I am writing continuously into a db file which has PRAGMA journal_mode=WAL, PRAGMA journal_size_limit=0. My C++ program has two threads, one reader(queries at 15 sec intervals) and one writer(inserts at 5 sec intervals).
Every 3 min I am pausing insertion to run a sqlite3_wal_checkpoint_v2() from the writer thread with the mode parameter as SQLITE_CHECKPOINT_RESTART. To ensure that no active read operations are going on at this point, I set a flag that checkpointing is about to take place and wait for reader to complete (the connection is still open) before running checkpoint. After checkpoint completion I again indicate to readers it is okay to resume querying.
sqlite3_wal_checkpoint_v2() returns SQLITE_OK, and pnLog and Ckpt as equal(around 4000), indicating complete wal file has been synced with main db file. So next write should start from beginning according to documentation. However, this does not seem to be happening as the subsequent writes cause the WAL file to grow indefinitely, eventually up to some GBs.
I did some searching and found that that readers can cause checkpoint failure due to open transactions. However, the only reader I'm using is ending its transaction before the checkpoint starts. What else could be preventing the WAL file from not growing?
This is far too late as an answer, but may be useful to other people.
According to the SQLite documentation, your expectations should be correct, but if you read this SO post, problems arise also in case of non-finalized statements. Therefore, if you just sqlite3_reset() your statement, there are chances anyway that the db may look busy or locked for a checkpoint. Note that this may happen also with higher levels of SQLITE_CHECKPOINT_values.
Also, the SQLITE_CHECKPOINT_TRUNCATE value, if checkout is successfully operated, will truncate the -wal file to zero length. That may help you check that all pages have been inserted in the db.
Another discussion in which -wal files grow larger and larger due to unfinalized statements is this.
Related
I'll definitely need to update this based on feedback so I apologize in advance.
The problem I'm trying to solve is roughly this.
The graph shows Disk utilization in the Windows task manager. My sqlite application is a webserver that takes in json requests with timestamps, looks up the existing entry in a 2 column key/value table, merges the request into the existing item (they don't grow over time), and then writes it back to the database.
The db is created as follows. I've experimented with and without WAL without difference.
createStatement().use { it.executeUpdate("CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS items ( key TEXT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY, value BLOB );") }
The write/set is done as follows
try {
val insertStatement = "INSERT OR REPLACE INTO items (key, value) VALUES (?, ?)"
prepareStatement(insertStatement).use {
it.setBytes(1, keySerializer.serialize(key))
it.setBytes(2, valueSerializer.serialize(value))
it.executeUpdate()
}
commit()
} catch (t: Throwable) {
rollback()
throw t
}
I use a single database connection the entire time which seems to be ok for my use case and greatly improves performance relative to getting a new one for each operation.
val databaseUrl = "jdbc:sqlite:${System.getProperty("java.io.tmpdir")}/$name-map-v2.sqlite"
if (connection?.isClosed == true || connection == null) {
connection = DriverManager.getConnection(databaseUrl)
}
I'm effectively serializing access to the db. I'm pretty sure the default threading mode for the sqlite driver is to serialize and I'm also doing some serializing in kotlin coroutines (via actors).
I'm load testing the application locally and I notice that disk utilization spikes around the one minute mark but I can't determine why. I know that throughput plummets when that happens though. I expect the server to chug along at a more or less constant rate. The db in these tests is pretty small too, hardly reaches 1mb.
Hoping people can recommend some next steps or set me straight as far as performance expectations. I'm assuming there is some sqlite specific thing that happens when throughput is very high for too long, but I would have thought it would be related to WAL or something (which I'm not using).
I have a theory but it's a bit farfetched.
The fact that you hit a performance wall after some time makes me think that either a buffer somewhere is filling up, or some other kind of data accumulation threshold is being reached.
Where exactly the culprit is, I'm not sure.
So, I'd run the following tests.
// At the beginning
connection.setAutoCommit(true);
If the problem is in the driver side of the rollback transaction buffer, then this will slightly (hopefully) slow down operations, "spreading" the impact away from the one-minute mark. Instead of getting fast operations for 59 seconds and then some seconds of full stop, you get not so fast operations the whole time.
In case the problem is further down the line, try
PRAGMA JOURNAL_MODE=MEMORY
PRAGMA SYNCHRONOUS=OFF disables the rollback journal synchronization
(The data will be more at risk in case of a catastrophic powerdown).
Finally, another possibility is that the page translation buffer gets filled after a sufficient number of different keys has been entered. You can test this directly by doing these two tests:
1) pre-fill the database with all the keys in ascending order and a large request, then start updating the same many keys.
2) run the test with only very few keys.
If the slowdown does not occur in the above cases, then it's either TLB buffer management that's not up to the challenge, or database fragmentation is a problem.
It might be the case that issuing
PRAGMA PAGE_SIZE=32768
upon database creation might solve or mitigate the problem. Conversely, PRAGMA PAGE_SIZE=1024 could "spread" the problem avoiding performance bottlenecks.
Another thing to try is closing the database connection and reopening it when it gets older than, say, 30 seconds. If this works, we'll still need to understand why it works (in this case I expect the JDBC driver to be at fault).
First of all, I want to say that I do not use exactly your driver for sqlite, and I use different devices in my work. (but how different are they really?)
From what I see, correct me if im wrong, you use one transaction, for one insert statement. You get request, you use the disc, you use the memory, open, close etc... every time. This can't work fast.
The first thing I do when I have to do inserts in sqlite is to group them, and use a single transaction to do it. That way, you are using your resources in batches.
One transaction, many insert statements, single commit. If there is a problem with a batch, handle the valid separately, log the faulty, move the next batch of requests.
I have build a file archiver in Windows which uses sqlite3 to store files and takes advantage of multicore techniques to complete the archive faster.
I am trying a backup of 100.000 files now and insertion is slow.
When I comment the line which inserts, the app uses 100% CPU which is normal. With the insertion line on, it rarely gets above 25%.
As the archiving progresses, insertion gets more and more slow, processing a few files/second with a cpu usage of 11%. No disk usage is shown, so the bottleneck can't be the disk.
I 've:
PRAGMA temp_store = MEMORY
PRAGMA journal_mode = MEMORY
PRAGMA synchronous = OFF
and the entire insertion is within a transaction.
After further analysis it seems that SQLite's problem is to bind the blob64 (if I pass 0, it seems to be fine).
Why SQLite would have a problem inserting a raw blob of data into the archive?
Any ideas?
Thanks.
Your answer may lie here:
https://www.sqlite.org/threadsafe.html
Because it says there that:
The default mode is serialized.
which might explain your observations.
According to that document, you can either configure this at compile time (which I would most definitely not myself do) or via:
sqlite3_config (SQLITE_CONFIG_MULTITHREAD);
Just how stratospherically it then performs I wouldn't know.
I would like to know how the cache_spill = false pragma exactly works. I understand that once the cache is full it should be written to disk even before a commit actually happens. I understand this could be problematic because it requires keeping an exclusive lock since that moment until the actual commit takes place. I understand one could increment the cache size to ameliorate this potential problem. And I understand that one would like to magically avoid any spill under such circumstances although I don't believe the cache_spill pragma works in magical ways. So:
Does it make further API calls that require cache growing to fail, so signaling the user a commit is in order?
Does it stop writing to the memory cache and use the disk instead, losing performance but avoiding the spill?
The cache spilling affected by this pragma happens only when the database runs into a soft memory limit.
If you inhibit these spills, the changed data is just kept in memory.
This might result in an out-of-memory error if you need some memory for more changed data (or for anything else).
In practice, most operating systems will just swap out some data to disk (which is more inefficient because the data must be read back from swap before it is actually committed).
I need to write a client/server app stored on a network file system. I am quite aware that this is a no-no, but was wondering if I could sacrifice performance (Hermes: "And this time I mean really slash.") to prevent data corruption.
I'm thinking something along the lines of:
Create a separate file in the system everytime a write is called (I'm willing do it for every connection if necessary)
Store the file name as the current millisecond timestamp
Check to see if the file with that time or earlier exists
If the same one exists wait a random time between 0 to 10 ms, and try again.
While file is the earliest timestamp, do work, delete file lock, otherwise wait 10ms and try again.
If a file persists for more than a minute, log as an error, stop until it is determined that the data is not corrupted by a person.
The problem I see is trying to maintain the previous state if something locks up. Or choosing to ignore it, if the state change was actually successful.
Is there a better way of doing this, that doesn't involve not doing it this way? Or has anyone written one of these with a lot less problems than the Sqlite FAQ warns about? Will these mitigations even factor in to preventing data corruption?
A couple of notes:
This must exist on an NSF, the why is not important because it is not my decision to make (it doesn't look like I was clear enough on that point).
The number of readers/writers on the system will be between 5 and 10 all reading and writing at the same time, but rarely on the same record.
There will only be clients and a shared memory space, there is no way to put a server on there, or use a server based RDMS, if there was, obviously I would do it in a New York minute.
The amount of data will initially start off at about 70 MB (plain text, uncompressed), it will grown continuous from there at a reasonable, but not tremendous rate.
I will accept an answer of "No, you can't gain reasonably guaranteed concurrency on an NFS by sacrificing performance" if it contains a detailed and reasonable explanation of why.
Yes, there is a better way. Don't use NFS to do this.
If you are willing to create a new file every time something changes, I expect that you have a small amount of data and/or very infrequent changes. If the data is small, why use SQLite at all? Why not just have files with node names and timestamps?
I think it would help if you described the real problem you are trying to solve a bit more. For example if you have many readers and one writer, there are other approaches.
What do you mean by "concurrency"? Do you actually mean "multiple readers/multiple writers", or can you get by with "multiple readers/one writer with limited latency"?
Good day, I receive data from a communication channel and display it. Parallel, I serialize it into a SQLite database (using normal SQL INSERT statements). After my application exit I do a .commit on the sqlite object.
What happens if my application is terminated brutally in the middle? Will the latest (reasonably - not say 100 microsec ago, but at least a sec ago) data be safely in the database even without a .commit is made? Or should I have periodic commit? What are best patterns for doing these things?
I tried autocommit on (sqlite's option) and this slows code a lot by a factor ~55 (autocommit vs. just one commit at end). Doing commit every 100 inserts brings performance within 20% of the optimal mode. So autocommit is very slow for me.
My application pumps lots data into DB - what can I do to make it work well?
You should be performing this within a transaction, and consequently performing a commit at appropriate points in the process. A transaction will guarantee that this operation is atomic - that is, it either works or doesn't work.
Atomicity states that database
modifications must follow an “all or
nothing” rule. Each transaction is
said to be “atomic” if when one part
of the transaction fails, the entire
transaction fails. It is critical that
the database management system
maintain the atomic nature of
transactions in spite of any DBMS,
operating system or hardware failure.
If you've not committed, then the inserts won't be visible (and be rolled back) when your process is terminated.
When do you perform these commits ? When your inserts represent something consistent and complete. e.g.. if you have to insert 2 pieces of information for each message, then commit after you've inserted both pieces of info. Don't commit after each one, since your info won't be consistent or complete.
The data is not permanent in the database without a commit. Use an occasional commit to balance the speed of performing many inserts in a transaction (the more frequent the commit, the slower) with the safety of having more frequent commits.
You should do a COMMIT every time you complete a logical change.
One reason for transaction is to prevent uncommitted data from a transaction to be visible from outside. That is important because sometimes a single logical change can translate into multiple INSERT or UPDATE statements. If one of the latter queries of the transaction fails, the transaction can be cancelled with ROLLBACK and no change at all is recorded.
Generally speaking, no change performed in a transaction is recorded in the database until COMMIT succeeds.
does not this slow down considerably my code? – zaharpopov
Frequent commits, might slow down your code, and as an optimization you could try grouping several logical changes in a single transaction. But this is a departure from the correct use of transactions and you should only do this after measuring that this significantly improves performance.