Hi David, Sorry to have been unclear.
What I meant is we have two different kinds of backup to perform. In one use case I call "regular backup", it is the kind of backup you perform every night. You do not care not to grab the content just updated, since you will have it the day after. In the other use case I call "exceptional backup", you want to have all the data because for instance you will destroy the repository afterwards. Those two differs I think in small points. For instance, for "regular backup", we don't care about transaction started but not committed. In the second one, we do. I propose to support only the first use case. The second one would be added easily later. I don't know how JackRabbit is used in production environment. Is it feasible to lock workspace once at a time or it is too cumbersome for the customer? For instance, if backuping a workspace needs a two minutes workspace locking, then it can be done without affecting availibility (but it would affect reliability). We need data to estimate if it is needed. Can you give me the size of a typical workspace please? I am OK to record the transaction and commit it after the locking has occured but this means changing the semantic of Jackrabbit (a transaction initiated when a lock is on would be performed after the lock is released instead of raising an exception ) and I am not sure everybody would think it is a good idea. We would need to add a transaction log (is there one already?) and parse transaction to detect conflict (or capture exception maybe). We would not be able to guarantee anymore a transaction is persistent and it might have an impact on performance. And what about time out when running a transaction? Another idea would be: monitor Jackrabbit and launch the backup when we have a high probability no transaction are going to be started. But I think sysadmin already know when load is minimal on their system. Another idea would be as Miro stated, use more "lower" level strategy (working on the DB level or directly on the FS). It was actually my first backup strategy but Jukka thought have to be able to use the tool to migrate from one PM to another Here is my suggestion on the locking strategy: we can extend the backup tool later if needed. Right now even with a global lock, it is an improvement compared to the current situation. And I need to release the project before August 21. I would prefer to start with locking one workspace at a time and if I have still time then find a way to work with minimal lock. I will most probably keep working on Jackrabbit after the Google SoC is over. Are you OK with this approach? We are OK on the restore operation. Good idea for the replace or ignore option but I would recommend to build it only for existing nodes :p Properties might be more difficult to handle and not as useful (and it raises a lot more questions). nico My blog! http://www.deviant-abstraction.net !! On 5/24/06, David Kennedy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
"Nicolas Toper" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote on 05/24/2006 12:03:02 PM: > You are right: there are two different issues there so possibly two > different locking strategies: one for backup and one for restoring. > > We want to cover for now only one use case: the regular backup of data. You > would call the tool through a cron everyday at midnight for instance. > > There is another use case, we need to work on later (after the first project > for Google is completed): exceptional backup. For instance, before a > migration between different version. From my point of view, I would like > Missed the complete thought here... A regular backup is fine, but I don't expect people to stop using the repository while the backup is occurring. Anything we can do to minimize the locked set is advantageous to consumers. I'm not sure how an exceptional backup differs from a regular backup other then when it is performed. > Are those use cases covering your needs? > > Backup > We need to have a coherent image of the system. For a given workspace, is > the read access always coherent and consistant? I would prefer to avoid > locking the workspace since we are backuping a lot of data and it is going > to take some times. > The read access should be coherent and consistent assuming a transactional system. A locked workspace is the easiest to deal with, but the most inconvenient for consumers. Minimizing the lock set adds complexity because there are cases where transactions occurring during the backup can affect the data consistency (e.g. References: Node A has a property that references Node B....need to ensure when A gets backed up that B and all parents do or B may not exist by the time you get to it) > A workspace lock might not even solve all issues. Have anyone of you already > solved this? If yes how? > > Restore > I propose to actually lock the workspace while restoring: a restore > operation is rare and would delete the previous content. There shouldn't be > any other operations taking place. > Seems like a reasonable starting point. Will the restore take a Visitor to give requestors the ability to REPLACE or IGNORE existing nodes or properties. > Is this approach correct? > > Nicolas > > > On 5/24/06, David Kennedy <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote: > > > > Is the intent to lock out the entire workspace while backup or restore is > > occurring......no writes?! Can the transactions that occur during backup > > be recorded and played back to the backup system to avoid having to lock > > the entire workspace? > > > > Restore is a different issue though....which takes precedence: non-restore > > operations that occur during restore or the nodes from the backup? Is it > > feasible to restore clusters (transitive closure containing references) of > > > > nodes? Ideally we wouldn't have to lock the entire workspace. > > > > David > > > > > > > > "Nicolas Toper" < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > 05/24/2006 10:12 AM > > Please respond to > > [email protected] > > > > > > To > > [email protected], [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > cc > > > > Subject > > Re: Google Summer of Code project for Jackrabbit > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Hi Tobias, > > > > Thanks for your feedback. > > > > I assume I would need to lock the workspace using the getLockManager of > > WorkspaceImpl. > > > > Are those lock "time outted"? I mean for instance the backup application > > crashes, I had a lock on a Workspace, I would need to clean it as soon as > > possible. If they are not, maybe we should add it in JackRabbit through > > for > > instance a lease. > > > > What do you think? > > > > nico > > My blog! http://www.deviant-abstraction.net !! > > > > > > On 5/24/06, Tobias Bocanegra < [EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote: > > > > > > hi nicolas, > > > sounds very promising. just one important comment so far: > > > > > > > - All updates and read are isolated through transactions. Do we need > > to > > > > define a locking strategy? If I am correct, I can read a node even > > > though it > > > > is locked and it is threadsafe. You don't commit an incoherent > > > modification. > > > > > > thats not quite true, they are only "READ COMMITTED" isolated. i.e. > > > you need to lock the entire workspace before you can perform a backup. > > > > > > regards, tobi > > > -- > > > -----------------------------------------< [EMAIL PROTECTED] >--- > > > Tobias Bocanegra, Day Management AG, Barfuesserplatz 6, CH - 4001 Basel > > > T +41 61 226 98 98, F +41 61 226 98 97 > > > -----------------------------------------------< http://www.day.com >--- > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > a+ > nico > My blog! http://www.deviant-abstraction.net !!
