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NAME
Reader Lock Table -
Data Structures
struct MDB_rxbody
struct MDB_reader
struct MDB_txbody
struct MDB_txninfo
Macros
#define DEFAULT_READERS 126
#define CACHELINE 64
#define MDB_LOCK_FORMAT
Detailed Description
Readers don't acquire any locks for their data access. Instead, they simply record their
transaction ID in the reader table. The reader mutex is needed just to find an empty slot
in the reader table. The slot's address is saved in thread-specific data so that
subsequent read transactions started by the same thread need no further locking to
proceed.
If MDB_NOTLS is set, the slot address is not saved in thread-specific data.
No reader table is used if the database is on a read-only filesystem, or if MDB_NOLOCK is
set.
Since the database uses multi-version concurrency control, readers don't actually need any
locking. This table is used to keep track of which readers are using data from which old
transactions, so that we'll know when a particular old transaction is no longer in use.
Old transactions that have discarded any data pages can then have those pages reclaimed
for use by a later write transaction.
The lock table is constructed such that reader slots are aligned with the processor's
cache line size. Any slot is only ever used by one thread. This alignment guarantees that
there will be no contention or cache thrashing as threads update their own slot info, and
also eliminates any need for locking when accessing a slot.
A writer thread will scan every slot in the table to determine the oldest outstanding
reader transaction. Any freed pages older than this will be reclaimed by the writer. The
writer doesn't use any locks when scanning this table. This means that there's no
guarantee that the writer will see the most up-to-date reader info, but that's not
required for correct operation - all we need is to know the upper bound on the oldest
reader, we don't care at all about the newest reader. So the only consequence of reading
stale information here is that old pages might hang around a while longer before being
reclaimed. That's actually good anyway, because the longer we delay reclaiming old pages,
the more likely it is that a string of contiguous pages can be found after coalescing old
pages from many old transactions together.
Data Structure Documentation
struct MDB_rxbody
The information we store in a single slot of the reader table. In addition to a
transaction ID, we also record the process and thread ID that owns a slot, so that we can
detect stale information, e.g. threads or processes that went away without cleaning up.
Note:
We currently don't check for stale records. We simply re-init the table when we know
that we're the only process opening the lock file.
Data Fields
txnid_t mrb_txnid
MDB_PID_T mrb_pid
pthread_t mrb_tid
Field Documentation
txnid_t MDB_rxbody::mrb_txnid
Current Transaction ID when this transaction began, or (txnid_t)-1. Multiple readers that
start at the same time will probably have the same ID here. Again, it's not important to
exclude them from anything; all we need to know is which version of the DB they started
from so we can avoid overwriting any data used in that particular version.
MDB_PID_T MDB_rxbody::mrb_pid
The process ID of the process owning this reader txn.
pthread_t MDB_rxbody::mrb_tid
The thread ID of the thread owning this txn.
struct MDB_reader
The actual reader record, with cacheline padding.
Data Fields
union {
MDB_rxbody mrx
char pad [(sizeof(MDB_rxbody)+CACHELINE-1)&~(CACHELINE-1)]
} mru
Field Documentation
char MDB_reader::pad[(sizeof(MDB_rxbody)+CACHELINE-1)&~(CACHELINE-1)]
cache line alignment
struct MDB_txbody
The header for the reader table. The table resides in a memory-mapped file. (This is a
different file than is used for the main database.)
For POSIX the actual mutexes reside in the shared memory of this mapped file. On Windows,
mutexes are named objects allocated by the kernel; we store the mutex names in this mapped
file so that other processes can grab them. This same approach is also used on
MacOSX/Darwin (using named semaphores) since MacOSX doesn't support process-shared POSIX
mutexes. For these cases where a named object is used, the object name is derived from a
64 bit FNV hash of the environment pathname. As such, naming collisions are extremely
unlikely. If a collision occurs, the results are unpredictable.
Data Fields
uint32_t mtb_magic
uint32_t mtb_format
pthread_mutex_t mtb_mutex
txnid_t mtb_txnid
unsigned mtb_numreaders
Field Documentation
uint32_t MDB_txbody::mtb_magic
Stamp identifying this as an MDB file. It must be set to MDB_MAGIC.
uint32_t MDB_txbody::mtb_format
Format of this lock file. Must be set to MDB_LOCK_FORMAT.
pthread_mutex_t MDB_txbody::mtb_mutex
Mutex protecting access to this table. This is the reader lock that LOCK_MUTEX_R acquires.
txnid_t MDB_txbody::mtb_txnid
The ID of the last transaction committed to the database. This is recorded here only for
convenience; the value can always be determined by reading the main database meta pages.
unsigned MDB_txbody::mtb_numreaders
The number of slots that have been used in the reader table. This always records the
maximum count, it is not decremented when readers release their slots.
struct MDB_txninfo
The actual reader table definition.
Data Fields
union {
MDB_txbody mtb
char pad [(sizeof(MDB_txbody)+CACHELINE-1)&~(CACHELINE-1)]
} mt1
union {
pthread_mutex_t mt2_wmutex
char pad [(MNAME_LEN+CACHELINE-1)&~(CACHELINE-1)]
} mt2
MDB_reader mti_readers [1]
Macro Definition Documentation
#define DEFAULT_READERS 126
Number of slots in the reader table. This value was chosen somewhat arbitrarily. 126
readers plus a couple mutexes fit exactly into 8KB on my development machine. Applications
should set the table size using mdb_env_set_maxreaders().
#define CACHELINE 64
The size of a CPU cache line in bytes. We want our lock structures aligned to this size to
avoid false cache line sharing in the lock table. This value works for most CPUs. For
Itanium this should be 128.
#define MDB_LOCK_FORMAT
Value:
((uint32_t) ((MDB_LOCK_VERSION) /* Flags which describe functionality */ + (((MDB_PIDLOCK) != 0) << 16)))
Lockfile format signature: version, features and field layout
Author
Generated automatically by Doxygen for MDB from the source code.