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  • SQL University: Parallelism Week - Part 2, Query Processing

    - by Adam Machanic
    Welcome back for the second part of Parallelism Week here at SQL University . Get your pencils ready, and make sure to raise your hand if you have a question. Last time we covered the necessary background material to help you understand how the SQL Server Operating System schedules its many active threads, and the differences between its behavior and that of the Windows operating system's scheduler. We also discussed some of the variations on the theme of parallel processing. Today we'll take a look...(read more)

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  • Modern programming language with intuitive concurrent programming abstractions

    - by faif
    I am interested in learning concurrent programming, focusing on the application/user level (not system programming). I am looking for a modern high level programming language that provides intuitive abstractions for writing concurrent applications. I want to focus on languages that increase productivity and hide the complexity of concurrent programming. To give some examples, I don't consider a good option writing multithreaded code in C, C++, or Java because IMHO my productivity is reduced and their programming model is not intuitive. On the other hand, languages that increase productivity and offer more intuitive abstractions such as Python and the multiprocessing module, Erlang, Clojure, Scala, etc. would be good options. What would you recommend based on your experience and why?

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  • Inside the Concurrent Collections: ConcurrentBag

    - by Simon Cooper
    Unlike the other concurrent collections, ConcurrentBag does not really have a non-concurrent analogy. As stated in the MSDN documentation, ConcurrentBag is optimised for the situation where the same thread is both producing and consuming items from the collection. We'll see how this is the case as we take a closer look. Again, I recommend you have ConcurrentBag open in a decompiler for reference. Thread Statics ConcurrentBag makes heavy use of thread statics - static variables marked with ThreadStaticAttribute. This is a special attribute that instructs the CLR to scope any values assigned to or read from the variable to the executing thread, not globally within the AppDomain. This means that if two different threads assign two different values to the same thread static variable, one value will not overwrite the other, and each thread will see the value they assigned to the variable, separately to any other thread. This is a very useful function that allows for ConcurrentBag's concurrency properties. You can think of a thread static variable: [ThreadStatic] private static int m_Value; as doing the same as: private static Dictionary<Thread, int> m_Values; where the executing thread's identity is used to automatically set and retrieve the corresponding value in the dictionary. In .NET 4, this usage of ThreadStaticAttribute is encapsulated in the ThreadLocal class. Lists of lists ConcurrentBag, at its core, operates as a linked list of linked lists: Each outer list node is an instance of ThreadLocalList, and each inner list node is an instance of Node. Each outer ThreadLocalList is owned by a particular thread, accessible through the thread local m_locals variable: private ThreadLocal<ThreadLocalList<T>> m_locals It is important to note that, although the m_locals variable is thread-local, that only applies to accesses through that variable. The objects referenced by the thread (each instance of the ThreadLocalList object) are normal heap objects that are not specific to any thread. Thinking back to the Dictionary analogy above, if each value stored in the dictionary could be accessed by other means, then any thread could access the value belonging to other threads using that mechanism. Only reads and writes to the variable defined as thread-local are re-routed by the CLR according to the executing thread's identity. So, although m_locals is defined as thread-local, the m_headList, m_nextList and m_tailList variables aren't. This means that any thread can access all the thread local lists in the collection by doing a linear search through the outer linked list defined by these variables. Adding items So, onto the collection operations. First, adding items. This one's pretty simple. If the current thread doesn't already own an instance of ThreadLocalList, then one is created (or, if there are lists owned by threads that have stopped, it takes control of one of those). Then the item is added to the head of that thread's list. That's it. Don't worry, it'll get more complicated when we account for the other operations on the list! Taking & Peeking items This is where it gets tricky. If the current thread's list has items in it, then it peeks or removes the head item (not the tail item) from the local list and returns that. However, if the local list is empty, it has to go and steal another item from another list, belonging to a different thread. It iterates through all the thread local lists in the collection using the m_headList and m_nextList variables until it finds one that has items in it, and it steals one item from that list. Up to this point, the two threads had been operating completely independently. To steal an item from another thread's list, the stealing thread has to do it in such a way as to not step on the owning thread's toes. Recall how adding and removing items both operate on the head of the thread's linked list? That gives us an easy way out - a thread trying to steal items from another thread can pop in round the back of another thread's list using the m_tail variable, and steal an item from the back without the owning thread knowing anything about it. The owning thread can carry on completely independently, unaware that one of its items has been nicked. However, this only works when there are at least 3 items in the list, as that guarantees there will be at least one node between the owning thread performing operations on the list head and the thread stealing items from the tail - there's no chance of the two threads operating on the same node at the same time and causing a race condition. If there's less than three items in the list, then there does need to be some synchronization between the two threads. In this case, the lock on the ThreadLocalList object is used to mediate access to a thread's list when there's the possibility of contention. Thread synchronization In ConcurrentBag, this is done using several mechanisms: Operations performed by the owner thread only take out the lock when there are less than three items in the collection. With three or greater items, there won't be any conflict with a stealing thread operating on the tail of the list. If a lock isn't taken out, the owning thread sets the list's m_currentOp variable to a non-zero value for the duration of the operation. This indicates to all other threads that there is a non-locked operation currently occuring on that list. The stealing thread always takes out the lock, to prevent two threads trying to steal from the same list at the same time. After taking out the lock, the stealing thread spinwaits until m_currentOp has been set to zero before actually performing the steal. This ensures there won't be a conflict with the owning thread when the number of items in the list is on the 2-3 item borderline. If any add or remove operations are started in the meantime, and the list is below 3 items, those operations try to take out the list's lock and are blocked until the stealing thread has finished. This allows a thread to steal an item from another thread's list without corrupting it. What about synchronization in the collection as a whole? Collection synchronization Any thread that operates on the collection's global structure (accessing anything outside the thread local lists) has to take out the collection's global lock - m_globalListsLock. This single lock is sufficient when adding a new thread local list, as the items inside each thread's list are unaffected. However, what about operations (such as Count or ToArray) that need to access every item in the collection? In order to ensure a consistent view, all operations on the collection are stopped while the count or ToArray is performed. This is done by freezing the bag at the start, performing the global operation, and unfreezing at the end: The global lock is taken out, to prevent structural alterations to the collection. m_needSync is set to true. This notifies all the threads that they need to take out their list's lock irregardless of what operation they're doing. All the list locks are taken out in order. This blocks all locking operations on the lists. The freezing thread waits for all current lockless operations to finish by spinwaiting on each m_currentOp field. The global operation can then be performed while the bag is frozen, but no other operations can take place at the same time, as all other threads are blocked on a list's lock. Then, once the global operation has finished, the locks are released, m_needSync is unset, and normal concurrent operation resumes. Concurrent principles That's the essence of how ConcurrentBag operates. Each thread operates independently on its own local list, except when they have to steal items from another list. When stealing, only the stealing thread is forced to take out the lock; the owning thread only has to when there is the possibility of contention. And a global lock controls accesses to the structure of the collection outside the thread lists. Operations affecting the entire collection take out all locks in the collection to freeze the contents at a single point in time. So, what principles can we extract here? Threads operate independently Thread-static variables and ThreadLocal makes this easy. Threads operate entirely concurrently on their own structures; only when they need to grab data from another thread is there any thread contention. Minimised lock-taking Even when two threads need to operate on the same data structures (one thread stealing from another), they do so in such a way such that the probability of actually blocking on a lock is minimised; the owning thread always operates on the head of the list, and the stealing thread always operates on the tail. Management of lockless operations Any operations that don't take out a lock still have a 'hook' to force them to lock when necessary. This allows all operations on the collection to be stopped temporarily while a global snapshot is taken. Hopefully, such operations will be short-lived and infrequent. That's all the concurrent collections covered. I hope you've found it as informative and interesting as I have. Next, I'll be taking a closer look at ThreadLocal, which I came across while analyzing ConcurrentBag. As you'll see, the operation of this class deserves a much closer look.

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  • Inside the Concurrent Collections: ConcurrentDictionary

    - by Simon Cooper
    Using locks to implement a thread-safe collection is rather like using a sledgehammer - unsubtle, easy to understand, and tends to make any other tool redundant. Unlike the previous two collections I looked at, ConcurrentStack and ConcurrentQueue, ConcurrentDictionary uses locks quite heavily. However, it is careful to wield locks only where necessary to ensure that concurrency is maximised. This will, by necessity, be a higher-level look than my other posts in this series, as there is quite a lot of code and logic in ConcurrentDictionary. Therefore, I do recommend that you have ConcurrentDictionary open in a decompiler to have a look at all the details that I skip over. The problem with locks There's several things to bear in mind when using locks, as encapsulated by the lock keyword in C# and the System.Threading.Monitor class in .NET (if you're unsure as to what lock does in C#, I briefly covered it in my first post in the series): Locks block threads The most obvious problem is that threads waiting on a lock can't do any work at all. No preparatory work, no 'optimistic' work like in ConcurrentQueue and ConcurrentStack, nothing. It sits there, waiting to be unblocked. This is bad if you're trying to maximise concurrency. Locks are slow Whereas most of the methods on the Interlocked class can be compiled down to a single CPU instruction, ensuring atomicity at the hardware level, taking out a lock requires some heavy lifting by the CLR and the operating system. There's quite a bit of work required to take out a lock, block other threads, and wake them up again. If locks are used heavily, this impacts performance. Deadlocks When using locks there's always the possibility of a deadlock - two threads, each holding a lock, each trying to aquire the other's lock. Fortunately, this can be avoided with careful programming and structured lock-taking, as we'll see. So, it's important to minimise where locks are used to maximise the concurrency and performance of the collection. Implementation As you might expect, ConcurrentDictionary is similar in basic implementation to the non-concurrent Dictionary, which I studied in a previous post. I'll be using some concepts introduced there, so I recommend you have a quick read of it. So, if you were implementing a thread-safe dictionary, what would you do? The naive implementation is to simply have a single lock around all methods accessing the dictionary. This would work, but doesn't allow much concurrency. Fortunately, the bucketing used by Dictionary allows a simple but effective improvement to this - one lock per bucket. This allows different threads modifying different buckets to do so in parallel. Any thread making changes to the contents of a bucket takes the lock for that bucket, ensuring those changes are thread-safe. The method that maps each bucket to a lock is the GetBucketAndLockNo method: private void GetBucketAndLockNo( int hashcode, out int bucketNo, out int lockNo, int bucketCount) { // the bucket number is the hashcode (without the initial sign bit) // modulo the number of buckets bucketNo = (hashcode & 0x7fffffff) % bucketCount; // and the lock number is the bucket number modulo the number of locks lockNo = bucketNo % m_locks.Length; } However, this does require some changes to how the buckets are implemented. The 'implicit' linked list within a single backing array used by the non-concurrent Dictionary adds a dependency between separate buckets, as every bucket uses the same backing array. Instead, ConcurrentDictionary uses a strict linked list on each bucket: This ensures that each bucket is entirely separate from all other buckets; adding or removing an item from a bucket is independent to any changes to other buckets. Modifying the dictionary All the operations on the dictionary follow the same basic pattern: void AlterBucket(TKey key, ...) { int bucketNo, lockNo; 1: GetBucketAndLockNo( key.GetHashCode(), out bucketNo, out lockNo, m_buckets.Length); 2: lock (m_locks[lockNo]) { 3: Node headNode = m_buckets[bucketNo]; 4: Mutate the node linked list as appropriate } } For example, when adding another entry to the dictionary, you would iterate through the linked list to check whether the key exists already, and add the new entry as the head node. When removing items, you would find the entry to remove (if it exists), and remove the node from the linked list. Adding, updating, and removing items all follow this pattern. Performance issues There is a problem we have to address at this point. If the number of buckets in the dictionary is fixed in the constructor, then the performance will degrade from O(1) to O(n) when a large number of items are added to the dictionary. As more and more items get added to the linked lists in each bucket, the lookup operations will spend most of their time traversing a linear linked list. To fix this, the buckets array has to be resized once the number of items in each bucket has gone over a certain limit. (In ConcurrentDictionary this limit is when the size of the largest bucket is greater than the number of buckets for each lock. This check is done at the end of the TryAddInternal method.) Resizing the bucket array and re-hashing everything affects every bucket in the collection. Therefore, this operation needs to take out every lock in the collection. Taking out mutiple locks at once inevitably summons the spectre of the deadlock; two threads each hold a lock, and each trying to acquire the other lock. How can we eliminate this? Simple - ensure that threads never try to 'swap' locks in this fashion. When taking out multiple locks, always take them out in the same order, and always take out all the locks you need before starting to release them. In ConcurrentDictionary, this is controlled by the AcquireLocks, AcquireAllLocks and ReleaseLocks methods. Locks are always taken out and released in the order they are in the m_locks array, and locks are all released right at the end of the method in a finally block. At this point, it's worth pointing out that the locks array is never re-assigned, even when the buckets array is increased in size. The number of locks is fixed in the constructor by the concurrencyLevel parameter. This simplifies programming the locks; you don't have to check if the locks array has changed or been re-assigned before taking out a lock object. And you can be sure that when a thread takes out a lock, another thread isn't going to re-assign the lock array. This would create a new series of lock objects, thus allowing another thread to ignore the existing locks (and any threads controlling them), breaking thread-safety. Consequences of growing the array Just because we're using locks doesn't mean that race conditions aren't a problem. We can see this by looking at the GrowTable method. The operation of this method can be boiled down to: private void GrowTable(Node[] buckets) { try { 1: Acquire first lock in the locks array // this causes any other thread trying to take out // all the locks to block because the first lock in the array // is always the one taken out first // check if another thread has already resized the buckets array // while we were waiting to acquire the first lock 2: if (buckets != m_buckets) return; 3: Calculate the new size of the backing array 4: Node[] array = new array[size]; 5: Acquire all the remaining locks 6: Re-hash the contents of the existing buckets into array 7: m_buckets = array; } finally { 8: Release all locks } } As you can see, there's already a check for a race condition at step 2, for the case when the GrowTable method is called twice in quick succession on two separate threads. One will successfully resize the buckets array (blocking the second in the meantime), when the second thread is unblocked it'll see that the array has already been resized & exit without doing anything. There is another case we need to consider; looking back at the AlterBucket method above, consider the following situation: Thread 1 calls AlterBucket; step 1 is executed to get the bucket and lock numbers. Thread 2 calls GrowTable and executes steps 1-5; thread 1 is blocked when it tries to take out the lock in step 2. Thread 2 re-hashes everything, re-assigns the buckets array, and releases all the locks (steps 6-8). Thread 1 is unblocked and continues executing, but the calculated bucket and lock numbers are no longer valid. Between calculating the correct bucket and lock number and taking out the lock, another thread has changed where everything is. Not exactly thread-safe. Well, a similar problem was solved in ConcurrentStack and ConcurrentQueue by storing a local copy of the state, doing the necessary calculations, then checking if that state is still valid. We can use a similar idea here: void AlterBucket(TKey key, ...) { while (true) { Node[] buckets = m_buckets; int bucketNo, lockNo; GetBucketAndLockNo( key.GetHashCode(), out bucketNo, out lockNo, buckets.Length); lock (m_locks[lockNo]) { // if the state has changed, go back to the start if (buckets != m_buckets) continue; Node headNode = m_buckets[bucketNo]; Mutate the node linked list as appropriate } break; } } TryGetValue and GetEnumerator And so, finally, we get onto TryGetValue and GetEnumerator. I've left these to the end because, well, they don't actually use any locks. How can this be? Whenever you change a bucket, you need to take out the corresponding lock, yes? Indeed you do. However, it is important to note that TryGetValue and GetEnumerator don't actually change anything. Just as immutable objects are, by definition, thread-safe, read-only operations don't need to take out a lock because they don't change anything. All lockless methods can happily iterate through the buckets and linked lists without worrying about locking anything. However, this does put restrictions on how the other methods operate. Because there could be another thread in the middle of reading the dictionary at any time (even if a lock is taken out), the dictionary has to be in a valid state at all times. Every change to state has to be made visible to other threads in a single atomic operation (all relevant variables are marked volatile to help with this). This restriction ensures that whatever the reading threads are doing, they never read the dictionary in an invalid state (eg items that should be in the collection temporarily removed from the linked list, or reading a node that has had it's key & value removed before the node itself has been removed from the linked list). Fortunately, all the operations needed to change the dictionary can be done in that way. Bucket resizes are made visible when the new array is assigned back to the m_buckets variable. Any additions or modifications to a node are done by creating a new node, then splicing it into the existing list using a single variable assignment. Node removals are simply done by re-assigning the node's m_next pointer. Because the dictionary can be changed by another thread during execution of the lockless methods, the GetEnumerator method is liable to return dirty reads - changes made to the dictionary after GetEnumerator was called, but before the enumeration got to that point in the dictionary. It's worth listing at this point which methods are lockless, and which take out all the locks in the dictionary to ensure they get a consistent view of the dictionary: Lockless: TryGetValue GetEnumerator The indexer getter ContainsKey Takes out every lock (lockfull?): Count IsEmpty Keys Values CopyTo ToArray Concurrent principles That covers the overall implementation of ConcurrentDictionary. I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of this sophisticated collection. That I leave to you. However, we've looked at enough to be able to extract some useful principles for concurrent programming: Partitioning When using locks, the work is partitioned into independant chunks, each with its own lock. Each partition can then be modified concurrently to other partitions. Ordered lock-taking When a method does need to control the entire collection, locks are taken and released in a fixed order to prevent deadlocks. Lockless reads Read operations that don't care about dirty reads don't take out any lock; the rest of the collection is implemented so that any reading thread always has a consistent view of the collection. That leads us to the final collection in this little series - ConcurrentBag. Lacking a non-concurrent analogy, it is quite different to any other collection in the class libraries. Prepare your thinking hats!

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  • Need a Holistic view of your Concurrent Processing?

    - by cwarticki
    Need a Holistic view of your Concurrent Processing? Choose CP AnalyzerGo to Doc 1411723.1 for more details and script download. The Concurrent Processing Analyzer is a Self-Service Health-Check script which reviews the overall Concurrent Processing Footprint, analyzes the current configurations and settings for the environment providing feedback and recommendations on Best Practices. This is a non-invasive script which provides recommended actions to be performed on the instance it was run on.  For production instances, always apply any changes to a recent clone to ensure an expected outcome. E-Business Applications Concurrent Processing Analyzer Overview E-Business Applications Concurrent Request Analysis E-Business Applications Concurrent Manager Analysis Identifies Concurrent System Setup and configurations Identifies and recommends Concurrent Best Practices Easy to add Tool for regular Concurrent Maintenance Execute Analysis anytime to compare trending from past outputs Feedback welcome!

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  • Concurrent Business Events

    - by Manoj Madhusoodanan
    This blog describes the various business events related to concurrent requests.In the concurrent program definition screen we can see the various business events which are attached to concurrent processing. Following are the actual definition of above business events. Each event will have following parameters. Create subscriptions to above business events.Before testing enable profile option 'Concurrent: Business Intelligence Integration Enable' to Yes. ExampleI have created a scenario.Whenever my concurrent request completes normally I want to send out file as attachment to my mail.So following components I have created.1) Host file deployed on $XXCUST_TOP/bin to send mail.It accepts mail ids,subject and output file.(Code here)2) Concurrent Program to send mail which points to above host file.3) Subscription package to oracle.apps.fnd.concurrent.request.completed.(Code here)Choose a concurrent program which you want to send the out file as attachment.Check Request Completed check box.Submit the program.If it completes normally the business event subscription program will send the out file as attachment to the specified mail id.

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  • Codeigniter + JQuery + Processing.js to replace a Delphi App

    - by Peter Turner
    So, I've got a mandate to make our aged trillion lined Delphi app web based and it needs to make heavy use of the <canvas> element (HTML5 compatibility doesn't seem to be a big issue since we can just make our clients use a compatible browser the way we'd make them use a compatible version of Windows in the win32 environment). The Delphi app in question is almost completely database driven and will still pretty much continue to be developed as the main product. What I am tasked with is pretty much recreating a scaled down version of the program that performs the major functions of the whole program. I couldn't find any frameworks that simulate windows forms using the canvas element, I'm assuming this is probably by design since it is easier just to use HTML, well, be that as it may, I still think it would be cool to have a few of my cool controls on the web (TRichView and TVirtualTree, etc...) So my question is, to anyone who has tried this before, A.) What can we use for an IDE to code this web app (I just use emacs, but no one else in my company does)? B.) Is it a good idea to mix PHP and Processing.JS? It seems like I'm using a lot of AJAX to get anything to happen. 3 calls just for one dialog box to pop up, Loads the HTML for the dialog, Loads the XML to populate the database info on the form Loads the processing.js PJS file which draws the database info to the canvas. Is three a lot, do people usually combine all their gets into one?

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  • C#/.NET Little Wonders: The Concurrent Collections (1 of 3)

    - by James Michael Hare
    Once again we consider some of the lesser known classes and keywords of C#.  In the next few weeks, we will discuss the concurrent collections and how they have changed the face of concurrent programming. This week’s post will begin with a general introduction and discuss the ConcurrentStack<T> and ConcurrentQueue<T>.  Then in the following post we’ll discuss the ConcurrentDictionary<T> and ConcurrentBag<T>.  Finally, we shall close on the third post with a discussion of the BlockingCollection<T>. For more of the "Little Wonders" posts, see the index here. A brief history of collections In the beginning was the .NET 1.0 Framework.  And out of this framework emerged the System.Collections namespace, and it was good.  It contained all the basic things a growing programming language needs like the ArrayList and Hashtable collections.  The main problem, of course, with these original collections is that they held items of type object which means you had to be disciplined enough to use them correctly or you could end up with runtime errors if you got an object of a type you weren't expecting. Then came .NET 2.0 and generics and our world changed forever!  With generics the C# language finally got an equivalent of the very powerful C++ templates.  As such, the System.Collections.Generic was born and we got type-safe versions of all are favorite collections.  The List<T> succeeded the ArrayList and the Dictionary<TKey,TValue> succeeded the Hashtable and so on.  The new versions of the library were not only safer because they checked types at compile-time, in many cases they were more performant as well.  So much so that it's Microsoft's recommendation that the System.Collections original collections only be used for backwards compatibility. So we as developers came to know and love the generic collections and took them into our hearts and embraced them.  The problem is, thread safety in both the original collections and the generic collections can be problematic, for very different reasons. Now, if you are only doing single-threaded development you may not care – after all, no locking is required.  Even if you do have multiple threads, if a collection is “load-once, read-many” you don’t need to do anything to protect that container from multi-threaded access, as illustrated below: 1: public static class OrderTypeTranslator 2: { 3: // because this dictionary is loaded once before it is ever accessed, we don't need to synchronize 4: // multi-threaded read access 5: private static readonly Dictionary<string, char> _translator = new Dictionary<string, char> 6: { 7: {"New", 'N'}, 8: {"Update", 'U'}, 9: {"Cancel", 'X'} 10: }; 11:  12: // the only public interface into the dictionary is for reading, so inherently thread-safe 13: public static char? Translate(string orderType) 14: { 15: char charValue; 16: if (_translator.TryGetValue(orderType, out charValue)) 17: { 18: return charValue; 19: } 20:  21: return null; 22: } 23: } Unfortunately, most of our computer science problems cannot get by with just single-threaded applications or with multi-threading in a load-once manner.  Looking at  today's trends, it's clear to see that computers are not so much getting faster because of faster processor speeds -- we've nearly reached the limits we can push through with today's technologies -- but more because we're adding more cores to the boxes.  With this new hardware paradigm, it is even more important to use multi-threaded applications to take full advantage of parallel processing to achieve higher application speeds. So let's look at how to use collections in a thread-safe manner. Using historical collections in a concurrent fashion The early .NET collections (System.Collections) had a Synchronized() static method that could be used to wrap the early collections to make them completely thread-safe.  This paradigm was dropped in the generic collections (System.Collections.Generic) because having a synchronized wrapper resulted in atomic locks for all operations, which could prove overkill in many multithreading situations.  Thus the paradigm shifted to having the user of the collection specify their own locking, usually with an external object: 1: public class OrderAggregator 2: { 3: private static readonly Dictionary<string, List<Order>> _orders = new Dictionary<string, List<Order>>(); 4: private static readonly _orderLock = new object(); 5:  6: public void Add(string accountNumber, Order newOrder) 7: { 8: List<Order> ordersForAccount; 9:  10: // a complex operation like this should all be protected 11: lock (_orderLock) 12: { 13: if (!_orders.TryGetValue(accountNumber, out ordersForAccount)) 14: { 15: _orders.Add(accountNumber, ordersForAccount = new List<Order>()); 16: } 17:  18: ordersForAccount.Add(newOrder); 19: } 20: } 21: } Notice how we’re performing several operations on the dictionary under one lock.  With the Synchronized() static methods of the early collections, you wouldn’t be able to specify this level of locking (a more macro-level).  So in the generic collections, it was decided that if a user needed synchronization, they could implement their own locking scheme instead so that they could provide synchronization as needed. The need for better concurrent access to collections Here’s the problem: it’s relatively easy to write a collection that locks itself down completely for access, but anything more complex than that can be difficult and error-prone to write, and much less to make it perform efficiently!  For example, what if you have a Dictionary that has frequent reads but in-frequent updates?  Do you want to lock down the entire Dictionary for every access?  This would be overkill and would prevent concurrent reads.  In such cases you could use something like a ReaderWriterLockSlim which allows for multiple readers in a lock, and then once a writer grabs the lock it blocks all further readers until the writer is done (in a nutshell).  This is all very complex stuff to consider. Fortunately, this is where the Concurrent Collections come in.  The Parallel Computing Platform team at Microsoft went through great pains to determine how to make a set of concurrent collections that would have the best performance characteristics for general case multi-threaded use. Now, as in all things involving threading, you should always make sure you evaluate all your container options based on the particular usage scenario and the degree of parallelism you wish to acheive. This article should not be taken to understand that these collections are always supperior to the generic collections. Each fills a particular need for a particular situation. Understanding what each container is optimized for is key to the success of your application whether it be single-threaded or multi-threaded. General points to consider with the concurrent collections The MSDN points out that the concurrent collections all support the ICollection interface. However, since the collections are already synchronized, the IsSynchronized property always returns false, and SyncRoot always returns null.  Thus you should not attempt to use these properties for synchronization purposes. Note that since the concurrent collections also may have different operations than the traditional data structures you may be used to.  Now you may ask why they did this, but it was done out of necessity to keep operations safe and atomic.  For example, in order to do a Pop() on a stack you have to know the stack is non-empty, but between the time you check the stack’s IsEmpty property and then do the Pop() another thread may have come in and made the stack empty!  This is why some of the traditional operations have been changed to make them safe for concurrent use. In addition, some properties and methods in the concurrent collections achieve concurrency by creating a snapshot of the collection, which means that some operations that were traditionally O(1) may now be O(n) in the concurrent models.  I’ll try to point these out as we talk about each collection so you can be aware of any potential performance impacts.  Finally, all the concurrent containers are safe for enumeration even while being modified, but some of the containers support this in different ways (snapshot vs. dirty iteration).  Once again I’ll highlight how thread-safe enumeration works for each collection. ConcurrentStack<T>: The thread-safe LIFO container The ConcurrentStack<T> is the thread-safe counterpart to the System.Collections.Generic.Stack<T>, which as you may remember is your standard last-in-first-out container.  If you think of algorithms that favor stack usage (for example, depth-first searches of graphs and trees) then you can see how using a thread-safe stack would be of benefit. The ConcurrentStack<T> achieves thread-safe access by using System.Threading.Interlocked operations.  This means that the multi-threaded access to the stack requires no traditional locking and is very, very fast! For the most part, the ConcurrentStack<T> behaves like it’s Stack<T> counterpart with a few differences: Pop() was removed in favor of TryPop() Returns true if an item existed and was popped and false if empty. PushRange() and TryPopRange() were added Allows you to push multiple items and pop multiple items atomically. Count takes a snapshot of the stack and then counts the items. This means it is a O(n) operation, if you just want to check for an empty stack, call IsEmpty instead which is O(1). ToArray() and GetEnumerator() both also take snapshots. This means that iteration over a stack will give you a static view at the time of the call and will not reflect updates. Pushing on a ConcurrentStack<T> works just like you’d expect except for the aforementioned PushRange() method that was added to allow you to push a range of items concurrently. 1: var stack = new ConcurrentStack<string>(); 2:  3: // adding to stack is much the same as before 4: stack.Push("First"); 5:  6: // but you can also push multiple items in one atomic operation (no interleaves) 7: stack.PushRange(new [] { "Second", "Third", "Fourth" }); For looking at the top item of the stack (without removing it) the Peek() method has been removed in favor of a TryPeek().  This is because in order to do a peek the stack must be non-empty, but between the time you check for empty and the time you execute the peek the stack contents may have changed.  Thus the TryPeek() was created to be an atomic check for empty, and then peek if not empty: 1: // to look at top item of stack without removing it, can use TryPeek. 2: // Note that there is no Peek(), this is because you need to check for empty first. TryPeek does. 3: string item; 4: if (stack.TryPeek(out item)) 5: { 6: Console.WriteLine("Top item was " + item); 7: } 8: else 9: { 10: Console.WriteLine("Stack was empty."); 11: } Finally, to remove items from the stack, we have the TryPop() for single, and TryPopRange() for multiple items.  Just like the TryPeek(), these operations replace Pop() since we need to ensure atomically that the stack is non-empty before we pop from it: 1: // to remove items, use TryPop or TryPopRange to get multiple items atomically (no interleaves) 2: if (stack.TryPop(out item)) 3: { 4: Console.WriteLine("Popped " + item); 5: } 6:  7: // TryPopRange will only pop up to the number of spaces in the array, the actual number popped is returned. 8: var poppedItems = new string[2]; 9: int numPopped = stack.TryPopRange(poppedItems); 10:  11: foreach (var theItem in poppedItems.Take(numPopped)) 12: { 13: Console.WriteLine("Popped " + theItem); 14: } Finally, note that as stated before, GetEnumerator() and ToArray() gets a snapshot of the data at the time of the call.  That means if you are enumerating the stack you will get a snapshot of the stack at the time of the call.  This is illustrated below: 1: var stack = new ConcurrentStack<string>(); 2:  3: // adding to stack is much the same as before 4: stack.Push("First"); 5:  6: var results = stack.GetEnumerator(); 7:  8: // but you can also push multiple items in one atomic operation (no interleaves) 9: stack.PushRange(new [] { "Second", "Third", "Fourth" }); 10:  11: while(results.MoveNext()) 12: { 13: Console.WriteLine("Stack only has: " + results.Current); 14: } The only item that will be printed out in the above code is "First" because the snapshot was taken before the other items were added. This may sound like an issue, but it’s really for safety and is more correct.  You don’t want to enumerate a stack and have half a view of the stack before an update and half a view of the stack after an update, after all.  In addition, note that this is still thread-safe, whereas iterating through a non-concurrent collection while updating it in the old collections would cause an exception. ConcurrentQueue<T>: The thread-safe FIFO container The ConcurrentQueue<T> is the thread-safe counterpart of the System.Collections.Generic.Queue<T> class.  The concurrent queue uses an underlying list of small arrays and lock-free System.Threading.Interlocked operations on the head and tail arrays.  Once again, this allows us to do thread-safe operations without the need for heavy locks! The ConcurrentQueue<T> (like the ConcurrentStack<T>) has some departures from the non-concurrent counterpart.  Most notably: Dequeue() was removed in favor of TryDequeue(). Returns true if an item existed and was dequeued and false if empty. Count does not take a snapshot It subtracts the head and tail index to get the count.  This results overall in a O(1) complexity which is quite good.  It’s still recommended, however, that for empty checks you call IsEmpty instead of comparing Count to zero. ToArray() and GetEnumerator() both take snapshots. This means that iteration over a queue will give you a static view at the time of the call and will not reflect updates. The Enqueue() method on the ConcurrentQueue<T> works much the same as the generic Queue<T>: 1: var queue = new ConcurrentQueue<string>(); 2:  3: // adding to queue is much the same as before 4: queue.Enqueue("First"); 5: queue.Enqueue("Second"); 6: queue.Enqueue("Third"); For front item access, the TryPeek() method must be used to attempt to see the first item if the queue.  There is no Peek() method since, as you’ll remember, we can only peek on a non-empty queue, so we must have an atomic TryPeek() that checks for empty and then returns the first item if the queue is non-empty. 1: // to look at first item in queue without removing it, can use TryPeek. 2: // Note that there is no Peek(), this is because you need to check for empty first. TryPeek does. 3: string item; 4: if (queue.TryPeek(out item)) 5: { 6: Console.WriteLine("First item was " + item); 7: } 8: else 9: { 10: Console.WriteLine("Queue was empty."); 11: } Then, to remove items you use TryDequeue().  Once again this is for the same reason we have TryPeek() and not Peek(): 1: // to remove items, use TryDequeue. If queue is empty returns false. 2: if (queue.TryDequeue(out item)) 3: { 4: Console.WriteLine("Dequeued first item " + item); 5: } Just like the concurrent stack, the ConcurrentQueue<T> takes a snapshot when you call ToArray() or GetEnumerator() which means that subsequent updates to the queue will not be seen when you iterate over the results.  Thus once again the code below will only show the first item, since the other items were added after the snapshot. 1: var queue = new ConcurrentQueue<string>(); 2:  3: // adding to queue is much the same as before 4: queue.Enqueue("First"); 5:  6: var iterator = queue.GetEnumerator(); 7:  8: queue.Enqueue("Second"); 9: queue.Enqueue("Third"); 10:  11: // only shows First 12: while (iterator.MoveNext()) 13: { 14: Console.WriteLine("Dequeued item " + iterator.Current); 15: } Using collections concurrently You’ll notice in the examples above I stuck to using single-threaded examples so as to make them deterministic and the results obvious.  Of course, if we used these collections in a truly multi-threaded way the results would be less deterministic, but would still be thread-safe and with no locking on your part required! For example, say you have an order processor that takes an IEnumerable<Order> and handles each other in a multi-threaded fashion, then groups the responses together in a concurrent collection for aggregation.  This can be done easily with the TPL’s Parallel.ForEach(): 1: public static IEnumerable<OrderResult> ProcessOrders(IEnumerable<Order> orderList) 2: { 3: var proxy = new OrderProxy(); 4: var results = new ConcurrentQueue<OrderResult>(); 5:  6: // notice that we can process all these in parallel and put the results 7: // into our concurrent collection without needing any external locking! 8: Parallel.ForEach(orderList, 9: order => 10: { 11: var result = proxy.PlaceOrder(order); 12:  13: results.Enqueue(result); 14: }); 15:  16: return results; 17: } Summary Obviously, if you do not need multi-threaded safety, you don’t need to use these collections, but when you do need multi-threaded collections these are just the ticket! The plethora of features (I always think of the movie The Three Amigos when I say plethora) built into these containers and the amazing way they acheive thread-safe access in an efficient manner is wonderful to behold. Stay tuned next week where we’ll continue our discussion with the ConcurrentBag<T> and the ConcurrentDictionary<TKey,TValue>. For some excellent information on the performance of the concurrent collections and how they perform compared to a traditional brute-force locking strategy, see this wonderful whitepaper by the Microsoft Parallel Computing Platform team here.   Tweet Technorati Tags: C#,.NET,Concurrent Collections,Collections,Multi-Threading,Little Wonders,BlackRabbitCoder,James Michael Hare

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  • Where can I learn image processing? [on hold]

    - by Little Child
    I am learning image processing on my own and I have managed to teach myself a fair few things like: Making images grayscale using 3 different methods Applying a 'pixellate' filter Applying a 'pointillize' filter Make images out of lines Now, I want to take my knowledge further but I do not know how. Adding more information: I am interested in making software like Photoshop or Gimp (although it won't be half as powerful as these 2). So, I want to learn to apply various creative effects to an image. Can someone please suggest resources for this??

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  • How should I implement a command processing application?

    - by Nini Michaels
    I want to make a simple, proof-of-concept application (REPL) that takes a number and then processes commands on that number. Example: I start with 1. Then I write "add 2", it gives me 3. Then I write "multiply 7", it gives me 21. Then I want to know if it is prime, so I write "is prime" (on the current number - 21), it gives me false. "is odd" would give me true. And so on. Now, for a simple application with few commands, even a simple switch would do for processing the commands. But if I want extensibility, how would I need to implement the functionality? Do I use the command pattern? Do I build a simple parser/interpreter for the language? What if I want more complex commands, like "multiply 5 until >200" ? What would be an easy way to extend it (add new commands) without recompiling? Edit: to clarify a few things, my end goal would not be to make something similar to WolframAlpha, but rather a list (of numbers) processor. But I want to start slowly at first (on single numbers). I'm having in mind something similar to the way one would use Haskell to process lists, but a very simple version. I'm wondering if something like the command pattern (or equivalent) would suffice, or if I have to make a new mini-language and a parser for it to achieve my goals?

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  • Form, function and complexity in rule processing

    - by Charles Young
    Tim Bass posted on ‘Orwellian Event Processing’. I was involved in a heated exchange in the comments, and he has more recently published a post entitled ‘Disadvantages of Rule-Based Systems (Part 1)’. Whatever the rights and wrongs of our exchange, it clearly failed to generate any agreement or understanding of our different positions. I don't particularly want to promote further argument of that kind, but I do want to take the opportunity of offering a different perspective on rule-processing and an explanation of my comments. For me, the ‘red rag’ lay in Tim’s claim that “...rules alone are highly inefficient for most classes of (not simple) problems” and a later paragraph that appears to equate the simplicity of form (‘IF-THEN-ELSE’) with simplicity of function.   It is not the first time Tim has expressed these views and not the first time I have responded to his assertions.   Indeed, Tim has a long history of commenting on the subject of complex event processing (CEP) and, less often, rule processing in ‘robust’ terms, often asserting that very many other people’s opinions on this subject are mistaken.   In turn, I am of the opinion that, certainly in terms of rule processing, which is an area in which I have a specific interest and knowledge, he is often mistaken. There is no simple answer to the fundamental question ‘what is a rule?’ We use the word in a very fluid fashion in English. Likewise, the term ‘rule processing’, as used widely in IT, is equally difficult to define simplistically. The best way to envisage the term is as a ‘centre of gravity’ within a wider domain. That domain contains many other ‘centres of gravity’, including CEP, statistical analytics, neural networks, natural language processing and so much more. Whole communities tend to gravitate towards and build themselves around some of these centres. The term 'rule processing' is associated with many different technology types, various software products, different architectural patterns, the functional capability of many applications and services, etc. There is considerable variation amongst these different technologies, techniques and products. Very broadly, a common theme is their ability to manage certain types of processing and problem solving through declarative, or semi-declarative, statements of propositional logic bound to action-based consequences. It is generally important to be able to decouple these statements from other parts of an overall system or architecture so that they can be managed and deployed independently.  As a centre of gravity, ‘rule processing’ is no island. It exists in the context of a domain of discourse that is, itself, highly interconnected and continuous.   Rule processing does not, for example, exist in splendid isolation to natural language processing.   On the contrary, an on-going theme of rule processing is to find better ways to express rules in natural language and map these to executable forms.   Rule processing does not exist in splendid isolation to CEP.   On the contrary, an event processing agent can reasonably be considered as a rule engine (a theme in ‘Power of Events’ by David Luckham).   Rule processing does not live in splendid isolation to statistical approaches such as Bayesian analytics. On the contrary, rule processing and statistical analytics are highly synergistic.   Rule processing does not even live in splendid isolation to neural networks. For example, significant research has centred on finding ways to translate trained nets into explicit rule sets in order to support forms of validation and facilitate insight into the knowledge stored in those nets. What about simplicity of form?   Many rule processing technologies do indeed use a very simple form (‘If...Then’, ‘When...Do’, etc.)   However, it is a fundamental mistake to equate simplicity of form with simplicity of function.   It is absolutely mistaken to suggest that simplicity of form is a barrier to the efficient handling of complexity.   There are countless real-world examples which serve to disprove that notion.   Indeed, simplicity of form is often the key to handling complexity. Does rule processing offer a ‘one size fits all’. No, of course not.   No serious commentator suggests it does.   Does the design and management of large knowledge bases, expressed as rules, become difficult?   Yes, it can do, but that is true of any large knowledge base, regardless of the form in which knowledge is expressed.   The measure of complexity is not a function of rule set size or rule form.  It tends to be correlated more strongly with the size of the ‘problem space’ (‘search space’) which is something quite different.   Analysis of the problem space and the algorithms we use to search through that space are, of course, the very things we use to derive objective measures of the complexity of a given problem. This is basic computer science and common practice. Sailing a Dreadnaught through the sea of information technology and lobbing shells at some of the islands we encounter along the way does no one any good.   Building bridges and causeways between islands so that the inhabitants can collaborate in open discourse offers hope of real progress.

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  • TV audio processing with TV capture card

    - by Jonathan Barbero
    Hello, I'm looking for an open source library or framework to process audio signal from a TV capture card. The idea is to detect TV ad spots and register the time and the channel where them happends. I never worked in something like this, so, any information, link, idea is welcome. Thanks in advance!

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  • configure Squid3 proxy server on Ubuntu with caching and logging

    - by Panshul
    I have a ubuntu 11.10 machine. Installed Squid3. When i configure the squid as http_access allow all, everything works fine. my current configuration mostly default is as follows: 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing Configuration File: /etc/squid3/squid.conf (depth 0) 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: acl manager proto cache_object 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: acl localhost src 127.0.0.1/32 ::1 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: acl to_localhost dst 127.0.0.0/8 0.0.0.0/32 ::1 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: acl SSL_ports port 443 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: acl Safe_ports port 80 # http 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: acl Safe_ports port 21 # ftp 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: acl Safe_ports port 443 # https 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: acl Safe_ports port 70 # gopher 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: acl Safe_ports port 210 # wais 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: acl Safe_ports port 1025-65535 # unregistered ports 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: acl Safe_ports port 280 # http-mgmt 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: acl Safe_ports port 488 # gss-http 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: acl Safe_ports port 591 # filemaker 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: acl Safe_ports port 777 # multiling http 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: acl CONNECT method CONNECT 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: http_access allow manager localhost 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: http_access deny manager 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: http_access deny !Safe_ports 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: http_access deny CONNECT !SSL_ports 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: http_access allow localhost 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: http_access deny all 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: http_port 3128 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: coredump_dir /var/spool/squid3 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: refresh_pattern ^ftp: 1440 20% 10080 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: refresh_pattern ^gopher: 1440 0% 1440 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: refresh_pattern -i (/cgi-bin/|\?) 0 0% 0 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: refresh_pattern (Release|Packages(.gz)*)$ 0 20% 2880 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: refresh_pattern . 0 20% 4320 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: http_access allow all 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: cache_mem 512 MB 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: logformat squid3 %ts.%03tu %6tr %>a %Ss/%03>Hs %<st %rm %ru 2012/09/10 13:19:57| Processing: access_log /home/panshul/squidCache/log/access.log squid3 The problem starts when I enable the following line: access_log /home/panshul/squidCache/log/access.log I start to get proxy server is refusing connections error in the browser. on commenting out the above line in my config, things go back to normal. The second problem starts when i add the following line to my config: cache_dir ufs /home/panshul/squidCache/cache 100 16 256 The squid server fails to start. Any suggestions what am I missing in the config. Please help.!!

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  • Hosting StreamInsight applications using WCF

    - by gsusx
    One of the fundamental differentiators of Microsoft's StreamInsight compared to other Complex Event Processing (CEP) technologies is its flexible deployment model. In that sense, a StreamInsight solution can be hosted within an application or as a server component. This duality contrasts with most of the popular CEP frameworks in the current market which are almost exclusively server based. Whether it's undoubtedly that the ability of embedding a CEP engine in your applications opens new possibilities...(read more)

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  • Tellago announces SQL Server 2008 R2 BI quick adoption programs

    - by gsusx
    During the last year, we (Tellago) have been involved in various business intelligence initiatives that leverage some emerging BI techniques such as self-service BI or complex event processing (CEP). Specifically, in the last few months, we have partnered with Microsoft to deliver a series of events across the country where we present the different technologies of the SQL Server 2008 R2 BI stack such as PowerPivot, StreamInsight, Ad-Hoc Reporting and Master Data Services. As part of those events...(read more)

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  • SQL University: Parallelism Week - Part 3, Settings and Options

    - by Adam Machanic
    Congratulations! You've made it back for the the third and final installment of Parallelism Week here at SQL University . So far we've covered the fundamentals of multitasking vs. parallel processing and delved into how parallel query plans actually work . Today we'll take a look at the settings and options that influence intra-query parallelism and discuss how best to set things up in various situations. Instance-Level Configuration Your database server probably has more than one logical processor....(read more)

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  • Parallel Classloading Revisited: Fully Concurrent Loading

    - by davidholmes
    Java 7 introduced support for parallel classloading. A description of that project and its goals can be found here: http://openjdk.java.net/groups/core-libs/ClassLoaderProposal.html The solution for parallel classloading was to add to each class loader a ConcurrentHashMap, referenced through a new field, parallelLockMap. This contains a mapping from class names to Objects to use as a classloading lock for that class name. This was then used in the following way: protected Class loadClass(String name, boolean resolve) throws ClassNotFoundException { synchronized (getClassLoadingLock(name)) { // First, check if the class has already been loaded Class c = findLoadedClass(name); if (c == null) { long t0 = System.nanoTime(); try { if (parent != null) { c = parent.loadClass(name, false); } else { c = findBootstrapClassOrNull(name); } } catch (ClassNotFoundException e) { // ClassNotFoundException thrown if class not found // from the non-null parent class loader } if (c == null) { // If still not found, then invoke findClass in order // to find the class. long t1 = System.nanoTime(); c = findClass(name); // this is the defining class loader; record the stats sun.misc.PerfCounter.getParentDelegationTime().addTime(t1 - t0); sun.misc.PerfCounter.getFindClassTime().addElapsedTimeFrom(t1); sun.misc.PerfCounter.getFindClasses().increment(); } } if (resolve) { resolveClass(c); } return c; } } Where getClassLoadingLock simply does: protected Object getClassLoadingLock(String className) { Object lock = this; if (parallelLockMap != null) { Object newLock = new Object(); lock = parallelLockMap.putIfAbsent(className, newLock); if (lock == null) { lock = newLock; } } return lock; } This approach is very inefficient in terms of the space used per map and the number of maps. First, there is a map per-classloader. As per the code above under normal delegation the current classloader creates and acquires a lock for the given class, checks if it is already loaded, then asks its parent to load it; the parent in turn creates another lock in its own map, checks if the class is already loaded and then delegates to its parent and so on till the boot loader is invoked for which there is no map and no lock. So even in the simplest of applications, you will have two maps (in the system and extensions loaders) for every class that has to be loaded transitively from the application's main class. If you knew before hand which loader would actually load the class the locking would only need to be performed in that loader. As it stands the locking is completely unnecessary for all classes loaded by the boot loader. Secondly, once loading has completed and findClass will return the class, the lock and the map entry is completely unnecessary. But as it stands, the lock objects and their associated entries are never removed from the map. It is worth understanding exactly what the locking is intended to achieve, as this will help us understand potential remedies to the above inefficiencies. Given this is the support for parallel classloading, the class loader itself is unlikely to need to guard against concurrent load attempts - and if that were not the case it is likely that the classloader would need a different means to protect itself rather than a lock per class. Ultimately when a class file is located and the class has to be loaded, defineClass is called which calls into the VM - the VM does not require any locking at the Java level and uses its own mutexes for guarding its internal data structures (such as the system dictionary). The classloader locking is primarily needed to address the following situation: if two threads attempt to load the same class, one will initiate the request through the appropriate loader and eventually cause defineClass to be invoked. Meanwhile the second attempt will block trying to acquire the lock. Once the class is loaded the first thread will release the lock, allowing the second to acquire it. The second thread then sees that the class has now been loaded and will return that class. Neither thread can tell which did the loading and they both continue successfully. Consider if no lock was acquired in the classloader. Both threads will eventually locate the file for the class, read in the bytecodes and call defineClass to actually load the class. In this case the first to call defineClass will succeed, while the second will encounter an exception due to an attempted redefinition of an existing class. It is solely for this error condition that the lock has to be used. (Note that parallel capable classloaders should not need to be doing old deadlock-avoidance tricks like doing a wait() on the lock object\!). There are a number of obvious things we can try to solve this problem and they basically take three forms: Remove the need for locking. This might be achieved by having a new version of defineClass which acts like defineClassIfNotPresent - simply returning an existing Class rather than triggering an exception. Increase the coarseness of locking to reduce the number of lock objects and/or maps. For example, using a single shared lockMap instead of a per-loader lockMap. Reduce the lifetime of lock objects so that entries are removed from the map when no longer needed (eg remove after loading, use weak references to the lock objects and cleanup the map periodically). There are pros and cons to each of these approaches. Unfortunately a significant "con" is that the API introduced in Java 7 to support parallel classloading has essentially mandated that these locks do in fact exist, and they are accessible to the application code (indirectly through the classloader if it exposes them - which a custom loader might do - and regardless they are accessible to custom classloaders). So while we can reason that we could do parallel classloading with no locking, we can not implement this without breaking the specification for parallel classloading that was put in place for Java 7. Similarly we might reason that we can remove a mapping (and the lock object) because the class is already loaded, but this would again violate the specification because it can be reasoned that the following assertion should hold true: Object lock1 = loader.getClassLoadingLock(name); loader.loadClass(name); Object lock2 = loader.getClassLoadingLock(name); assert lock1 == lock2; Without modifying the specification, or at least doing some creative wordsmithing on it, options 1 and 3 are precluded. Even then there are caveats, for example if findLoadedClass is not atomic with respect to defineClass, then you can have concurrent calls to findLoadedClass from different threads and that could be expensive (this is also an argument against moving findLoadedClass outside the locked region - it may speed up the common case where the class is already loaded, but the cost of re-executing after acquiring the lock could be prohibitive. Even option 2 might need some wordsmithing on the specification because the specification for getClassLoadingLock states "returns a dedicated object associated with the specified class name". The question is, what does "dedicated" mean here? Does it mean unique in the sense that the returned object is only associated with the given class in the current loader? Or can the object actually guard loading of multiple classes, possibly across different class loaders? So it seems that changing the specification will be inevitable if we wish to do something here. In which case lets go for something that more cleanly defines what we want to be doing: fully concurrent class-loading. Note: defineClassIfNotPresent is already implemented in the VM as find_or_define_class. It is only used if the AllowParallelDefineClass flag is set. This gives us an easy hook into existing VM mechanics. Proposal: Fully Concurrent ClassLoaders The proposal is that we expand on the notion of a parallel capable class loader and define a "fully concurrent parallel capable class loader" or fully concurrent loader, for short. A fully concurrent loader uses no synchronization in loadClass and the VM uses the "parallel define class" mechanism. For a fully concurrent loader getClassLoadingLock() can return null (or perhaps not - it doesn't matter as we won't use the result anyway). At present we have not made any changes to this method. All the parallel capable JDK classloaders become fully concurrent loaders. This doesn't require any code re-design as none of the mechanisms implemented rely on the per-name locking provided by the parallelLockMap. This seems to give us a path to remove all locking at the Java level during classloading, while retaining full compatibility with Java 7 parallel capable loaders. Fully concurrent loaders will still encounter the performance penalty associated with concurrent attempts to find and prepare a class's bytecode for definition by the VM. What this penalty is depends on the number of concurrent load attempts possible (a function of the number of threads and the application logic, and dependent on the number of processors), and the costs associated with finding and preparing the bytecodes. This obviously has to be measured across a range of applications. Preliminary webrevs: http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~dholmes/concurrent-loaders/webrev.hotspot/ http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~dholmes/concurrent-loaders/webrev.jdk/ Please direct all comments to the mailing list [email protected].

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  • Tellago is still hiring….

    - by gsusx
    Tellago 's SOA practice is rapidly growing and we are still hiring. In that sense, we are looking to for Connected Systems (WCF, BizTalk, WF) experts who are passionate about building game changing solutions with the latest Microsoft technologies. You will be working alongside technology gurus like DonXml , Pablo Cibraro or Dwight Goins . If you are interested and not afraid of working with a bunch of crazy people ;)please drop me a line at jesus dot rodriguez at tellago dot com. Hope to hear from...(read more)

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  • Tellago && Tellago Studios 2010

    - by gsusx
    With 2011 around the corner we, at Tellago and Tellago Studios , we have been spending a lot of times evaluating our successes and failures (yes those too ;)) of 2010 and delineating some of our goals and strategies for 2011. When I look at 2010 here are some of the things that quickly jump off the page: Growing Tellago by 300% Launching a brand new company: Tellago Studios Expanding our customer base Establishing our business intelligence practice http://tellago.com/what-we-say/events/business-intelligence...(read more)

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  • SQL Peer-to-Peer Dynamic Structured Data Processing Collaboration

    Unstructured and XML semi-structured data is now used more than structured data. But fixed structured data still keeps businesses running day in and day out, which requires consistent predictable highly principled processing for correct results. For this reason, it would be very useful to have a general purpose SQL peer-to-peer collaboration capability that can utilize highly principled hierarchical data processing and its flexible and advanced structured processing to support dynamically structured data and its dynamic structured processing. This flexible dynamic structured processing can change the structure of the data as necessary for the required processing while preserving the relational and hierarchical data principles. This processing will perform freely across remote unrelated peer locations anytime and transparently process unpredictable and unknown structured data and data type changes automatically for immediate processing using automatic metadata maintenance.

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  • EBS Concurrent Processing Information Center

    - by LuciaC
    Do you have problems or questions about concurrent request processing?  Do you want to know: How and when to run CP Diagnostics? What are the latest Hot Topics being looked at for Concurrent Processing? All about the Concurrent Process Analyzer self-service Health-Check script? Go to the EBS Concurrent Processing Information Center (Doc ID 1304305.1) and find out the above and lots more!

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  • Windows 8 / IIS 8 Concurrent Requests Limit

    - by OWScott
    IIS 8 on Windows Server 2012 doesn’t have any fixed concurrent request limit, apart from whatever limit would be reached when resources are maxed. However, the client version of IIS 8, which is on Windows 8, does have a concurrent connection request limitation to limit high traffic production uses on a client edition of Windows. Starting with IIS 7 (Windows Vista), the behavior changed from previous versions.  In previous client versions of IIS, excess requests would throw a 403.9 error message (Access Forbidden: Too many users are connected.).  Instead, Windows Vista, 7 and 8 queue excessive requests so that they will be handled gracefully, although there is a maximum number of requests that will be processed simultaneously. Thomas Deml provided a concurrent request chart for Windows Vista many years ago, but I have been unable to find an equivalent chart for Windows 8 so I asked Wade Hilmo from the IIS team what the limits are.  Since this is controlled not by the IIS team itself but rather from the Windows licensing team, he asked around and found the authoritative answer, which I’ll provide below. Windows 8 – IIS 8 Concurrent Requests Limit Windows 8 3 Windows 8 Professional 10 Windows RT N/A since IIS does not run on Windows RT Windows 7 – IIS 7.5 Concurrent Requests Limit Windows 7 Home Starter 1 Windows 7 Basic 1 Windows 7 Premium 3 Windows 7 Ultimate, Professional, Enterprise 10 Windows Vista – IIS 7 Concurrent Requests Limit Windows Vista Home Basic (IIS process activation and HTTP processing only) 3 Windows Vista Home Premium 3 Windows Vista Ultimate, Professional 10 Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012 allow an unlimited amount of simultaneously requests.

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  • How to reduce java concurrent mode failure and excessive gc

    - by jimx
    In Java, the concurrent mode failure means that the concurrent collector failed to free up enough memory space form tenured and permanent gen and has to give up and let the full stop-the-world gc kicks in. The end result could be very expensive. I understand this concept but never had a good comprehensive understanding of A) what could cause a concurrent mode failure and B) what's the solution?. This sort of unclearness leads me to write/debug code without much of hints in mind and often has to shop around those performance flags from Foo to Bar without particular reasons, just have to try. I'd like to learn from developers here how your experience is. If you had previous encountered such performance issue, what was the cause and how you addressed it? If you have coding recommendations, please don't be too general. Thanks!

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  • How is 'processing credit card data' defined (PCI)?

    - by Chris
    If i have a web application and i receive credit card data transmitted via a POST request by a web browser over HTTPS and instantly open a socket (SSL) to a remote PCI compilant card processor to forward the data and wait for a response, am i allowed to do that? or is this receiving the data with my application and forwarding it already subject of "processing credit card data"? if i create an iframe that is displayed in a client browser to enter cc data and this iframe posts the data via HTTPS to remote card processor (directly!) is this already a case of processing credit card data? even if my application code 'doesnt touch' the entered data with any event handlers? i'm interested in the definition "credit card data processing". when does it start to be a cc data processing application? can somebody maybe point me to that section in PCI-DSS standard that clearly defines when you start to 'be a processing application'? Thanks,

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  • Reminder: For a Complete View Of Your Concurrent Processing Take A Look At The CP Analyzer!

    - by LuciaC
    For a complete view of your Concurrent Processing take a look at the CP Analyzer!  Doc ID 1411723.1 has the script to download and a 9 min video. The Concurrent Processing Analyzer is a Self-Service Health-Check script which reviews the overall Concurrent Processing Footprint, analyzes the current configurations and settings for the environment providing feedback and recommendations on Best Practices.This is a non-invasive script which provides recommended actions to be performed on the instance it was run on.  For production instances, always apply any changes to a recent clone to ensure an expected outcome. E-Business Applications Concurrent Processing Analyzer Overview E-Business Applications Concurrent Request Analysis E-Business Applications Concurrent Manager Analysis Identifies Concurrent System Setup and configurations Identifies and recommends Concurrent Best Practices Easy to add Tool for regular Concurrent Maintenance Execute Analysis anytime to compare trending from past outputs Feedback welcome!

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