sqlite database lock multithreading question - multithreading

I've got a "database lock" issue despite the sqlite has been compiled with -DSQLITE_THREADSAFE=2 and each thread uses its own database connection like this simplified code:
thread *t = new thread(RandomTextThread);
t.join();
and
static void RandomTextThread(void * aArg)
{
RandomText *rt1;
rt1 = new RandomText();
rt1->genRandomText();
}
and
RandomText::RandomText() {
int rc;
//
// open the database
//
rc = sqlite3_open("mydata.db.sqlite", &this->db);
}
So within each thread constructed by the RandomTextThread statical function, a new RandomText object will be created which in turn creates a new sqlite connection stored within the ->db class variable.
Sometimes the code will be execute DML commands. And this works for one thread without an error.
But two or more threads created by the mechanism above fails until as soon the threads will be make concurrent DML.
The system is old, I could compile sqlite 3.27 but I can use only GCC 4.2 with the TinyThread++ solution which in turn uses POSIX pthread.h .
Any help appreciate.

SQLITE_BUSY is an expected error code when a database is both read and modified at the same time. Using Write-Ahead Logging, it is possibly to greatly reduce the number of occurrences if there is just one writer and many readers.
sqlite3_exec may keep a lock after completion if you have disabled auto-commit mode, for example using the BEGIN command. In this case, you must issue a COMMIT or ROLLBACK command to release the lock.
You can use sqlite3_busy_timeout to install a buys handler which performs waiting inside SQLite itself.

Related

How to sync Delphi event while running DB operations in a background thread?

Using Delphi 7 & UIB, I'm running database operations in a background thread to eliminate problems like:
Timeout
Priority
Immediate Force-reconnect after network-loss
Non-blocked UI
Keeping an opened DB connection alive
User canceling
I've read ALL related topics here, and realized: using while isMyThreadStillRuning and not UserCanceled do sleep(100); end; isn't the recommended way to do this, but rather using TEvent.WaitFor(3000)....
The solutions here are either about sending signals FROM or TO... the thread, or doing it with messages, but never both ways.
Reading the help file, I've also found TSimpleEvent, which seems to be easier to use.
So what is the recommended way to communicate between Main-UI + DB-Thread in both ways?
Should I simply create 2+2 TSimpleEvent?
to start a new transaction (thread should stop sleeping)
force-STOP execution
to signal back if it's moved to a new stage (transaction started / executed / commited=done)
to signal back if there is any error happened
or should there be only 1 TEvent?
Update 2:
First tests show:
2x TSimpleEvent is enough (1 for Thread + 1 for Gui)
Both created as public properties of the background thread
Force-terminating the thread does not work. (Too many errors impossible to handle..)
Better to set a variable like (Stop_yourself) and let it cancel and free itself, (while creating a new instance from the same class and try again.)
(still work in progress...)
You should move the query to a TThread. Unfortunately, anonymous threads are not available in D7 so you need to write your own TThread derived class. Inside, you need its own DB connection to prevent shared resources. From the caller method, you can wait for the thread to end. The results should be stored somewhere in the caller class. Ensure that the access to parameters of the query and for storing the result of the query is handled thread-safe by using a TMutex or TMonitor.

What is the proper way to get continuously processed data from a thread?

The following functions and fields are part of the same class in a Visual Studio DLL. Data is continuously being read and processed using the run function on a thread. However, getPoints is being accessed in a Qt app on a QTimer. I don't wan't to miss a single processed vector, because it seems it could be skipping leading to jumpy data. What's the safest way to get the points to the updated version?
If possible I'd like an answer that uses the C++ standard library as I've been exploring mutex-es, but it still seems to lead to jumpy data.
vector<float> points;
// std::mutex ioMutex;
// function running on a thread
void run(){
while(running){
//ioMutex.lock()
vector<byte> data = ReadData()
points = processData(data);
//ioMutex.unlock()
}
}
vector<float> getPoints(){
return points;
}
I believe there is a mistake in your code. The while loop will consume all the process activity and will not allow proper functionality of other functions. In Qt, in such continuous loops, usually it is a good habit to use the following because it actually gives other process time to access the event buffer properly. If this dll is written in Qt, please add the following within the while loop
QCoreApplication::processEvents();
The safest (and probably easiest) way to deliver your points-data to the main thread is by calling qApp->postEvent() with an object of a custom QEvent-subclass that contains your vector<float> as a member-variable.
That will cause the event(QEvent *) method of (whatever Qt object you specified as the first argument to postEvent()) to be called from inside the main/GUI thread, and so you can override that method to read the vector<float> out of the QEvent-subclassed object and update the GUI with that data.

Using QSqlQuery from multiple threads

I have a lot of C++11 threads running which all need database access at some time. In main I do initalize the database connection and open the database. Qt documentation says that queries are not threadsafe so I use a global mutex until a QSqlQuery exists inside a thread.
This works but is that guaranteed to work or do I run into problems at some time?
A look at the Documentation tells us, that
A connection can only be used from within the thread that created it.
Moving connections between threads or creating queries from a
different thread is not supported.
So you do indeed need one connection per thread. I solved this by generating dynamic names based on the thread:
auto name = "my_db_" + QString::number((quint64)QThread::currentThread(), 16);
if(QSqlDatabase::contains(name))
return QSqlDatabase::database(name);
else {
auto db = QSqlDatabase::addDatabase( "QSQLITE", name);
// open the database, setup tables, etc.
return db;
}
In case you use threads not managed by Qt make use of QThreadStorage to generate names per thread:
// must be static, to be the same for all threads
static QThreadStorage<QString> storage;
QString name;
if(storage.hasLocalData())
name = storage.localData();
else {
//simple way to get a random name
name = "my_db_" + QUuid::createUuid().toString();
storage.setLocalData(name);
}
Important: Sqlite may or may not be able to handle multithreading. See https://sqlite.org/threadsafe.html. As far as I know, the sqlite embedded into Qt is threadsafe, as thats the default, and I could not find any flags that disable it in the sourcecode. But If you are using a different sqlite version, make shure it does actually support threads.
You can write class with SQL functions and use signals-slots to do the queries and get result from database.
It's thread-safe also no need to use mutex.
You choose not well approach. Should use shared QSqlDatabase object instead QSqlQuery. Please check next example of multithreading database access. If that will not clear for you please let me know. Will explain more.

multithreading with MQ

I'm having problem using MQSeries Perl module in multi-threading environment. Here what I have tried:
create two handle in different thread with $mqMgr = MQSeries::QueueManager->new(). I thought this would give me two different connection to MQ, but instead I got return code 2219 on the second call to MQOPEN(), which probably means I got the same underling connection to mq from two separate call to new() method.
declare only one $mqMgr as global shared variable. But I can't assign reference to an MQSeries::QueueManager object to $mqMgr. The reason is "Type of arg 1 to threads::shared::share must be one of [$#%] (not subroutine entry)"
declare only one $mqMgr as global variable. Got same 2219 code.
Tried to pass MQCNO_HANDLE_SHARE_NO_BLOCK into MQSeries::QueueManager->new(), so that a single connection can be shared across thread. But I can not find a way to pass it in.
My question is, with Perl module MQSeries
How/can I get separate connection to MQ queue manager from different thread?
How/can I share a connection to MQ queue manager across different thread?
I have looked around but with little luck, Any info would be appreciated.
related question:
C++ - MQ RC Code 2219
Update 1: add a example that two local MQSeries::QueueManager object in two thread cause MQ error code 2219.
use threads;
use Thread::Queue;
use MQSeries;
use MQSeries::QueueManager;
use MQSeries::Queue;
# globals
our $jobQ = Thread::Queue->new();
our $resultQ = Thread::Queue->new();
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# sub routines
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
sub worker {
# fetch work from $jobQ and put result to $resultQ
# ...
}
sub monitor {
# fetch result from $resultQ and put it onto another MQ queue
my $mqQMgr = MQSeries::QueueManager->new( ... );
# different queue from the one in main
# this would cause error with MQ code 2219
my $mqQ = MQSeries::Queue->new( ... );
while (defined(my $result = $resultQ->dequeue())) {
# create an mq message and put it into $mqQ
my $mqMsg = MQSeries::Message->new();
$mqQ->put($mqMsg);
}
}
# main
unless (caller()) {
# create connection to MQ
my $mqQMgr = MQSeries::QueueManager->new( ... );
my $mqQ = MQSeries::Queue->new( ... );
# create worker and monitor thread
my #workers;
for (1 .. $nThreads) {
push(#workers, threads->create('worker'));
}
my $monitor = threads->create('monitor');
while (True) {
my $mqMsg = MQSeries::Message->new ();
my $retCode = $mqQ->get(
Message => $mqMsg,
GetMsgOptions => $someOption,
Wait => $sometime
);
die("error") if ($retCode == 0);
next if ($retCode == -1); # no message
# not we have some job to do
$jobQ->enqueue($mqMsg->Data);
}
}
There is a very real danger when trying to multithread with modules that the module is not thread safe. There's a bunch of things that can just break messily because of the way threading works - you clone the current process state, and that includes things like file handles, sockets, etc.
But if you try and use them in an asynchronous/threaded way, they'll act really weird because the operations aren't (necessarily) atomic.
So whilst I can't answer your question directly, because I have no experience of the particular module:
Unless you know otherwise, assume you can't share between threads. It might be thread safe, it might not. If it isn't, it might still look ok, until one day you get a horrifically difficult to find bug as a result of a race condition in concurrent conditions.
A shared scalar/list is explicitly described in threads::shared as basically safe (and even then, you can still have problems with non-atomicity if you're not locking).
I would suggest therefore that what you need to do is either:
have a 'comms' thread, that does all the work related to the module, and make the other threads use IPC to talk to it. Thread::Queue can work nicely for this.
treat each thread as entirely separate for purposes of the module. That includes loading it (with require and import - not use because that acts earlier) and instantiating. (You might get away with 'loading' the module before threads start, but instantiating does things like creating descriptors, sockets etc.)
lock stuff when there's any danger of interruption of an atomic operation.
Much of the above also applies to fork parallelism too - but not in quite the same way, as fork makes "sharing" stuff considerably harder, so you're less likely to trip over it.
Edit:
Looking at the code you've posted, and crossreferencing against the MQSeries source:
There is a BEGIN block, that sets up some stuff with the MQSeries at the point at which you use it.
Whilst I can't say for sure that this is your problem, it makes me very wary - because bear in mind that when it does that, it sets up some stuff - and then when your threads start, they inherit non-shared copies of "whatever it did" during that "BEGIN" block.
So in light of what I suggested earlier on - I would recommend you try (because I can't say for sure, as I don't have a reference implementation):
require MQSeries;
MQSeries->import;
Put this in your code - in lieu of use - after thread start. E.g. after you do the creates and within the thread subroutine.

facing issue using Multithreading in exe

I am facing issue in multi threading .
Case : I am creating exe to download photos from some another website , As there are 1000's of photos coming from other server i have implemented multi-threading, but that is not working properly
In Main() , i have called a method named as ThreadMain();
and In ThreadMain(); function, we have divided task into ten threads like
ThreadStart jobOne = new ThreadStart(ThreadOne);
Thread threadOne = new Thread(jobOne);
// Start the thread
threadOne.Start();
ThreadStart jobTwo = new ThreadStart(ThreadTwo);
Thread threadTwo = new Thread(jobTwo);
threadTwo.Start();
ThreadStart jobThree = new ThreadStart(ThreadThree);
Thread threadThree = new Thread(jobThree);
threadThree.Start();
etc upto 10 threads
Then further we have defined static method like
static void ThreadOne()
{
database tasks
}
static void ThreadTwo()
{
database tasks
}
static void ThreadThree()
{
database tasks
}
Upto 10 jobs
But After completing threads,console window does not close itself Or i am not able to know whether threads are completed or NOT ? Please advice
use background workers.
They are a special kind of thread which runs in your program. You can use the "Progress" property of the background worker to report the progress to another method and in the method compute the necessary criteria and check if the threads are closed and finally close the program.
If you do not want to alter the structure of the program another method would be to have another thread called "watcherThread" (call it wat ever u want) and make this thread run continuosly in intervals of three or five seconds based upon your general execution time and have it check the isRunning property of all the other threads or threadState property of all the other threads and once you know all threads have completely run you can safely close your windows using "environment.exit(0);"
Some references
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc221403(v=vs.95).aspx
http://www.dotnetperls.com/backgroundworker
http://midnightprogrammer.net/post/Using-Background-Worker-in-C.aspx
http://csharptuning.blogspot.com/2007/05/background-worker.html

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