On Sep 8, 2007, at 0:38, dormando wrote:
Sorry.. Could I perhaps get an example (to the list is fine) of a
condition this fixes? Having a hard time thinking it through.
Yeah, I almost wrote more, but I've been typing too much lately.
In the earlier question about how to track recent users on a site,
one could imagine a list of active users in a form like:
uid1,uid2,uid3,uid4,uid5,...
To ensure the current user is in the list, you could do something
like this:
get(s) the current value for the uid list
check to see if you're in it. If so, you're done.
If not, adjust the list appropriately and cas in the new list
There are three points for failure:
1) gets fails -- add || try again
2) cas fails (not found) -- add || try again
3) cas fails (exists) -- try again
The CAS provides the ``only replace this object iff I know the
value'' functionality that prevents race conditions for arbitrary
mutations.
You could, for example, implement a client-side incr with a CAS if
the server-functionality didn't exist. Obviously, it's two (or more
depending on contention) round trips instead of one, but it seems
like a pretty good building block.
Thanks,
-Dormando
Dustin Sallings wrote:
I just prototyped a pair of operations for implementing CAS in
memcached. This provides atomic updates of arbitrary objects
without having to rely on locks.
The idea is that every object will have some unique 64-bit
value that can be retrieved with a new command (I called it
``gets'' for some reason). This value needs to be unique and
consistent for a given value within memcached. It can be a
counter or memory address or whatever.
After doing a ``gets'' for a key and getting a response, the
client can manipulate the data structure as fit, and use a ``cas''
operation to put it back iff it has the same value as retrieved
(based on the identifier). It returns a ``NOT FOUND'' error when
there's no value for the key (and then you can try it with an
``add''), or ``EXISTS'' when the identifier does not match (and
then you can try again from the ``gets'').
Opinions?
--
Dustin Sallings
