Accessing MySQL database from Delphi asynchronously - mysql

How to access MySQL database from Delphi asynchronously?
Thread that executes select statement should not be blocked. Creating background threads for each active select statement is not a solution too, because on heavy loaded system this would create to many threads and would lead to performance problems.
IOCP (i/o completion ports) is exactly what I need. But I don't know how to use this technology with MySQL from Delphi.

If you have some kind of application where it actually makes sense to execute queries asynchronously, then do it. Let the server deal with the concurrency issue. You can easily configure the server.
For example, take a look at innodb_thread_concurrency and max_connections.

Related

Best technique to make node mysql run fastest?

I am using this
var mysql = require('mysql');
in my node.js app. I am interested to make my app perform the fastest. I have many functions that connect to SQL. There is 2 approaches I am familiar with
For every request, I make a new connection and then execute the query and the close the connection.
Open the connection and make it a global variable, and then never close it. Then for every request that comes in, it just uses the opened connection saved globally.
Which is generally better to use? Also for number 2, if the server closes unexpectedly, then the sql connection doesn't close. Is that bad?
Thanks
Approach 2 is faster, but to avoid the potential problem of connections dropping without unexpectedly, you'll have to implement testing mechanism for every segment that queries the database (ex: count the number of returned rows).
To take this approach further, you can define connections bank or pool. Where you can deal with connection testing and distributions. The basic idea is to have many connections to the database and just inject healthy connections to consumers (functions, or objects that query the database). As Andrew mentions in the comments You can check this question: node.js + mysql connection pooling
Since the database is an essential asset to a project, if this is not a homework or learning project, it might not be a bad idea to explore 3rd party libraries, where a lot of the connections and security details is covered and automated.

Sqlalchemy sessions and autobahn

I'm using the autobahn server in twisted to provide an RPC API. Some calls require queries to the database and multiple clients may be connected via websocket to the server.
I am using the SqlAlchemy ORM to access the database.
What are the pros and cons of the two following approaches for dealing with SqlAlchemy sessions.
Create and destroy a session for every RPC call
Create a single session when the server starts and use it in every RPC call
Which would you recommend and why? (I'm leaning towards 2)
The recommended way of doing SQL-based database access from Twisted (and Autobahn) with databases like PostgreSQL, Oracle or SQLite would be twisted.enterprise.adbapi.
twisted.enterprise.adbapi will run queries on a background thread pool, which is required, since most database drivers are blocking.
Sidenote: for PostgreSQL, there is a native-asynchronous, non-blocking
driver also: txpostgres.
Now, if you put an ORM like SQLAlchemy on top of the native SQL driver, I'm not sure how this will work together (if at all) with twisted.enterprise.adbapi.
So from the options you mention
Is a no go, since most drivers are blocking (and Autobahn's RPCs run on the main thread = Twisted reactor thread - and you MUST not block that).
With this, you need to put the database session(s) in background threads (again, to not block).
Also see here.
If you're using SQLAlchemy and Twisted together, consider using Alchimia rather than the built-in adbapi.

Is it better to hold database connections?

I'm currently developing plugins for bukkit and a lot of them need a database connection. Now I'm thinking about if could be better to have just one plugin that handles the connection for all plugins.
The question behind that is if it is good or not to keep a connection up even if there are no queries for some minutes (that may happen). Otherwise I would need to establish a new connection for each query?
It is a good idea to have one class/plugin for handling database, but the connection state should not be open all the time,make sure the connection is opened only for the time taken by the query.
Many applications use connection pools to have a number of connections readily available to run queries over. It reduces the number of protocol re-negotiations that the database driver has to do. This is especially useful for applications that need fast access times to the underlying data, yet have larger downtimes between requests. E-Commerce applications like webshops are a good example.

Prevent 'too many connections'(ConnectionPool is not the answer, looking for mysql server side solution)

A few weeks ago, I post a question about queuing database access request to prevent 'too many connection' error when massive concurrent db requests happen. People told me ConnectionPool is the right way to go which I agreed at that time. However, I finally realized this is not the solution especially when there are a lot of different clients accessing mysql server through network, because connection pool is at client side it can not prevent the sum of connections of all clients from exceeding the max connection number of mysql server.
I think there should be some middleware on the mysql server working as a queue or pool, is anybody familiar with this? Thank you.
I know this question is widely asked, I am also surprised as if there is no total solution for it.
HAProxy should perform TCP-level queueing for you purpose. Though, would it be better to build an application server in the middle, to handle incoming flow at more conscious level than TCP. This could require rewriting of both server and clients, but could give you more control over what's happening.
What you ask is actually a pretty complicated problem.
First of all you need to decide whether mis-alignments in data are acceptable, for example: if you store in the database the number of Likes received, and you ask this number at 12:00:00, and the number in the DB is 500, and someone posts a LIKE at 12:00:01, and you query it again at 12:00:02; is it OK to receive "500" again, even if the correct number should be 501, provided that in a little time the answer "501" does come out?
If this is acceptable (the infamous "301 bug" in YouTube), then you might start caching some SELECT responses.
You might even cache them in middleware, i.e. have a special process running continuously and hogging ONE connection to MySQL, and answering requests in a queue. You might run it internally in the server as a Web server on port 8001 and have an Apache ReverseProxy, HAproxy, pound, or NginX location to proxy it outside.
You can do the same for special UPDATE/DELETE queries even if it's trickier.
It would be best to cache queries running asynchronously through AJAX first, if any, because serializing queries with a proxy is liable to perceptibly slow down the application.
You have a threefold target:
run queries on MySQL as fast as possible (look into indexing and MySQL caching) in order to free the ConnectionPool and keep it as lightly loaded as possible.
refactor the application in order to extract all information from queries (e.g., the number of rows with a certain property AND those rows as data are often retrieved using TWO queries, but with proper management you need only one and a SQLNumRows() call. Also, quite often similar queries with different informations are run, when a single query might have returned all information at one go: typically, one query to check user/password, another to fetch the complete user profile).
divert the most calls possible to something not at all (NginX, middleware) or lightly (queuing process) bound to MySQL; in the latter case, using a known number of connections in order to run predictably.
Unfortunately there's no easy "magic bullet" to solve this problem (except of course increasing the number of connections, maybe replicating the DB on several hosts running as master-slave. While not really a magic bullet, it is easier to design and implement).

Data queries and computation happen in MySQL server or Rails server?

I need to run a long backend job with long MySQL queries regularly, which will take several hours to complete. I set up Delayed Job gem to schedule this job.
When this process is running:
Will this job slow down my Rails front-end server (i.e., it will take much longer to response to a simple user's request)?
Where heavy computation happens: in my Rails server, or in MySQL server?
Will MySQL server be occupied by my scheduled job, and no one can access MySQL at the same time?
Thank you.
The answer to your question is: It depends
If your task is processor intensive it could slow down the rails server. If you are concerned about the DJ workers impacting the front end box, move them to another box with access to a shared DB. Your worker box needs the project setup but does not need to be the same box you are serving pages from.
This is completely dependent on how you wrote your task. Typically a rails app does simple select / insert / update / delete. the actual computation is done in rails. But you can specify select statements that involve complex joins or take advantage of functions in the DB. This can offload the computation of complex fields to the DB
This is dependent on the number of connections your DB is configured to accept. Typically in a production level server, you wouldn't see an issue here from the size of your query. But you should take into account how many active connections there are and how many are permitted. Each rails instance counts as a connection, as well as each worker for DJ.
In each case the actual performance is going to depend on several factors. How many connections are you creating, how much data are you transmitting between worker and DB. Where are you doing the work.
If the rails server is on the same machine as the mysql server, then there will be some impact. But your OS, and MySQL together, are pretty capable of minimizing the effects without much other intervention by you. Depending how you're deployed, you can always utilize the 'nice' command, and lower the priority of the delayed job, minimizing it's impact on your site's responsiveness.