database sharing between two servers - java

My current set up is a single dedicated server with Java, hibernate app running on tomcat, apache http server, MYSQL.
I need to get a second server to share the load, but using the same database from the first server.
The backend processing(excluding db transaction) is time consuming, hence the second server for backend processing).
Will there be any unwanted consequences of this setup? Is this the optimal setup?
My apps do update/delete and has transaction control as follows:
beginTransaction();
getSession().save(obj);
//sessionFactory.openSession().save(obj);
commitTransaction()

As long as only one of the apps does database updates on a shared table you should be fine. What you definitely don't want to happen is:
app1: delete/update table1.record24
app2: delete/update table1.record24
because when Hibernate writes the records one of the processes will notice the data has changed and throw an error. And as a classic Heisenbug it's really difficult to reproduce.
When, on the other hand, the responsibilities are clearly separated (the apps share data for reading, but do not delete/update the same tables) it should be ok. Document that behavior though as a future upgrade may not take that into account.
EDIT 1:Answering comments
You overcome concurrency issues by design. For any given table:
Both apps may insert
Both apps may select
one of the apps may also update / delete in that table
Your frontend will probably insert into tables, and the backend can read those tables,
update rows where necessary, create new result rows, and delete rows as cleanup.
Alternatively, when the apps communicate, the frontend can transfer ownership of the records for a given task to the business backend, which gives the ownership back when finished. Make sure the hibernate cache is flushed (transaction is executed) and no hibernate objects of that task are in use before transferring ownership.
The trick of the game is to ensure that Hibernate will not attempt write records which are changed by the other app, as that will result in a StaleStateException.
And example of how I solved a similar problem:
app 1 receives data, and writes it in table1
app 2 reads table1, processes it, and writes/updates table2
app 2 deletes the processed records in table1
Note that app 1 only writes to the shared table. It also reads, writes and updates from other tables, but those tables are not accessed by app 2, so that's no problem.

It is a fairly common approach, both for failover and load balancing.
Here's a short article describing the setup:
http://raibledesigns.com/tomcat/
Beware of singletons in this setup.

Related

Multitenancy using data segregation in Oracle

I'm working on a new application, that will be used by dozens of clients, each client also with dozens of users. I really don't want to handle with multiple datasources (because that may lead to performance issues), so I choose to use only 1 database for all tenants, and prepare the application to handle multitenancy through logical data segregation (creating a tenant id with my entities and indexing all tables with this ID).
But, I was wondering, in case of a client need to restore it's backup, in order to prevent the down time of the entire system, is it possible (or viable) to address this problem creating all tables partitioned by tenant id? In this case, can I performe a backup/restore by partition on Oracle?
Yes, backup and restore of table partitions is possible. See here in the documentation: https://docs.oracle.com/database/121/BRADV/rcmresind.htm#BRADV696.
Also see here for examples:
https://www.thegeekdiary.com/oracle-database-12c-new-feature-rman-recover-table/
https://oracle-base.com/articles/12c/rman-table-point-in-time-recovery-12cr1

Synchronize tables in SpringBoot multitenant architecture

I have a SpringBoot application running on a multitenant architecture.
I've two databases Admin and Client (both are MySQL) and both these databases have a User table
Client can add users to the User Table but I need them to get synchronized in the User table of Admin database.
Is there a way I can achieve this?
I've read about flyway migrations but I think it works more on database schema changes and not values.
Please ignore my mistakes as this my first question, any help would be appreciated.
This looks like a solution to your problem:
SymmetricDS is software that replicates relational database tables between multiple databases. It can also be used to replicate files and directories between multiple hosts. It uses a light-weight, web-based protocol to send and receive data, which makes it easy to work with firewalls. Replication is done in the background asynchronously, allowing data changes in offline mode. It supports most commercial and open source database platforms.
How does it work?
Triggers are installed in the database to guarantee that data changes are captured. This means that applications continue to use the database as usual without any special driver software. The triggers are written to be as small and efficient as possible. Routing and syncing of data is done outside of the database in the SymmetricDS process.
SymmetricDS supports many databases and can replicate across different databases, including Oracle, MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, MS SQL and many more.
https://www.symmetricds.org/docs/faq
You need to create some event from the flow where client adds user to the User Table.
If this "client" flow is in same java service then you can make use of Spring's Asynchronous Event Handling or have a method(which does the data copy) marked with #Async. This ensures the data copy happens in separate thread.
If the "client" flow is in different java service, then any publisher-subscriber model can be used (some opensource frameworks available are kafka, rabbitmq etc).
Now to connect to two datasources at the same time, Spring's RoutingDataSource will come handy in this scenario as it works on "lookup key" to choose the datasource. Or else you can hardcode two datasource beans in your config (since it is fixed in your case).

2PC or event publisher (Spring Batch) or Oracle Database Link

I have a situation wherein as part of a online transaction, I have to save some data into other database, a slight latency (few seconds) in updating the other database is fine. Now since both databases are Oracle, I have below 3 options, I need some insight as which one is better.
Oracle Database Links: Wherein I convert the SQL into PL/SQL and make my database take care of writing into another Oracle based database for DEV env both the databases are in same server as different schema while in production they happen to be two separate ORACLE RACs separated by a few routers and switches.
Spring Batch: Use a batch job somehow to pick the transactions from my source database and process and write into another target database. This way my online transactions would not fail it other database ever goes down or hits a perf issue or face a network issue. And if they ever fail I can code for job restart ability. Is Spring batch well suited for such event publishing case? Would I hit any challenge in future?
2-Phase-Commit: I simply implement 2PC and save the data in both the database in a transaction. Or maybe make it look more future proof and save in a messaging system and my source database.

Multiprocessing on web hosting

I have a java dynamic web app. I am exposing RESTful webservices for my android application.
The thing is that there are some services that do DB updates. Now, I want to host the application on public domain. I was wondering how parallel processing works on web hosting.
Say, my service /updateDB updates the database. Now, if there are two users who hit the same service at the same time, will the two of them run concurrently, because that will cause inconsistency in data. How exactly does the whole thing work.
Do I need to take care of synchronisation in my code?
Why kind of database are you using?
Certain database engines already have mechanisms in place to allow a transaction to be completed before another request over writes data. Most web developers do not have to worry about this because the application server (websphere, weblogic) and database (Mysql,Oracle) take care of these things for you.
(I am going to overly simplify this for you.)
A request to the webservice may perform one or more actions on the DB. These actions can be clumped together and be called a transaction. A transaction can include one or more of the following INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE etc. e.g A new customer registers for your webservice. the following actions take place which can be considered into a transaction.
Insert a new customer username password in the Customer table
Insert customers address in Address table
Update total customer count in Summary table
All the above actions can be completed as one transaction. If any of this fails then all actions will be reverted back automatically. Similarly if two customers registers simultaneously then the database will take care to not over write each other as well.
We can configure the database to make sure that every transaction should be completed before another transaction can dirty the data in a row.
In a database they are called ACID properties.
A - Atomicity - Every transaction must be complete, if anything in a transaction fails, then do not complete the transaction and also revert back every previous action within that transaction.
C - Consistency - make sure that every transaction that occurs will always update the database in a predefined manner. e.g. after every customer registration make sure that all the actions within it are executed
I - Isolation - if more than one request comes in, then they get executed on the database separately
D - Durabilty - after a transaction completes, the changes done should remain forever.
For example Mysql Database with the InnoDB engine supports this. There are other databases which support this as well.
You can read more here
http://java.dzone.com/articles/beginners-guide-acid-and
This is a very vast topic in databases.
Programming language have APIS which will help you write code in this manner. But the basic take away is that databases and applications servers will do most of the work for you. You just have to make sure to design the code structure to identify transactions and commit them appropriately).
Java and other programming languages are aware of ACID properties in DB and will help you achieve that goal.
Read more here about how you use Java to achieve things we mentioned above.
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/jdbc/basics/transactions.html
Similarly other languages have similar functionality and APIs.
In google search for "java database transaction" or "<your favorite language>database transaction"

Getting events from a database

I am not very familiar with databases and what they offer outside of the CRUD operations.
My research has led me to triggers. Basically it looks like triggers offer this type of functionality:
(from Wikipedia)
There are typically three triggering events that cause triggers to "fire":
INSERT event (as a new record is being inserted into the database).
UPDATE event (as a record is being changed).
DELETE event (as a record is being deleted).
My question is: is there some way I can be notified in Java (preferably including the data that changed) by the database when a record is Updated/Deleted/Inserted using some sort of trigger semantics?
What might be some alternate solutions to this problem? How can I listen to database events?
The main reason I want to do this is a scenario like this:
I have 5 client applications all in different processes/existing across different PCs. They all share a common database (Postgres in this case).
Lets say one client changes a record in the DB that all 5 of the clients are "interested" in. I am trying to think of ways for the clients to be "notified" of the change (preferably with the affected data attached) instead of them querying for the data at some interval.
Using Oracle you can setup a Trigger on a table and then have the trigger send a JMS message. Oracle has two different JMS implementations. You can then have a process that will 'listen' for the message using the JDBC Driver. I have used this method to push changes out to my application vs. polling.
If you are using a Java database (H2) you have additional options. In my current application (SIEM) I have triggers in H2 that publish change events using JMX.
Don't mix up the database (which contains the data), and events on that data.
Triggers are one way, but normally you will have a persistence layer in your application. This layer can choose to fire off events when certain things happen - say to a JMS topic.
Triggers are a last ditch thing, as you're operating on relational items then, rather than "events" on the data. (For example, an "update", could in reality map to a "company changed legal name" event) If you rely on the db, you'll have to map the inserts & updates back to real life events.... which you already knew about!
You can then layer other stuff on top of these notifications - like event stream processing - to find events that others are interested in.
James
Hmm. So you're using PostgreSQL and you want to "listen" for events and be "notified" when they occur?
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/sql-listen.html
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/sql-notify.html
Hope this helps!
Calling external processes from the database is very vendor specific.
Just off the top of my head:
SQLServer can call CLR programs from
triggers,
postgresql can call arbitrary C
functions loaded dynamically,
MySQL can call arbitrary C functions,
but they must be compiled in,
Sybase can make system calls if set
up to do so.
The simplest thing to do is to have the insert/update/delete triggers make an entry in some log table, and have your java program monitor that table. Good columns to have in your log table would be things like EVENT_CODE, LOG_DATETIME, and LOG_MSG.
Unless you require very high performance or need to handle 100Ks of records, that is probably sufficient.
I think you're confusing two things. They are both highly db vendor specific.
The first I shall call "triggers". I am sure there is at least one DB vendor who thinks triggers are different than this, but bear with me. A trigger is a server-side piece of code that can be attached to table. For instance, you could run a PSQL stored procedure on every update in table X. Some databases allow you to write these in real programming languages, others only in their variant of SQL. Triggers are typically reasonably fast and scalable.
The other I shall call "events". These are triggers that fire in the database that allow you to define an event handler in your client program. IE, any time there are updates to the clients database, fire updateClientsList in your program. For instance, using python and firebird see http://www.firebirdsql.org/devel/python/docs/3.3.0/beyond-python-db-api.html#database-event-notification
I believe the previous suggestion to use a monitor is an equivalent way to implement this using some other database. Maybe oracle? MSSQL Notification services, mentioned in another answer is another implementation of this as well.
I would go so far as to say you'd better REALLY know why you want the database to notify your client program, otherwise you should stick with server side triggers.
What you're asking completely depends on both the database you're using and the framework you're using to communicate with your database.
If you're using something like Hibernate as your persistence layer, it has a set of listeners and interceptors that you can use to monitor records going in and out of the database.
There are a few different techniques here depending on the database you're using. One idea is to poll the database (which I'm sure you're trying to avoid). Basically you could check for changes every so often.
Another solution (if you're using SQL Server 2005) is to use Notification Services, although this techonology is supposedly being replaced in SQL 2008 (we haven't seen a pure replacement yet, but Microsoft has talked about it publicly).
This is usually what the standard client/server application is for. If all inserts/updates/deletes go through the server application, which then modifies the database, then client applications can find out much easier what changes were made.
If you are using postgresql it has capability to listen notifications from JDBC client.
I would suggest using a timestamp column, last updated, together with possibly the user updating the record, and then let the clients check their local record timestamp against that of the persisted record.
The added complexity of adding a callback/trigger functionality is just not worth it in my opinion, unless supported by the database backend and the client library used, like for instance the notification services offered for SQL Server 2005 used together with ADO.NET.

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