xdocs/LateralTCPAuxCache.xml (135 lines of code) (raw):
<?xml version="1.0"?>
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<document>
<properties>
<title>Lateral TCP Auxiliary Cache</title>
<author email="pete@kazmier.com">Pete Kazmier</author>
<author email="ASmuts@therealm.com">Aaron Smuts</author>
</properties>
<body>
<section name="Lateral TCP Auxiliary Cache">
<p>
The TCP Lateral Auxiliary Cache is an optional plug in for the
JCS. It is primarily intended to broadcast puts and removals to
other local caches, though it can also get cached objects. It
functions by opening up a <code>SocketServer</code> that
listens to a configurable port and by creating
<code>Socket</code> connections with other local cache
<code>SocketServers</code>. It can be configured to connect to
any number of servers.
</p>
<p>
If there is an error connecting to another server or if an error
occurs in transmission, it will move into a recovery mode. In
recovery mode the TCP Lateral Auxiliary Cache will continue to
communicate with healthy servers while it tries to restore the
connection with the server that is in error.
</p>
<p>
The cache hub communicates with a facade that implements a
zombie pattern (balking facade) to prevent blocking. Puts and
removals are queued and occur synchronously in the background.
Get requests are synchronous and can potentially block for a
configurable interval if there is a communication problem.
</p>
<subsection name="Non-UDP Discovery Configuration">
<p>
The configuration is fairly straightforward and is done in the
auxiliary cache section of the <code>cache.ccf</code>
configuration file. In the example below, I created a TCP
Lateral Auxiliary Cache referenced by <code>LTCP</code>. It
connects to two servers defined in a comma separated list in
the <code>TcpServers</code> attribute. It listens to port
<code>1110</code> and does <code>AllowGet</code>.
Setting <code>AllowGet</code>
equal to <code>false</code> would cause the auxiliary cache to
return <code>null</code> from any get request. In most cases this
attribute should be set to <code>false</code>, since if the
lateral caches were properly configured, the elements in one
would be present in all.
</p>
<source><![CDATA[
jcs.auxiliary.LTCP=org.apache.commons.jcs3.auxiliary.lateral.socket.tcp.LateralTCPCacheFactory
jcs.auxiliary.LTCP.attributes=org.apache.commons.jcs3.auxiliary.lateral.socket.tcp.TCPLateralCacheAttributes
jcs.auxiliary.LTCP.attributes.TcpServers=localhost:1111,localhost:1112
jcs.auxiliary.LTCP.attributes.TcpListenerPort=1110
jcs.auxiliary.LTCP.attributes.AllowGet=true
]]></source>
<p>
A mostly configurationless mode is available for the TCP
lateral cache if you use the <a href="LateralUDPDiscovery.html">UDP Discovery</a>
mechanism.
</p>
</subsection>
<subsection name="Send Only Configuration">
<p>
You can configure the TCP lateral cache to operate
in send only mode by setting the <code>Receive</code> attribute
to false. By default the receive attribute is true.
When it is set to false, the lateral cache will not
establish a socket server.
</p>
<p>
Setting receive to false allows you to broadcast puts
and removes, but not receive any. This is useful for
nodes of an application that produce data, but are not
involved in data retrieval.
</p>
<p>
The configuration below is the same as above, except the
<code>Receive</code> attribute is set to false. It also uses UDP
discovery to find the servers, rather than listing them in the
servers attribute.
</p>
<source><![CDATA[
jcs.auxiliary.LTCP=org.apache.commons.jcs3.auxiliary.lateral.socket.tcp.LateralTCPCacheFactory
jcs.auxiliary.LTCP.attributes=org.apache.commons.jcs3.auxiliary.lateral.socket.tcp.TCPLateralCacheAttributes
#jcs.auxiliary.LTCP.attributes.TcpServers=
jcs.auxiliary.LTCP.attributes.TcpListenerPort=1118
jcs.auxiliary.LTCP.attributes.UdpDiscoveryAddr=228.5.6.8
jcs.auxiliary.LTCP.attributes.UdpDiscoveryPort=6780
jcs.auxiliary.LTCP.attributes.UdpDiscoveryEnabled=true
jcs.auxiliary.LTCP.attributes.Receive=true
jcs.auxiliary.LTCP.attributes.AllowGet=false
jcs.auxiliary.LTCP.attributes.IssueRemoveOnPut=false
jcs.auxiliary.LTCP.attributes.FilterRemoveByHashCode=false
]]></source>
</subsection>
<subsection name="Potential Issues">
<p>
The TCP Lateral Auxiliary Cache can provide a high level of
consistency but it does not guarantee consistency between
caches. A put for the same object could be issued in two
different local caches. Since the transmission is queued, a
situation could occur where the item put last in one cache is
overridden by a put request from another local cache. The two
local caches could potentially have different versions of the
same item. Like most caches, this is intended for high get
and low put utilization, and this occurrence would hint at
improper usage. The RMI Remote cache makes this situation a
bit less likely to occur, since the default behavior is to
remove local copies on put operations. If either local cache
needed the item put in the above situation, it would have to
go remote to retrieve it. Both local copies would have been
expired and would end up using the same version, though it is
possible that the version stored remotely would not be the
last version created. The OCS4J tries to implement a locking
system to prevent this from occurring, but the locking system
itself could suffer from similar problems (when granting locks
from two roughly simultaneous lock requests) and it would
create a significant burden on all the caches involved. Since
this situation would be extremely rare and is nearly
impossible to solve practically, for now JCS will not offer
any type of locking.
</p>
</subsection>
<subsection name="Recent">
<p>
I added a <code>IssueRemoveOnPut</code> attribute that
causes the lateral cache to remove an element from the
cache rather than inserting it when a put. This allows the local caches to
dictate their own memory usage pattern.
</p>
</subsection>
</section>
</body>
</document>