec_async().
>
> I don't quite understand how a select can be an async call....  I need the
> data to proceed.  If you're saying on my inserts, deletes, etc, then that I
> can understand.
Don't be fooled by the word async()... It's still synchronous for the
thread that calls it - the _thread_ is blocked until the query is done,
and query_async() returns the result, just as query() does. The difference
is only for all _other_ threads. All other threads can continue to run
while the one thread waits for query results _only_ if the one thread
used query_async(). If it used query(), then you _whole_ interpreter is
blocked until the query is finished.

The naming of these function is quite strange - I was fooled by this myself,
and so was whoever wrote the DBD-module for pg, because he used the non-async
functions too ;-)

To rephrase - you don't usually need to change anything in your program when
using query_async() instead of query(). It'll just work better ;-).

greetings, Florian Pflug