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The situation is like this. We have a form with a large number of fields (over 30 spread over several tabs) and what I want to do is find which values have changed before saving with minimum impact on performance. What happens right now is, for editing, single records are queried from several databases. The values are passed over to the client side as value objects. At the moment they are not bound to any fields in the form.
My initial idea was to have a boolean flag for each field to set true or false each time any of the fields were changed. At the time of saving the program would run through the list of flags to see which fields have changed. This seems more than a bit clunky to me so I was thinking maybe it could be done on the server side. But then I don't want to go through each field one by one checking to see which ones don't match the db records.
Any ideas on what to do here?
This is a very common problem for a lot of Flex applications. Because it happens so often there are a number of commercial implementations for Data Management. Queries are stored into entities and those entities are bound to a form on the client side. Whenever a field is updated, it will automatically perform the steps to persist the changes to the db and do rollbacks when requested.
Adobe LCDS Data Management - If you are dealing with a Java environment
WebOrb - If you are dealing with a .net, php, java, rails environment
Of course you can re-invent the wheel and roll out your own, set up PropertyChangeEvent listeners on each field. When the changes are dispatched, listen for them and write handlers for each one.
This sounds exactly like what we're doing with one of the projects I'm working on for a client.
What we do is dupe the value objects once they back to the UI. Then when calling the update service, I send both the original object and the new object. In the service, I do a field by field compare on the server to determine what values should sent to the database.
If you need to update every field/property conditionally based on whether or not it changed; then I don't see a way to avoid the check with every field/property. Even if you implement your Boolean idea and swap the flag in the UI whenever anything changes; you're still going to have to check those Boolean values when creating your query to determine what should be updated or not.
In my situation, three different databases are queried to create the value object that gets sent back to the UI. Field updates are saved in one of those database and given first order of preference when doing the select. So, wee have an explicit field by field comparison happening inside a stored procedure.
If you don't need field by field comparisons, but rather a "record by record" comparisons; then the Boolean approach to let you know the record/Value Object had changed is going to save you some time and coding.
I have asked a few questions today as I try to think through to the solution of a problem.
We have a complex data structure where all of the various entities are tightly interconnected, with almost all entities heavily reliant/dependant upon entities of other types.
The project is a website (MVC3, .NET 4), and all of the logic is implemented using LINQ-to-SQL (2008) in the business layer.
What we need to do is have a user "lock" the system while they make their changes (there are other reasons for this which I won't go into here that are not database related). While this user is making their changes we want to be able to show them the original state of entities which they are updating, as well as a "preview" of the changes they have made. When finished, they need to be able to rollback/commit.
We have considered these options:
Holding open a transaction for the length of time a user takes to make multiple changes stinks, so that's out.
Holding a copy of all the data in memory (or cached to disk) is an option but there is heck of a lot of it, so seems unreasonable.
Maintaining a set of secondary tables, or attempting to use session state to store changes, but this is complex and difficult to maintain.
Using two databases, flipping between them by connection string, and using T-SQL to manage replication, putting them back in sync after commit/rollback. I.e. switching on/off, forcing snapshot, reversing direction etc.
We're a bit stumped for a solution that is relatively easy to maintain. Any suggestions?
Our solution to a similar problem is to use a locking table that holds locks per entity type in our system. When the client application wants to edit an entity, we do a "GetWithLock" which gets the client the most up-to-date version of the entity's data as well as obtaining a lock (a GUID that is stored in the lock table along with the entity type and the entity ID). This prevents other users from editing the same entity. When you commit your changes with an update, you release the lock by deleting the lock record from the lock table. Since stored procedures are the api we use for interacting with the database, this allows a very straight forward way to lock/unlock access to specific entities.
On the client side, we implement IEditableObject on the UI model classes. Our model classes hold a reference to the instance of the service entity that was retrieved on the service call. This allows the UI to do a Begin/End/Cancel Edit and do the commit or rollback as necessary. By holding the instance of the original service entity, we are able to see the original and current data, which would allow the user to get that "preview" you're looking for.
While our solution does not implement LINQ, I don't believe there's anything unique in our approach that would prevent you from using LINQ as well.
HTH
Consider this:
Long transactions makes system less scalable. If you do UPDATE command, update locks last until commit/rollback, preventing other transaction to proceed.
Second tables/database can be modified by concurent transactions, so you cannot rely on data in tables. Only way is to lock it => see no1.
Serializable transaction in some data engines uses versions of data in your tables. So after first cmd is executed, transaction can see exact data available in cmd execution time. This might help you to show changes made by user, but you have no guarantee to save them back into storage.
DataSets contains old/new version of data. But that is unfortunatelly out of your technology aim.
Use a set of secondary tables.
The problem is that your connection should see two versions of data while the other connections should see only one (or two, one of them being their own).
While it is possible theoretically and is implemented in Oracle using flashbacks, SQL Server does not support it natively, since it has no means to query previous versions of the records.
You can issue a query like this:
SELECT *
FROM mytable
AS OF TIMESTAMP
TO_TIMESTAMP('2010-01-17')
in Oracle but not in SQL Server.
This means that you need to implement this functionality yourself (placing the new versions of rows into your own tables).
Sounds like an ugly problem, and raises a whole lot of questions you won't be able to go into on SO. I got the following idea while reading your problem, and while it "smells" as bad as the others you list, it may help you work up an eventual solution.
First, have some kind of locking system, as described by #user580122, to flag/record the fact that one of these transactions is going on. (Be sure to include some kind of periodic automated check, to test for lost or abandoned transactions!)
Next, for every change you make to the database, log it somehow, either in the application or in a dedicated table somewhere. The idea is, given a copy of the database at state X, you could re-run the steps submitted by the user at any time.
Next up is figuring out how to use database snapshots. Read up on these in BOL; the general idea is you create a point-in-time snapshot of the database, do whatever you want with it, and eventually throw it away. (Only available in SQL 2005 and up, Enterprise edition only.)
So:
A user comes along and initiates one of these meta-transactions.
A flag is marked in the database showing what is going on. A new transaction cannot be started if one is already in process. (Again, check for lost transactions now and then!)
Every change made to the database is tracked and recorded in such a fashion that it could be repeated.
If the user decides to cancel the transaction, you just drop the snapshot, and nothing is changed.
If the user decides to keep the transaction, you drop the snapshot, and then immediately re-apply the logged changes to the "real" database. This should work, since your requirements imply that, while someone is working on one of these, no one else can touch the related parts of the database.
Yep, this sure smells, and it may not apply to well to your problem. Hopefully the ideas here help you work something out.
I have the scenario like this,
My environment is .Net2.0, VS 2008, Web Application
I need to lock a record when two members are trying to access at the same time.
We can do it in two ways,
By Front end (putting the sessionID and record unique number in the dictionary and keeping it as a static or application variable), we will release when the response is go out of that page, client is not connected, after the post button is clicked and session is out.
By backend (record locking in the DB itself - need to study - my team member is looking ).
Is there any others to ways to do and do I need to look at other ways in each and every steps?
Am I missing any conditions?
You do not lock records for clients, because locking a record for anything more than a few milliseconds is just about the most damaging thing one can do in a database. You should use instead Optimistic Concurrency: you detect if the record was changed since the last read and re-attempt the transaction (eg you re-display the screen to the user). How that is actually implemented, will depend on what DB technology you use (ADO.Net, DataSets, Linq, EF etc).
If the business domain requires lock-like behavior, those are always implemented as reservation logic in the database: when a record is displayed, it is 'reserved' so that no other users can attempt to make the same transaction. The reservation completes or times out or is canceled. But a 'reservation' is never done using locks, is always an explicit update of state from 'available' to 'reserved', or something similar.
This pattern is also describe din P of EAA: Optimistic Offline Lock.
If your talking about only reading data from a record from SQL server database, you don't need to do anything!!! SQL server will do everything about managing multi access to records. but if you want to manipulate data, you have to use Transactions.
I agree with Ramus. But still if u need it. Create a column with name like IsInUse as bit type and set it true if one is accessing. Since other guys will also need same data at same time then u need to save your app from crash .. so at every place from where the data is retrieved you have to put a check if IsInUse is False or not.
For the sake of argument assume that I have a webform that allows a user to edit order details. User can perform the following functions:
Change shipping/payment details (all simple text/dropdowns)
Add/Remove/Edit products in the order - this is done with a grid
Add/Remove attachments
Products and attachments are stored in separate DB tables with foreign key to the order.
Entity Framework (4.0) is used as ORM.
I want to allow the users to make whatever changes they want to the order and only when they hit 'Save' do I want to commit the changes to the database. This is not a problem with textboxes/checkboxes etc. as I can just rely on ViewState to get the required information. However the grid is presenting a much larger problem for me as I can't figure out a nice and easy way to persist the changes the user made without committing the changes to the database. Storing the Order object tree in Session/ViewState is not really an option I'd like to go with as the objects could get very large.
So the question is - how can I go about preserving the changes the user made until ready to 'Save'.
Quick note - I have searched SO to try to find a solution, however all I found were suggestions to use Session and/or ViewState - both of which I would rather not use due to potential size of my object trees
If you have control over the schema of the database and the other applications that utilize order data, you could add a flag or status column to the orders table that differentiates between temporary and finalized orders. Then, you can simply store your intermediate changes to the database. There are other benefits as well; for example, a user that had a browser crash could return to the application and be able to resume the order process.
I think sticking to the database for storing data is the only reliable way to persist data, even temporary data. Using session state, control state, cookies, temporary files, etc., can introduce a lot of things that can go wrong, especially if your application resides in a web farm.
If using the Session is not your preferred solution, which is probably wise, the best possible solution would be to create your own temporary database tables (or as others have mentioned, add a temporary flag to your existing database tables) and persist the data there, storing a single identifier in the Session (or in a cookie) for later retrieval.
First, you may want to segregate your specific state management implementation into it's own class so that you don't have to replicate it throughout your systems.
Second, you may want to consider a hybrid approach - use session state (or cache) for a short time to avoid unnecessary trips to a DB or other external store. After some amount of inactivity, write the cached state out to disk or DB. The simplest way to do this, is to serialize your objects to text (using either serialization or a library like proto-buffers). This helps allow you to avoid creating redundant or duplicate data structure to capture the in-progress data relationally. If you don't need to query the content of this data - it's a reasonable approach.
As an aside, in the database world, the problem you describe is called a long running transaction. You essentially want to avoid making changes to the data until you reach a user-defined commit point. There are techniques you can use in the database layer, like hypothetical views and instead-of triggers to encapsulate the behavior that you aren't actually committing the change. The data is in the DB (in the real tables), but is only visible to the user operating on it. This is probably a more complicated implementation than you may be willing to undertake, and requires intrusive changes to your persistence layer and data model - but allows the application to be ignorant of the issue.
Have you considered storing the information in a JavaScript object and then sending that information to your server once the user hits save?
Use domain events to capture the users actions and then replay those actions over the snapshot of the order model ( effectively the current state of the order before the user started changing it).
Store each change as a series of events e.g. UserChangedShippingAddress, UserAlteredLineItem, UserDeletedLineItem, UserAddedLineItem.
These events can be saved after each postback and only need a link to the related order. Rebuilding the current state of the order is then as simple as replaying the events over the currently stored order objects.
When the user clicks save, you can replay the events and persist the updated order model to the database.
You are using the database - no session or viewstate is required therefore you can significantly reduce page-weight and server memory load at the expense of some page performance ( if you choose to rebuild the model on each postback ).
Maintenance is incredibly simple as due to the ease with which you can implement domain object, automated testing is easily used to ensure the system behaves as you expect it to (while also documenting your intentions for other developers).
Because you are leveraging the database, the solution scales well across multiple web servers.
Using this approach does not require any alterations to your existing domain model, therefore the impact on existing code is minimal. Biggest downside is getting your head around the concept of domain events and how they are used and abused =)
This is effectively the same approach as described by Freddy Rios, with a little more detail about how and some nice keyword for you to search with =)
http://jasondentler.com/blog/2009/11/simple-domain-events/ and http://www.udidahan.com/2009/06/14/domain-events-salvation/ are some good background reading about domain events. You may also want to read up on event sourcing as this is essentially what you would be doing ( snapshot object, record events, replay events, snapshot object again).
how about serializing your Domain object (contents of your grid/shopping cart) to JSON and storing it in a hidden variable ? Scottgu has a nice article on how to serialize objects to JSON. Scalable across a server farm and guess it would not add much payload to your page. May be you can write your own JSON serializer to do a "compact serialization" (you would not need product name,product ID, SKU id, etc, may be you can just "serialize" productID and quantity)
Have you considered using a User Profile? .Net comes with SqlProfileProvider right out of the box. This would allow you to, for each user, grab their profile and save the temporary data as a variable off in the profile. Unfortunately, I think this does require your "Order" to be serializable, but I believe all of the options except Session thus far would require the same.
The advantage of this is it would persist through crashes, sessions, server down time, etc and it's fairly easy to set up. Here's a site that runs through an example. Once you set it up, you may also find it useful for storing other user information such as preferences, favorites, watched items, etc.
You should be able to create a temp file and serialize the object to that, then save only the temp file name to the viewstate. Once they successfully save the record back to the database then you could remove the temp file.
Single server: serialize to the filesystem. This also allows you to let the user resume later.
Multiple server: serialize it but store the serialized value in the db.
This is something that's for that specific user, so when you persist it to the db you don't really need all the relational stuff for it.
Alternatively, if the set of data is v. large and the amount of changes is usually small, you can store the history of changes done by the user instead. With this you can also show the change history + support undo.
2 approaches - create a complex AJAX application that stores everything on the client and only submits the entire package of changes to the server. I did this once a few years ago with moderate success. The applicaiton is not something I would want to maintain though. You have a hard time syncing your client code with your server code and passing fields that are added/deleted/changed is nightmarish.
2nd approach is to store changes in the data base in a temp table or "pending" mode. Advantage is your code is more maintainable. Disadvantage is you have to have a way to clean up abandonded changes due to session timeout, power failures, other crashes. I would take this approach for any new development. You can have separate tables for "pending" and "committed" changes that opens up a whole new level of features you can add. What if? What changed? etc.
I would go for viewstate, regardless of what you've said before. If you only store the stuff you need, like { id: XX, numberOfProducts: 3 }, and ditch every item that is not selected by the user at this point; the viewstate size will hardly be an issue as long as you aren't storing the whole object tree.
When storing attachments, put them in a temporary storing location, and reference the filename in your viewstate. You can have a scheduled task that cleans the temp folder for every file that was last saved over 1 day ago or something.
This is basically the approach we use for storing information when users are adding floorplan information and attachments in our backend.
Are the end-users internal or external clients? If your clients are internal users, it may be worthwhile to look at an alternate set of technologies. Instead of webforms, consider using a platform like Silverlight and implementing a rich GUI there.
You could then store complex business objects within the applet, provide persistant "in progress" edit tracking across multiple sessions via offline storage and easily integrate with back-end services that providing saving / processing of the finalised order. All whilst maintaining access via the web (albeit closing out most *nix clients).
Alternatives include Adobe Flex or AJAX, depending on resources and needs.
How large do you consider large? If you are talking sessions-state (so it doesn't go back/fore to the actual user, like view-state) then state is often a pretty good option. Everything except the in-process state provider uses serialization, but you can influence how it is serialized. For example, I would tend to create a local model that represents just the state I care about (plus any id/rowversion information) for that operation (rather than the full domain entities, which may have extra overhead).
To reduce the serialization overhead further, I would consider using something like protobuf-net; this can be used as the implementation for ISerializable, allowing very light-weight serialized objects (generally much smaller than BinaryFormatter, XmlSerializer, etc), that are cheap to reconstruct at page requests.
When the page is finally saved, I would update my domain entities from the local model and submit the changes.
For info, to use a protobuf-net attributed object with the state serializers (typically BinaryFormatter), you can use:
// a simple, sessions-state friendly light-weight UI model object
[ProtoContract]
public class MyType {
[ProtoMember(1)]
public int Id {get;set;}
[ProtoMember(2)]
public string Name {get;set;}
[ProtoMember(3)]
public double Value {get;set;}
// etc
void ISerializable.GetObjectData(
SerializationInfo info,StreamingContext context)
{
Serializer.Serialize(info, this);
}
public MyType() {} // default constructor
protected MyType(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)
{
Serializer.Merge(info, this);
}
}
I would like some advice from anyone experienced with implementing something like "pessimistic locking" in an asp.net application. This is the behavior I'm looking for:
User A opens order #313
User B attempts to open order #313 but is told that User A has had the order opened exclusively for X minutes.
Since I haven't implemented this functionality before, I have a few design questions:
What data should i attach to the order record? I'm considering:
LockOwnedBy
LockAcquiredTime
LockRefreshedTime
I would consider a record unlocked if the LockRefreshedTime < (Now - 10 min).
How do I guarantee that locks aren't held for longer than necessary but don't expire unexpectedly either?
I'm pretty comfortable with jQuery so approaches which make use of client script are welcome. This would be an internal web application so I can be rather liberal with my use of bandwidth/cycles. I'm also wondering if "pessimistic locking" is an appropriate term for this concept.
It sounds like you are most of the way there. I don't think you really need LockRefreshedTime though, it doesn't really add anything. You may just as well use the LockAcquiredTime to decide when a lock has become stale.
The other thing you will want to do is make sure you make use of transactions. You need to wrap the checking and setting of the lock within a database transaction, so that you don't end up with two users who think they have a valid lock.
If you have tasks that require gaining locks on more than one resource (i.e. more than one record of a given type or more than one type of record) then you need to apply the locks in the same order wherever you do the locking. Otherwise you can have a dead lock, where one bit of code has record A locked and is wanting to lock record B and another bit of code has B locked and is waiting for record A.
As to how you ensure locks aren't released unexpectedly. Make sure that if you have any long running process that could run longer than your lock timeout, that it refreshes its lock during its run.
The term "explicit locking" is also used to describe this time of locking.
I have done this manually.
Store the primary-key of the record to a lock table, and mark record
mode attribute to edit.
When another user tries to select this record, indicate the user's
ready only record.
Have a set-up maximum time for locking the records.
Refresh page data for locked records. While an user is allowed to
make changes, all other users are only allowed to check.
Lock table should have design similar to this:
User_ID, //who locked
Lock_start_Time,
Locked_Row_ID(Entity_ID), //this is primary key of the table of locked row.
Table_Name(Entity_Name) //table name of the locked row.
Remaining logic is something you have to figure out.
This is just an idea which I implemented 4 years ago on special request of a client. After that client no one has asked me again to do anything similar, so I haven't achieved any other method.