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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-10528?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=15096328#comment-15096328
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Benedict commented on CASSANDRA-10528:
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bq. On the local node the observable will go to disk pages which will go to
cells then rows, so I think this isn't an issue.
If we go to cells, we have to have an _extra_ layer of nesting, at which point
I think callback mayhem has reached escape velocity - at least, I don't trust
myself to understand what's happening in a call graph that complex (it's tough
enough with sequential execution of iterators, which is why CASSANDRA-9975 was
born; I certainly couldn't follow beforehand, and even now it's far away from
any ideal world). I think the performance impact of the method transitions
would also become a real burden.
bq. there are tools to mitigate this (i.e. tracing and logging injection)
I may be alone in this, but I really like to be able to plod through a virtual
call flow in my head. To me, program complexity is determined by how far I can
easily figure out what the program would do _without_ resorting to other tools,
or even running it, or preferably even changing cursor position in a source
file.
Depending on log injection and tracing to understand what the application is
doing suggests to me that when people come to make modifications to the
behaviour they'll simply get it wrong.
bq. In general I think pushing the POC further is a good way to flush these
concerns out
For sure, it's not remotely my place to deprioritize this. Just offering up my
views from where we are at.
> Proposal: Integrate RxJava
> --------------------------
>
> Key: CASSANDRA-10528
> URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-10528
> Project: Cassandra
> Issue Type: Improvement
> Reporter: T Jake Luciani
> Assignee: T Jake Luciani
> Fix For: 3.x
>
> Attachments: rxjava-stress.png
>
>
> The purpose of this ticket is to discuss the merits of integrating the
> [RxJava|https://github.com/ReactiveX/RxJava] framework into C*. Enabling us
> to incrementally make the internals of C* async and move away from SEDA to a
> more modern thread per core architecture.
> Related tickets:
> * CASSANDRA-8520
> * CASSANDRA-8457
> * CASSANDRA-5239
> * CASSANDRA-7040
> * CASSANDRA-5863
> * CASSANDRA-6696
> * CASSANDRA-7392
> My *primary* goals in raising this issue are to provide a way of:
> * *Incrementally* making the backend async
> * Avoiding code complexity/readability issues
> * Avoiding NIH where possible
> * Building on an extendable library
> My *non*-goals in raising this issue are:
>
> * Rewrite the entire database in one big bang
> * Write our own async api/framework
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> I've attempted to integrate RxJava a while back and found it not ready mainly
> due to our lack of lambda support. Now with Java 8 I've found it very
> enjoyable and have not hit any performance issues. A gentle introduction to
> RxJava is [here|http://blog.danlew.net/2014/09/15/grokking-rxjava-part-1/] as
> well as their
> [wiki|https://github.com/ReactiveX/RxJava/wiki/Additional-Reading]. The
> primary concept of RX is the
> [Obervable|http://reactivex.io/documentation/observable.html] which is
> essentially a stream of stuff you can subscribe to and act on, chain, etc.
> This is quite similar to [Java 8 streams
> api|http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/java/ma14-java-se-8-streams-2177646.html]
> (or I should say streams api is similar to it). The difference is java 8
> streams can't be used for asynchronous events while RxJava can.
> Another improvement since I last tried integrating RxJava is the completion
> of CASSANDRA-8099 which provides is a very iterable/incremental approach to
> our storage engine. *Iterators and Observables are well paired conceptually
> so morphing our current Storage engine to be async is much simpler now.*
> In an effort to show how one can incrementally change our backend I've done a
> quick POC with RxJava and replaced our non-paging read requests to become
> non-blocking.
> https://github.com/apache/cassandra/compare/trunk...tjake:rxjava-3.0
> As you can probably see the code is straight-forward and sometimes quite nice!
> *Old*
> {code}
> private static PartitionIterator
> fetchRows(List<SinglePartitionReadCommand<?>> commands, ConsistencyLevel
> consistencyLevel)
> throws UnavailableException, ReadFailureException, ReadTimeoutException
> {
> int cmdCount = commands.size();
> SinglePartitionReadLifecycle[] reads = new
> SinglePartitionReadLifecycle[cmdCount];
> for (int i = 0; i < cmdCount; i++)
> reads[i] = new SinglePartitionReadLifecycle(commands.get(i),
> consistencyLevel);
> for (int i = 0; i < cmdCount; i++)
> reads[i].doInitialQueries();
> for (int i = 0; i < cmdCount; i++)
> reads[i].maybeTryAdditionalReplicas();
> for (int i = 0; i < cmdCount; i++)
> reads[i].awaitRes
> ultsAndRetryOnDigestMismatch();
> for (int i = 0; i < cmdCount; i++)
> if (!reads[i].isDone())
> reads[i].maybeAwaitFullDataRead();
> List<PartitionIterator> results = new ArrayList<>(cmdCount);
> for (int i = 0; i < cmdCount; i++)
> {
> assert reads[i].isDone();
> results.add(reads[i].getResult());
> }
> return PartitionIterators.concat(results);
> }
> {code}
> *New*
> {code}
> private static Observable<PartitionIterator>
> fetchRows(List<SinglePartitionReadCommand<?>> commands, ConsistencyLevel
> consistencyLevel)
> throws UnavailableException, ReadFailureException, ReadTimeoutException
> {
> return Observable.from(commands)
> .map(command -> new
> SinglePartitionReadLifecycle(command, consistencyLevel))
> .flatMap(read -> read.getPartitionIterator())
> .toList()
> .map(results -> PartitionIterators.concat(results));
> }
> {code}
> Since the read call is now non blocking (no more future.get()) we can remove
> one thread pool hop from the native netty request pool which yields a
> non-trivial improvement to read performance.
> !rxjava-stress.png|width=800px!
> http://cstar.datastax.com/tests/id/ae648c12-729a-11e5-8625-0256e416528f
> At the same time the current Iterator based api still works by calling
> {{.toBlocking()}} on the observable. So for example the existing thrift read
> call requires little modification
> On the async side we get the added benefits of RxJava:
> * Customizable backpressure strategies (for dealing with streams that can't
> be processed quickly enough)
> * Cancelling of work due to timeouts is a 1 line change
> * When a Subscriber disconnects from the stream they Observable stops as
> well
> * Batching/windowing of work can be added in one line
> * Observers and Subscribers can do work across any thread at any stage of
> the pipeline
> * Observables can be [debugged|https://github.com/ReactiveX/RxJavaDebug]
> and
> [tested|http://reactivex.io/RxJava/javadoc/rx/observers/TestSubscriber.html]
> Another plus is the community surrounding RxJava specifically our good
> friends at netflix have authored and used it extensively. Docs and examples
> are good.
> In order to get the most out of this we will need to take this api further
> into the code. MessagingService, Disk Access/Page, Cache, Thread per core...
> but again I want to hammer home this will be able to be achieved
> incrementally.
> On the bad side this is:
> * Locking into a "framework"
> * Will inevitably hit bugs / performance issues we need fixed upstream
> * Some of the more advanced API uses look pretty mentally taxing/hard to
> grasp
> Which brings us to the Alternatives, primarily being to just use
> CompletableFutures.
> We certainly could but if you look at the code changes I had to make to make
> the SP calls asynchronous I think you will realize you would need to pass
> all kinds of state around to get the read command callback to start the netty
> write. Vs observables which make that pipeline declarative. Also more
> advanced things like backpressure and message passing between N:M producers
> and consumers becomes complex. This isn't to say we can't [use
> both|http://www.nurkiewicz.com/2014/11/converting-between-completablefuture.html]
> if Observables are overkill.
> I hope this ticket sparks some good discussion!
>
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