How should I properly handle CommandTimeout when calling ExecuteSqlCommand - sql-server

I have some long running commands in stored procedures that are at risk of timing out, and I run them using Context.Database.ExecuteSqlCommand
It would appear that when a command times out, it leaves a lock in the database because the transaction is not rolled back.
I found an explanation for that here: CommandTimeout – How to handle it properly?
Based on the linked example I changed my code to:
Database database = Context.Database;
try
{
return database.ExecuteSqlCommand(sql, parameters);
}
catch (SqlException e)
{
//Transactions can stay open after a CommandTimeout,
//so need to rollback any open transactions
if (e.Number == -2) //CommandTimeout occurred
{
//Single rollback exits all levels of nested transactions,
//no need to loop.
database.ExecuteSqlCommand("IF ##TRANCOUNT>0 ROLLBACK TRAN;");
}
throw;
}
However, that threw an exception inside the catch, because the connection is now null:
ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: connection
Following the comments from Annie and usr I changed my code to this:
Database database = Context.Database;
using (var tran = database.BeginTransaction())
{
try
{
int result = database.ExecuteSqlCommand(sql, parameters);
tran.Commit();
return result;
}
catch (SqlException)
{
var debug = database.SqlQuery<Int16>("SELECT ##SPID");
tran.Rollback();
throw;
}
}
I really thought that would do it, but the locks in the database continue to accumulate when I set my CommandTimeout to a really small value to test it out.
I put a breakpoint at the throw, so I know the transaction has been rolled back. The debug variable tells me the session id and when I check my locks using this query: SELECT * FROM sys.dm_tran_locks, I find a match for the session id in the request_session_id, but it's a lock that was already there, not one of the new ones, so I'm a bit confused.
So, how should I properly handle CommandTimeout when using ExecuteSqlCommand to ensure locks are released immediately?
I downloaded sp_whoisactive and ran it, the spid appears to be linked to a query on tables used by Hangfire - I am using Hangfire to run the long running queries in a background process. So, I think that perhaps I am barking up the wrong tree. I did have a problem with locking but I've rewritten my own queries to avoid locking too many rows and I've disabled lock escalation on the tables where I had a problem. These last locks may be coming from Hangfire, and may not be significant, nonetheless I've decided to go with XACT_ABORT ON for now.

Related

Suspending Azure function until Entity Framework makes changes

I have an Azure function (Iot hub trigger) that:
selects a top 1 record ordered by time in descending order
compares with a new record that comes
writes the coming record only if it differs from the selected one (some fields are different)
The issue pops up when records come into the azure function very rapidly - I end up with duplicates in the database. I guess this is because SQL Server doesn't have enough time to make changes in the database by the time the next record comes and Azure function selects, and when the Azure function selects the latest record, it actually receives an outdated one.
I use EF Core.
I do believe that there is no issue with function but with the transactional nature of the operation you described. To solve your issue trivially, you can try using transaction with the highest isolation level:
using (var transaction = new TransactionScope(
TransactionScopeOption.Required,
new TransactionOptions
{
// With this isolation level all data modifications are sequential
IsolationLevel = IsolationLevel.Serializable
}))
{
using (var connection = new SqlConnection("YOUR CONNECTION"))
{
connection.Open();
try
{
// Run raw ADO.NET command in the transaction
var command = connection.CreateCommand();
// Your reading query (just for example sake)
command.CommandText = "SELECT TOP 1 FROM dbo.Whatever";
var result = command.ExecuteScalar();
// Run an EF Core command in the transaction
var options = new DbContextOptionsBuilder<TestContext>()
.UseSqlServer(connection)
.Options;
using (var context = new TestContext(options))
{
context.Items.Add(result);
context.SaveChanges();
}
// Commit transaction if all commands succeed, transaction will auto-rollback
// when disposed if either commands fails
transaction.Complete();
}
catch (System.Exception)
{
// TODO: Handle failure
}
}
}
You should adjust the code for your need, but you have an idea.
Although, I would rather avoid the problem entirely and not modify any records, but rather insert them and select the latests afterwards. Transactions are tricky in application, they may cause performance degradation and deadlocks being applied in the wrong place and in the wrong way.

Cassandra data reappearing

Inspired by this, I wrote a simple mutex on Cassandra 2.1.4.
Here is a how the lock/unlock (pseudo) code looks:
public boolean lock(String uuid){
try {
Statement stmt = new SimpleStatement("INSERT INTO LOCK (id) VALUES (?) IF NOT EXISTS", uuid);
stmt.setConsistencyLevel(ConsistencyLevel.QUORUM);
ResultSet rs = session.execute(stmt);
if (rs.wasApplied()) {
return true;
}
} catch (Throwable t) {
Statement stmt = new SimpleStatement("DELETE FROM LOCK WHERE id = ?", uuid);
stmt.setConsistencyLevel(ConsistencyLevel.QUORUM);
session.execute(stmt); // DATA DELETED HERE REAPPEARS!
}
return false;
}
public void unlock(String uuid) {
try {
Statement stmt = new SimpleStatement("DELETE FROM LOCK WHERE id = ?", uuid);
stmt.setConsistencyLevel(ConsistencyLevel.QUORUM);
session.execute(stmt);
} catch (Throwable t) {
}
}
Now, I am able to recreate at will a situation where a WriteTimeoutException is thrown in lock() in a high load test. This means the data may or may not be written. After this my code deletes the lock - and again a WriteTimeoutException is thrown. However, the lock remains (or reappears).
Why is this?
Now I know I can easily put a TTL on this table (for this usecase), but how do I reliably delete that row?
My guess on seeing this code is a common error that happens in Distributed Systems programming. There is an assumption that in case in failure your attempt to correct the failure will succeed.
In the above code you check to make sure that initial write is successful, but don't make sure that the "rollback" is also successful. This can lead to a variety of unwanted states.
Let's imagine a few scenarios with Replicas A, B and C.
Client creates Lock but an error is thrown. The lock is present on all replicas but the client gets a timeout because that connection is lost or broken.
State of System
A[Lock], B[Lock], C[Lock]
We have an exception on the client and attempt to undo the lock by issuing a delete but this fails with an exception back at the client. This means the system can be in a variety of states.
0 Successful Writes of the Delete
A[Lock], B[Lock], C[Lock]
All quorum requests will see the Lock. There exists no combination of replicas which would show us the Lock has been removed.
1 Successful Writes of the Delete
A[Lock], B[Lock], C[]
In this case we are still vulnerable. Any request which excludes C as part of the quorum call will miss the deletion. If only A and B are polled than we'll still see the lock existing.
2/3 Successful Writes of the Delete (Quorum CL Is Met)
A[Lock/], B[], C[]
In this case we have once more lost the connection to the driver but somehow succeeded internally in replicating the delete request. These scenarios are the only ones in which we are actually safe and that future reads will not see the Lock.
Conclusion
One of the tricky things with situations like this is that if you fail do make your lock correctly because of network instability it is also unlikely that your correction will succeed since it has to work in the exact same environment.
This may be an instance where CAS operations can be beneficial. But in most cases it is better to not attempt to use distributing locking if at all possible.

Java more than one DB connection in UserTransaction

static void clean() throws Exception {
final UserTransaction tx = InitialContext.doLookup("UserTransaction");
tx.begin();
try {
final DataSource ds = InitialContext.doLookup(Databases.ADMIN);
Connection connection1 = ds.getConnection();
Connection connection2 = ds.getConnection();
PreparedStatement st1 = connection1.prepareStatement("XXX delete records XXX"); // delete data
PreparedStatement st2 = connection2.prepareStatement("XXX insert records XXX"); // insert new data that is same primary as deleted data above
st1.executeUpdate();
st1.close();
connection1.close();
st2.executeUpdate();
st2.close();
connection2.close();
tx.commit();
} finally {
if (tx.getStatus() == Status.STATUS_ACTIVE) {
tx.rollback();
}
}
}
I have a web app, the DAO taking DataSource as the object to create individual connection to perform database operations.
So I have a UserTransaction, inside there are two DAO object doing separated action, first one is doing deletion and second one is doing insertion. The deletion is to delete some records to allow insertion to take place because insertion will insert same primary key's data.
I take out the DAO layer and translate the logic into the code above. There is one thing I couldn't understand, based on the code above, the insertion operation should fail, because the code (inside the UserTransaction) take two different connections, they don't know each other, and the first deletion haven't committed obviously, so second statement (insertion) should fail (due to unique constraint), because two database operation not in same connection, second connection is not able to detect uncommitted changes. But amazingly, it doesn't fail, and both statement can work perfectly.
Can anyone help explain this? Any configuration can be done to achieve this result? Or whether my understanding is wrong?
Since your application is running in weblogic server, the java-EE-container is managing the transaction and the connection for you. If you call DataSource#getConnection multiple times in a java-ee transaction, you will get multiple Connection instances joining the same transaction. Usually those connections connect to database with the identical session. Using oracle you can check that with the following snippet in a #Stateless ejb:
#Resource(lookup="jdbc/myDS")
private DataSource ds;
#TransactionAttribute(TransactionAttributeType.REQUIRES_NEW)
#Schedule(hour="*", minute="*", second="42")
public void testDatasource() throws SQLException {
try ( Connection con1 = ds.getConnection();
Connection con2 = ds.getConnection();
) {
String sessId1 = null, sessId2 = null;
try (ResultSet rs1 = con1.createStatement().executeQuery("select userenv('SESSIONID') from dual") ){
if ( rs1.next() ) sessId1 = rs1.getString(1);
};
try (ResultSet rs2 = con2.createStatement().executeQuery("select userenv('SESSIONID') from dual") ){
if ( rs2.next() ) sessId2 = rs2.getString(1);
};
LOG.log( Level.INFO," con1={0}, con2={1}, sessId1={2}, sessId2={3}"
, new Object[]{ con1, con2, sessId1, sessId2}
);
}
}
This results in the following log-Message:
con1=com.sun.gjc.spi.jdbc40.ConnectionWrapper40#19f32aa,
con2=com.sun.gjc.spi.jdbc40.ConnectionWrapper40#1cb42e0,
sessId1=9347407,
sessId2=9347407
Note that you get different Connection instances with same session-ID.
For more details see eg this question
The only way to do this properly is to use a transaction manager and two phase commit XA drivers for all databases involved in this transaction.
My guess is that you have autocommit enabled on the connections. This is the default when creating a new connection, as is documented here
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/jdbc/basics/transactions.html
System.out.println(connection1.getAutoCommit());
will most likely print true.
You could try
connection1.setAutoCommit(false);
and see if that changes the behavior.
In addition to that, it's not really defined what happens if you call close() on a connection and haven't issued a commit or rollback statement beforehand. Therefore it is strongly recommended to either issue one of the two before closing the connection, see https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/sql/Connection.html#close()
EDIT 1:
If autocommit is false, the it's probably due to the undefined behavior of close. What happens if you switch the statements? :
st2.executeUpdate();
st2.close();
connection2.close();
st1.executeUpdate();
st1.close();
connection1.close();
EDIT 2:
You could also try the "correct" way of doing it:
st1.executeUpdate();
st1.close();
st2.executeUpdate();
st2.close();
tx.commit();
connection1.close();
connection2.close();
If that doesn't fail, then something is wrong with your setup for UserTransactions.
Depending on your database this is quite a normal case.
An object implementing UserTransaction interface represents a "logical transaction". It doesn't always map to a real, "physical" transaction that a database engine respects.
For example, there are situations that cause implicit commits (as well as implicit starts) of transactions. In case of Oracle (can't vouch for other DBs), closing a connection is one of them.
From Oracle's docs:
"If the auto-commit mode is disabled and you close the connection
without explicitly committing or rolling back your last changes, then
an implicit COMMIT operation is run".
But there can be other possible reasons for implicit commits: select for update, various locking statements, DDLs, and so on. They are database-specific.
So, back to our code.
The first transaction is committed by closing a connection.
Then another transaction is implicitly started by the DML on the second connection. It inserts non-conflicting changes and the second connection.close() commits them without PK violation. tx.commit() won't even get a chance to commit anything (and how could it? the connection is already closed).
The bottom line: "logical" transaction managers don't always give you the full picture.
Sometimes transactions are started and committed without an explicit reason. And sometimes they are even ignored by a DB.
PS: I assumed you used Oracle, but the said holds true for other databases as well. For example, MySQL's list of implicit commit reasons.
If auto-commit mode is disabled and you close the connection
without explicitly committing or rolling back your last changes,
then an implicit COMMIT operation is executed.
Please check below link for details:
http://in.relation.to/2005/10/20/pop-quiz-does-connectionclose-result-in-commit-or-rollback/

SQL deadlock in ColdFusion thread

I'm trying to figure out why I would be getting a deadlock error when executing a simple query inside a thread. I'm running CF10 with SQL Server 2008 R2, on a Windows 2012 server.
Once per day, I've got a process that caches a bunch of blog feeds in a database. For each blog feed, I create a thread and do all the work in inside it. Sometimes it runs fine with no errors, other times I get the following error in one or more of the threads:
[Macromedia][SQLServer JDBC Driver][SQLServer]Transaction (Process ID
57) was deadlocked on lock resources with another process and has been
chosen as the deadlock victim. Rerun the transaction.
This deadlock condition happens when I run a query that sets a flag indicating that the feed is being updated. Obviously, this query could happen concurrently with other threads that are updating other feeds.
From my research, I think I can solve the problem by putting a exclusive named lock around the query, but why would I need to do that? I've never had to deal with deadlocks before, so forgive my ignorance on the subject. How is it possible that I can run into a deadlock condition?
Since there's too much code to post, here's a rough algorithm:
thread name="#createUUID()#" action="run" idBlog=idBlog {
try {
var feedResults = getFeed(idBlog);
if (feedResults.errorCode != 0)
throw(message="failed to get feed");
transaction {
/* just a simple query to set a flag */
dirtyBlogCache(idBlog); /* this is where i get the deadlock */
cacheFeedResults(idBlog, feedResults);
}
} catch (any e) {
reportError(e);
}
}
} /* thread */
This approach has been working well for me.
<cffunction name="runQuery" access="private" returntype="query">
arguments if necessary
<cfset var whatever = QueryNew("a")>
<cfquery name="whatever">
sql
</cfquery>
<cfreturn whatever>
</cffunction>
attempts = 0;
myQuery = "not a query";
while (attempts <= 3 && isQuery(myQuery) == false) {
attempts += 1;
try {
myQuery = runQuery();
}
catch (any e) {
}
}
After all, the message does say to re-run the transaction.

Best way to retry a transaction with Seam & Hibernate

I've got a Seam web application working with Seam & Hibernate (JDBC to SQLServer).
It's working well, but under heavy load (stress test with JMeter), I have some LockAcquisitionException or OptimisticLockException.
The LockAquisitionException is caused by a SQLServerException "Transaction (Process ID 64) was deadlock on lock resources with another process and has been chosen as the deadlock victim. Rerun the transaction".
I've then written a Seam Interceptor to rerun such transactions for LockAquisitionException :
#AroundInvoke
public Object aroundInvoke(final InvocationContext invocationContext) throws Exception {
if (instanceThreadLocal.get() == null && isMethodInterceptable(invocationContext)) {
try {
instanceThreadLocal.set(this);
int i = 0;
PersistenceException exception = null;
do {
try {
return invocationContext.proceed();
} catch (final PersistenceException e) {
final Throwable cause = e.getCause();
if (!(cause instanceof LockAcquisitionException)) {
throw e;
}
exception = e;
i++;
if (i < MAX_RETRIES_LOCK_ACQUISITION) {
log.info("Swallowing a LockAcquisitionException - #0/#1", i, MAX_RETRIES_LOCK_ACQUISITION);
try {
if (Transaction.instance().isRolledBackOrMarkedRollback()) {
Transaction.instance().rollback();
}
Transaction.instance().begin();
} catch (final Exception e2) {
throw new IllegalStateException("Exception while rollback the current transaction, and begining a new one.", e2);
}
Thread.sleep(1000);
} else {
log.info("Can't swallow any more LockAcquisitionException (#0/#1), will throw it.", i, MAX_RETRIES_LOCK_ACQUISITION);
throw e;
}
}
} while (i < MAX_RETRIES_LOCK_ACQUISITION);
throw exception;
} finally {
instanceThreadLocal.remove();
}
}
return invocationContext.proceed();
}
First question : do you think this interceptor will correctly do the job ?
By googling around and saw that Alfresco (with a forum talk here), Bonita and Orchestra have some methods to rerun such transactions too, and they are catching much more Exceptions, like StaleObjectStateException for instance (the cause of my OptimisticLockException).
My 2nd question follows : for the StaleObjectStateException ("Row was updated or deleted by another transaction (or unsaved-value mapping was incorrect)"), normaly you can't just rerun the transaction, as it's a problem of synchronisation with the database and #Version fields isn't it ? Why Alfresco for instance tries to rerun such Transactions caused by such Exceptions ?
EDIT :
For LockAcquisitionException caused by SQLServerException, I've looked at some some resources on the web, and even if I should double check my code, it seems that it can happend anyway ... here are the links :
An article on the subject (with a comment which says it can happend by running out of resources also)
Another article with sublinks :
Microsoft talking about that on support.microsoft.com
A way to profile transactions
And some advice to reduce such problems
Even Microsoft says "Although deadlocks can be minimized, they cannot be completely avoided. That is why the front-end application should be designed to handle deadlocks."
Actually I finally found how to dodge the famous "Transaction (Process ID 64) was deadlock on lock resources with another process and has been chosen as the deadlock victim. Rerun the transaction".
So I will not really answer my question but I will explain what I saw and how I manage to do that.
At first, I thought that I had a "lock escalation problem" which would transform my row locks into page locks and produce my deadlocks (my JMeter test runs on a scenario which does delete / update while selecting rows, but the deletes and updates don't concern necessarily the same rows as the selects).
So I read Lock Escalation in SQL2005 and How to resolve blocking problems that are caused by lock escalation in SQL Server (by MS) and finally Diagnose SQL Server performance issues using sp_lock.
But before trying to detect if I was in a lock escalation situation, I fall on that page : http://community.jboss.org/message/95300. It talks about "transaction isolation" and that SQLServer has a special one which is called "snapshot isolation".
I then found Using Snapshot Isolation with SQL Server and Hibernate and read Using Snapshot Isolation (by MS).
So I first enabled the "snapshot isolation mode" on my database :
ALTER DATABASE [MY_DATABASE]
SET ALLOW_SNAPSHOT_ISOLATION ON
ALTER DATABASE [MY_DATABASE]
SET READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT ON
Then I had to define transaction isolation for JDBC driver to 4096 ... and by reading the book "Hibernate in Action" on paragraph "5.1.6 Setting an isolation level", it reads :
Note that Hibernate never changes the isolation level of connections obtained from a datasource provided by the application server in a managed environment. You may change the default isolation using the configuration of your application server.
So I read Configuring JDBC DataSources (for JBoss 4) and finally edited my database-ds.xml file to add this :
<local-tx-datasource>
<jndi-name>myDatasource</jndi-name>
<connection-url>jdbc:sqlserver://BDDSERVER\SQL2008;databaseName=DATABASE</connection-url>
<driver-class>com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerDriver</driver-class>
<user-name>user</user-name>
<password>password</password>
<min-pool-size>2</min-pool-size>
<max-pool-size>400</max-pool-size>
<blocking-timeout-millis>60000</blocking-timeout-millis>
<background-validation>true</background-validation>
<background-validation-minutes>2</background-validation-minutes>
<idle-timeout-minutes>15</idle-timeout-minutes>
<check-valid-connection-sql>SELECT 1</check-valid-connection-sql>
<prefill>true</prefill>
<prepared-statement-cache-size>75</prepared-statement-cache-size>
<transaction-isolation>4096</transaction-isolation>
</local-tx-datasource>
The most important part is of course <transaction-isolation>4096</transaction-isolation>.
And then, I got no more deadlock problem anymore ! ... so my question is now more or less useless for me ... but perhaps someone could have a real answer !

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