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Pure-Python object database.

Project description

Overview

Dobbin is a transactional object database for Python (2.6+). It’s a fast and convenient way to persist Python objects on disk.

Key features:

  • MVCC concurrency model

  • Implemented all in Python

  • Multi-thread, multi-process with no configuration

  • Zero object access overhead in general case

  • Optimal memory sharing between threads

  • Efficient storing and serving of binary streams

  • Architecture open to alternative storages

Author and license

Written by Malthe Borch <mborch@gmail.com>.

This software is made available under the BSD license.

Source

The source code is kept in version control. Use this command to anonymously check out the latest project source code:

svn co http://svn.repoze.org/dobbin/trunk dobbin

User’s guide

This is the primary documentation for the database. It uses an interactive narrative which doubles as a doctest.

You can run the tests by issuing the following command at the command-line prompt:

$ python setup.py test

Setup

The database stores transactions in a single file. It’s optimized for long-running processes, e.g. application servers.

The first step is to initialize a database object. To configure it we provide a path on the file system. The path needn’t exist already.

>>> from dobbin.database import Database
>>> db = Database(database_path)

This particular path does not already exist. This is a new database. We can verify it by using the len method to determine the number of objects stored.

>>> len(db)
0

The database uses an object graph persistency model. Objects must be transitively connected to the root node of the database (by Python reference).

Since this is an empty database, there is no root object yet.

>>> db.root is None
True

Persistent objects

Any persistent object can be elected as the database root object. Persistent objects must inherit from the Persistent class. These objects form the basis of the concurrency model; overlapping transactions may write a disjoint set of objects (conflict resolution mechanisms are available to ease this requirement).

>>> from dobbin.persistent import Persistent
>>> obj = Persistent()

Persistent objects begin life in local state. In this state we can both read and write attributes. However, when we want to write to an object which has previously been persisted in the database, we must check it out explicitly using the checkout method. We will see how this works shortly.

>>> obj.name = 'John'
>>> obj.name
'John'

Electing a database root

We can elect this object as the root of the database.

>>> db.elect(obj)
>>> obj._p_jar is db
True

The object is now the root of the object graph. To persist changes on disk, we commit the transaction.

>>> transaction.commit()

As expected, the database contains one object.

>>> len(db)
1

The tx_count attribute returns the number of transactions which have been written to the database (successful and failed).

>>> db.tx_count
1

Checking out objects

The object is now persisted in the database. This means that we must now check it out before we are allowed to write to it.

>>> obj.name = "John"
Traceback (most recent call last):
 ...
TypeError: Can't set attribute on shared object.

We use the checkout method on the object to change its state to local.

>>> from dobbin.persistent import checkout
>>> checkout(obj)

The checkout method does not have a return value; this is because the object identity never actually changes. Instead custom attribute accessor and mutator methods are used to provide a thread-local object state. This happens transparent to the user.

After checking out the object, we can both read and write attributes.

>>> obj.name = 'James'

When an object is first checked out by some thread, a counter is set to keep track of how many threads have checked out the object. When it falls to zero (always on a transaction boundary), it’s retracted to the previous shared state.

>>> transaction.commit()

This increases the transaction count by one.

>>> db.tx_count
2

Concurrency

The object manager (which implements the low-level functionality) is inherently thread-safe; it uses the MMVC concurrency model.

It’s up to the database which sits on top of the object manager to support concurrency between external processes sharing the same database (the included database implementation uses a file-locking scheme to extend the MVCC concurrency model to external processes; no configuration is required).

We can demonstrate concurrency between two separate processes by running a second database instance in the same thread.

>>> new_db = Database(database_path)
>>> new_obj = new_db.root

Objects from this database are disjoint from those of the first database.

>>> new_obj is obj
False

The new database instance has already read the previously committed transactions and applied them to its object graph.

>>> new_obj.name
'James'

Let’s examine this further. If we check out a persistent object from the first database instance and commit the changes, that same object from the second database will be updated as soon as we begin a new transaction.

>>> checkout(obj)
>>> obj.name = 'Jane'
>>> transaction.commit()

The database has registered the transaction; the new instance hasn’t.

>>> db.tx_count - new_db.tx_count
1

The object graphs are not synchronized.

>>> new_obj.name
'James'

Applications must begin a new transaction to stay in sync.

>>> tx = transaction.begin()
>>> new_obj.name
'Jane'

Conflicts

When concurrent transactions attempt to modify the same objects, we get a write conflict in all but one (first to get the commit-lock wins the transaction).

Objects can provide conflict resolution capabilities such that two concurrent transactions may update the same object.

As an example, let’s create a counter object; it could represent a counter which keeps track of visitors on a website. To provide conflict resolution for instances of this class, we implement a _p_resolve_conflict method.

>>> class Counter(Persistent):
...     def __init__(self):
...         self.count = 0
...
...     def hit(self):
...         self.count += 1
...
...     @staticmethod
...     def _p_resolve_conflict(old_state, saved_state, new_state):
...         saved_diff = saved_state['count'] - old_state['count']
...         new_diff = new_state['count']- old_state['count']
...         return {'count': old_state['count'] + saved_diff + new_diff}

As a doctest technicality, we set the class on the builtin module.

>>> import __builtin__; __builtin__.Counter = Counter

Next we instantiate a counter instance, then add it to object graph.

>>> counter = Counter()
>>> checkout(obj)
>>> obj.counter = counter
>>> transaction.commit()

To demonstrate the conflict resolution functionality of this class, we update the counter in two concurrent transactions. We will attempt one of the transactions in a separate thread.

>>> from threading import Semaphore
>>> flag = Semaphore()
>>> flag.acquire()
True
>>> def run():
...     counter = db.root.counter
...     assert counter is not None
...     checkout(counter)
...     counter.hit()
...     flag.acquire()
...     try: transaction.commit()
...     finally: flag.release()
>>> from threading import Thread
>>> thread = Thread(target=run)
>>> thread.start()

In the main thread we check out the same object and assign a different attribute value.

>>> checkout(counter)
>>> counter.count
0
>>> counter.hit()

Releasing the semaphore, the thread will commit the transaction.

>>> flag.release()
>>> thread.join()

As we commit the transaction running in the main thread, we expect the counter to have been increased twice.

>>> transaction.commit()
>>> counter.count
2

More objects

Persistent objects must be connected to the object graph, before they’re persisted in the database. If we check out a persistent object and commit the transaction without adding it to the object graph, an exception is raised.

>>> another = Persistent()
>>> transaction.commit()
Traceback (most recent call last):
 ...
ObjectGraphError: <dobbin.persistent.LocalPersistent object at ...> not connected to graph.

We abort the transaction and try again, this time connecting the object using an attribute reference.

>>> transaction.abort()
>>> checkout(another)
>>> another.name = 'Karla'
>>> checkout(obj)
>>> obj.another = another

We commit the transaction and observe that the object count has grown. The new object has been assigned an oid as well (these are not in general predictable; they are assigned by the database on commit).

>>> transaction.commit()
>>> len(db)
3
>>> another._p_oid is not None
True

If we begin a new transaction, the new object will propagate to the second database instance.

>>> tx = transaction.begin()
>>> new_obj.another.name
'Karla'

As we check out the object that carries the reference and access any attribute, a deep-copy of the shared state is made behind the scenes. Persistent objects are never copied, however, which a simple identity check will confirm.

>>> checkout(obj)
>>> obj.another is another
True

Circular references are permitted.

>>> checkout(another)
>>> another.another = obj
>>> transaction.commit()

Again, we can verify the identity.

>>> another.another is obj
True

Storing files

We can persist open files (or any stream object) by enclosing them in a persistent file wrapper. The wrapper is immutable; it’s for single use only.

>>> from tempfile import TemporaryFile
>>> file = TemporaryFile()
>>> file.write('abc')
>>> file.seek(0)

Note that the file is read from the current position and until the end of the file.

>>> from dobbin.persistent import PersistentFile
>>> pfile = PersistentFile(file)

Let’s store this persistent file as an attribute on our object.

>>> checkout(obj)
>>> obj.file = pfile
>>> transaction.commit()

Note that the persistent file has been given a new class. It’s the same object (in terms of object identity), but since it’s now stored in the database and is only available as a file stream, we call it a persistent stream.

>>> obj.file
<dobbin.database.PersistentStream object at ...>

We must manually close the file we provided to the persistent wrapper (or let it fall out of scope).

>>> file.close()

Using persistent streams

There are two ways to use persistent streams; either by iterating through it, in which case it automatically gets a file handle (implicitly closed when the iterator is garbage-collected), or through a file-like API.

We use the open method to open the stream; this is always required when using the stream as a file.

>>> obj.file.open()
>>> obj.file.read()
'abc'

The seek and tell methods work as expected.

>>> int(obj.file.tell())
3

We can seek to the beginning and repeat the exercise.

>>> obj.file.seek(0)
>>> obj.file.read()
'abc'

As any file, we have to close it after use.

>>> obj.file.close()

In addition we can use iteration to read the file; in this case, we needn’t bother opening or closing the file. This is automatically done for us. Note that this makes persistent streams suitable as return values for WSGI applications.

>>> "".join(obj.file)
'abc'

Iteration is strictly independent from the other methods. We can observe that the file remains closed.

>>> obj.file.closed
True

Start a new transaction (to prompt database catch-up) and confirm that file is available from second database.

>>> tx = transaction.begin()
>>> "".join(new_obj.file)
'abc'

Persistent dictionary

It’s not advisable in general to use the built-in dict type to store records in the database, in particular not if you expect frequent minor changes. Instead the PersistentDict class should be used (directly, or subclassed).

It operates as a normal Python dictionary and provides the same methods.

>>> from dobbin.persistent import PersistentDict
>>> pdict = PersistentDict()

Check out objects and connect to object graph.

>>> checkout(obj)
>>> obj.pdict = pdict

You can store any key/value combination that works with standard dictionaries.

>>> pdict['obj'] = obj
>>> pdict['obj'] is obj
True

The PersistentDict stores attributes, too. Note that attributes and dictionary entries are independent from each other.

>>> pdict.name = 'Bob'
>>> pdict.name
'Bob'

Committing the changes.

>>> transaction.commit()
>>> pdict['obj'] is obj
True
>>> pdict.name
'Bob'

Snapshots

We can use the snapshot method to merge all database transactions until a given timestamp and write the snapshot as a single transaction to a new database.

>>> tmp_path = "%s.tmp" % database_path
>>> tmp_db = Database(tmp_path)

To include all transactions (i.e. the current state), we just pass the target database.

>>> db.snapshot(tmp_db)

The snapshot contains three objects.

>>> len(tmp_db)
4

They were persisted in a single transaction.

>>> tmp_db.tx_count
1

We can confirm that the state indeed matches that of the current database.

>>> tmp_obj = tmp_db.root

The object graph is equal to that of the original database.

>>> tmp_obj.name
'Jane'
>>> tmp_obj.another.name
'Karla'
>>> tmp_obj.pdict['obj'] is tmp_obj
True
>>> tmp_obj.pdict.name
'Bob'

Binary streams are included in the snapshot, too.

>>> "".join(tmp_obj.file)
'abc'

Cleanup

>>> transaction.commit()

This concludes the narrative.

Notes

Most users of the database will want to get acquainted with the information in this section, especially before deployment.

Configuration

The included database implementation writes transactions to a single file. Multiple processes may connect to the same file and share the same database. No further configuration is required; the database uses native file-locking to ensure exclusive write-access.

You may want to compile Python with the --without-pymalloc flag to use native memory allocation. This may improve performance in applications that connect to large databases due to better paging.

Motivation

There are other object databases available for Python, most importantly the ZODB from Zope Corporation (available under the BSD-like ZPL license).

Notable differences:

  • Dobbin is pure Python

  • 1/20 the codebase

  • Less overhead

The assumptions that Dobbin makes lead to a simple design; the case of the ZODB is the exact opposite. Which is more reasonable comes down to these assumptions.

Architecture

Dobbin is designed to support multi-threaded applications without significant memory overhead. It does this by keeping objects in a shared (between all threads) state when possible, and only as little thread-local state as is required by the concurrency model.

It does not, however, manage memory consumption in terms of data on disk versus data in RAM. On startup, the entire database is loaded into virtual memory and to this extent some data may be loaded directly into the system page file. The operating system’s memory manager is expected to keep much-used objects readily available and lesser-used objects available on request.

One assumption that lead to this decision is that the virtual memory manager is able to write CPython-objects to disk while a Python-based memory manager will need to serialize objects first. It is difficult to implement a memory manager in Python and the complexity is certain to cause a logic overhead which will hurt performance.

MVCC

Dobbin provides a MVCC concurrency model.

A transaction (tx1) begins; an object is checked out. Meanwhile a second transaction (tx2) begins.

When tx1 is committed, the shared state of the object is updated, too, although first tx2 gets assigned local changes to the object in which said changes are reversed.

Such “reversing” changesets are applied for all active threads (which have an active transaction that predates the commit).

If a third transaction is begun (again in a separate thread), it simply uses the shared state of the object (having no local state of its own).

Changes

0.2 (2009-10-22)

  • Subclasses may now override existing methods (e.g. __setattr__) and use super to get at the overriden method.

  • Transactions now see data in isolation.

  • When a persistent object is first created, its state is immediately local. This allows an __init__ method to initialize the object.

  • Added method to create a snapshot in time of an existing database.

  • Added PersistentDict class.

  • The Persistent class is now persisted as changesets rather than complete object state.

  • Set up tests to run using the nose testrunner (or using setuptools).

0.1 (2009-09-26)

  • Initial public release.

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