[jira] [Commented] (AVRO-539) Allow asynchronous clients to specify a callback to be run when server processing completes

["James Baldassari (JIRA)" <ji...@apache.org>]

    [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/AVRO-539?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=13042626#comment-13042626 ] 

James Baldassari commented on AVRO-539:
---------------------------------------

Here's a high-level description of my changes copied from my e-mail to the users list:

I just finished a second attempt at the asynchronous RPC implementation incorporating Philip's feedback and some other ideas that I had.  I think it's easiest to explain how it works with an example.  So here's a simple IDL and schema:

IDL:
protocol Calculator {
  int add(int arg1, int arg2);
}

Schema:
{"protocol":"Calculator","messages":{
  "add":{
    "request":[{"name":"arg1","type":"int"},{"name":"arg2","type":"int"}],
    "response":"int"}}}

No changes are required to the IDL or schema to enable async RPCs.  The Avro Java compiler will generate two interfaces instead of one.  The first interface, Calculator, contains the standard synchronous methods.  The second interface, CalculatorClient, extends Calculator and adds asynchronous methods for all two-way messages.  The reason why the async methods are separated out into a separate interface is that the responder/server side doesn't need to know (and shouldn't know) about the client-side async methods.  So the Responder/server implements Calculator, and the Requestor/client can either use Calculator or CalculatorClient to invoke the RPCs.  For reference, here is what the two generated interfaces look like (without the PROTOCOL field and package names):

public interface Calculator {
  int add(int arg1, int arg2) throws AvroRemoteException;
}
public interface CalculatorClient extends Calculator {
  CallFuture<Integer> addAsync(int arg1, int arg2) throws IOException;
  CallFuture<Integer> addAsync(int arg1, int arg2, Callback<Integer> callback) throws IOException;
}

The CalculatorClient interface is the only new component.  It has two methods for each message, one that takes a Callback and one that does not.  Both methods return a CallFuture so that the client has the option of using either the Future or the Callback to obtain the result of the RPC.  Future.get() blocks until the RPC is complete, and either returns the result or throws an exception if one occurred during the RPC.  The Callback interface has two methods, handleResult(T result) and handleError(Exception error).  One or the other is always called depending on whether the RPC was successful or an Exception was thrown.

In addition to the compiler changes, I had to make some changes in the avro-ipc project to get the async plumbing to work correctly.  Most of these changes are in Requestor and NettyTransceiver.  As part of the changes I had to make to Requestor I ended up replacing a couple of large synchronized blocks with finer-grained critical sections protected by reentrant locks.  I think this change improved performance overall, at least in the case where multiple threads are using the same client.  I implemented a rudimentary performance test that spins up a bunch of threads, executes the same RPC (Simple.hello(String)) repeatedly for a fixed amount of time, and then calculates the average number of RPCs completed per second.  With Avro 1.5.1 I got 7,450 RPCs/sec, and with my modified version of trunk I got 19,050 RPCs/sec.  That was a very simple test, but if there is a standard benchmark that the Avro team uses I'd be happy to rerun my tests using that.

So that's basically it.  All existing unit tests pass, and I wrote additional tests for all the new async functionality.  I've documented all public interfaces, and I think the changes are ready to be reviewed whenever the committers have time to take a look.  Please let me know if you have any comments/questions.

> Allow asynchronous clients to specify a callback to be run when server processing completes
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: AVRO-539
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/AVRO-539
>             Project: Avro
>          Issue Type: New Feature
>            Reporter: Jeff Hammerbacher
>         Attachments: AVRO-539.patch
>
>


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