Custom thread in JAX-WS web method - java

I have a problem with web service via JAX-WS. If I start thread in web method, it will be ended while connection with client ended.
Example:
#WebMethod(operationName="test")
public boolean test()
{
Thread th = new MyThread();
th.start();
// Thread is running
...
return true;
// Now thread th ends;
}
Is there any solution to keep thread th running?

The problem is that you are trying to start a Thread on a Java EE app server. Manual threading is in violation of the Java EE specs, which is why you are running into problems. on some app servers you can't even start a separate thread at all. From the spec:
The enterprise bean must not attempt to manage threads. The enterprise bean must not attempt to start, stop, suspend, or resume a thread, or to change a thread’s priority or name. The enterprise bean must not attempt to manage thread groups.These functions are reserved for the EJB container. Allowing the enterprise bean to manage threads would decrease the container’s ability to properly manage the runtime environment.
If you need to do the work on a separate thread, you need to use the facilities provided by the app server for asynchronous work. some options are queueing the data to a JMS queue for processing by an MDB or possibly using an asynchronous ejb request (think that's in Java EE 6).

If you just want to be sure before returning that the thread has finished - easiest way is th.join(). This method waits for the thread to die.

Related

EJB #Schedule is synchronous or asynchronous?

As #Balus has explained in Spawning threads in a JSF managed bean for scheduled tasks using a timer
EJB available? Use #Schedule
If you target Java EE 6 or newer (e.g. JBoss AS, GlassFish, TomEE, etc and thus not a barebones JSP/Servlet container such as Tomcat), then use a #Singleton EJB with a #Schedule method instead. This way the container will worry itself about pooling and destroying threads via ScheduledExecutorService.
So i am curious to know by using #Schedule, the background process will run asynchronously by container managed threads (magically) or it is like a java.util.timer which creates single thread and all process run within this threads??
if #Schedule creates only single thread just to manage the scheduler then would it be safe to use further ScheduledExecutorService within #Schedule? and this ScheduledExecutorService contains further runnable tasks based on multiple threads.
I have a long running process including file manipulation, data processing and email generating, but really should i rely only on this single #Schedule annotation without using any executorservices/creating further threadpool?? BTW i am using Glassfish.

How do I timeout a blocking call inside an EJB?

I am in the process of developing an EJB that makes 10+ calls to other components (EJBs, Web services, etc.) as part of it's business logic. In my case, performance is a huge concern. This EJB will be servicing a few million requests a day.
My question is: For each of those 10+ calls, how can I enforce a timeout?
I cannot wait more than 'n' seconds for any one of the calls to return. If a call takes longer than 'n' seconds, I will use a default response for processing.
I would normally use a Executor to solve this problem but, from what I understand, one shouldn't spawn threads from within an EJB as it may potentially interfere with the EJB's lifecycle.
how can I enforce a timeout?
The ejb3.1 specification provides the possibility to set a timeout using #AccessTimeout annotation that applies for serialized client calls that have to wait when an Session Bean instance
is busy executing a previous request.
Clearly (and explicity described in the specification) this applies to StateFul and Singleton session bean, although it could be implemented for Stateless in the case the bean pool run out of available instances.
Notice, once the client-invoked business method is in progress this timeout no applies.
Other possibility that is not part of the specification but, is supported by several servers (see JBoss example) is to define a timeout at the remote client side. If the client invocation
takes longer than the configured timeout, the client will be informed, however, the server execution will not be interrupted which it is not good enough.
Set a transaction timeout neither is a good option because there is no guarantee the thread that executes the business logic will be interrupted when the transaction timeout expires.
I would normally use a Executor to solve this problem but, from what I understand, one shouldn't spawn threads from within an EJB..
Instead you could use ManagedExecutorService class that is an Executor extension suitable to use within a EJB Container.
Aditionally, to implement asynchronous call within an EJB, take a look at #Asynchronous annotation, which provides a high level abstraction to solve the multithreding issue you are facing.
Cancel() method from Future class, allows you to interrup a thread's execution if you consider that the process has taken too long.
since you are not providing much detail of your environment:
use bean managed transactions and set the transaction timeout
EE7: provides an managed executor service
EE6: custom executor service as a JCA connector

How to reliably kill #Scheduled threads across servers?

I'm building a plugin that is implemented as a Spring MVC application. This plugin is deployed on 3 - 6 tomcat servers via a gui on one of the servers. Each of the instances of the plugin has an #Scheduled method to collect information on the server and store it in a central database.
My issue is that the gui interface for uninstalling the plugin leaves some of the #Scheduled threads running.
For example, I have an environment that has servers 1 - 3. I install and enable the plugin via the gui on server 1. There are now 3 instances of the application running #Scheduled threads on servers 1 - 3. If I go back to server 1 and uninstall the plugin, the thread is reliably killed on server 1 but not servers 2 or 3.
I've implemented the following but the behavior persists:
#Component
public class ContextClosedListener implements ApplicationListener<ContextClosedEvent> {
#Autowired
ThreadPoolTaskExecutor executor;
#Autowired
ThreadPoolTaskScheduler scheduler;
public void onApplicationEvent(ContextClosedEvent event) {
scheduler.shutdown();
executor.shutdown();
}
}
Additionally, I've thought of implementing this as a context listener rather than an #Scheduled method but I'd rather stick to Spring for maintenance and extensibility reasons.
How can I reliably kill threads in an environment like this?
A couple thoughts I have. ThreadPoolTaskExecutor has a method setThreadNamePrefix, which allows you to set the prefix of the thread. You could set the prefix to something unique, then find and kill those threads at runtime. You can also set the thread group using the setThreadGroup method on the same object, then just stop the threads in the threadgroup.
The better, and safer, solution would be to create a break-out method in your scheduled jobs. This is the prefered method to stopping a Thread instead of the old "shot it in the head" method of calling Thread.stop(). You could get reference to those Runnables either by setting a common prefix or by using the thread group as described above.
The next question is: how do you stop the threads easily? For that, it would depend on how your appliation is implemented. Since I deal mainly with Spring MVC apps, my first solution would be to write a Controller to handle admin tasks. If this was JBoss, or some other large app server that had JMX (Tomcat can be configured to provide JMX I believe, but I don't think its configured out of the box that way), I might write a JMX-enabled bean to allow me to stop the threads via the app servers console. Basically, give your self a method to trigger the stopping of the threads.

User thread spawning in Jetty

I have a web application running over Jetty, and I need to spawn a thread for idle connection handling. This thread is being started in the spring context.
I know it's not a good practice to spawn threads in a container, but couldn't find a better way to do this. Any ideas?
You can have the container set up a timer or thread pool for you. See the docs.
The traditional way to handle such resources is in a servlet context listener. Check the Servlet API.

Threads in Spring

I have a Web application using spring and hibernate and struts (it runs on Tomcat)
The call sequence is something like this...
Struts action calls spring service bean which in turn calls Spring DAO bean. The DAO implementation is a Hibernate implementation.
The question is
Would all my spring beans be running in the same thread ?
Can I store something in the ThreadLocal and get it in another bean?
I am quite sure this would not work in Stateless Session Bean.
The EJB container can (or will) spawn a new thread for every call to the session bean
Will the spring container do the same? i.e. run all beans in the same thread ?
When I tried a JUnit test - I got the same id via Thread.currentThread().getId() in the Test Case and the two beans- which leads me to believe there was only one thread in action
Or is the behavior unpredictable?
Or will it change when running on Tomcat server ?
Clarification
I do not wish to exchange data between two threads. I want to put data in the ThreadLocal and be able to retrieve it from all beans in the call stack. This will work only if all beans are in the same thread
Spring doesn't spawn the threads. Tomcat does. Spring is just creating and wiring up the objects for you.
Each request from the browser is processed in one request. It is Tomcat that handles the request. It is Tomcat that creates the thread to process the request.
Assuming you have just created a singleton bean in Spring called "X". Then the same instance of X is used by all requests.
The Spring beans don't live in a thread. They are just allocated on the heap.
Would all my spring beans be running
in the same thread ? Can I store
something in the ThreadLocal and get
it in another bean?
AFAIK for the components you mentioned (service bean, DAO bean - i guess they are plain spring beans), Spring does not spawn a new thread. I do not understand your use case (ie, exchanging data between two threads).
For most webapps, a new thread is spawned for each new request, and if you want to share data between two requests you normally:
- use the get/post parameters to pass the data
- use the session to share data
To answer your question, I'm pretty sure the spring container does not spawn threads for most components.
Yes, you can do this. The same thread will be used to execute your action so the ThreadLocal will work. Typically, the same thread is used for the stateless session bean as well, assuming it is running in the same app server instance. I would not depend on this though, as it is probably vendor dependent.
We use this technique to access the callers identity anywhere in the code. We use session beans and jms as well, but explicitly pass the information between containers and set the ThreadLocal at each entry point. This way it doesn't matter if the bean (session or mdb) are local or not.
In addition to all the other answers, I will just add the following:
Normally the only reason to switch threads is because of some requirement for parallellity. Since this normally does not come for free in terms of complexity, you will usually be clearly informed when this happens.
Switching threads within what appears to be a single-threaded processing of a request is actually extremely complex. This will normally only happen at one place in a container, and this is usually handled by tcp/ip socket readers that receive the request from the external clients. These reader threads usually determine which thread(pool) should process the request and forward the request to that thread. After that the request stays with that thread.
So normally the only thing that will/can happen is that additional threads get created for parallelity or asynchronous processing (like JMS).

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