Question

Hello
I would like to know the best way to implement concurrency control in 3 tier application?
May first thought is:

1. A client wants to edit a record from a dataset.
2. send a request to the server asking a lock on that record
3. the server accepts/denies the edit request based on lock table

Based on this scenario the locks should have a reference to both the record locked and client using that record.
The client has to send periodic keep alive messages to the server. The keep alive is used to free locked records in case we lost the client in meddle of editing operation.

I will be using Delphi with datasnap. Maybe this is a novice question but I have to ask!!

Answer 1

I’m building on jachguate’s Optimistic Concurrency Control answer to answer a question posed in comments.

I prefer to use OCC wherever I can because the implementation is easier. I’m going to talk about a three tier app using an object persistence framework. There are three levels to my prferred scheme:

1. row or object level control, where a unique version ID is stored on each object. If you try to update the object the version id is automatically changed. If your version id doesn’t match what’s already there your update fails.

2. field or column level locking. You send a complete copy of the original object as well as the updated one. Each field in your update has the actual and old values compared before the new value is applied. It’s possible to ask the user to resolve the conflicts rather than discarding them, but this becomes messy as the amount of data in the commit increases.

3. pessimistic locking. Each object has a lock owner which is usually null (the object is not locked). When you want to edit the object you first lock it. The problem here is that locks need to be tidied up and the business rules around that can be ugly (what timeout is desirable).

The advantage of this is that most of the time the low-cost OCC path is taken. For things that happen a lot but with low contention the benefits are significant. Think of product tracking in a warehouse – products move all the time, but very rarely do identical items move at the same time, and when they do resolving is easy (quantity left = original less my removal and your removal). For the complex case where (say) a product is relocated it probably makes sense to lock the product while it’s in transit (because that mirrors the physical situation).

When you do have to fall back to locking, it’s often useful to be able to notify both users and have a communication channel. At least notify the user who wants the lock when it’s available, preferably allow them to send a message to the lock holder and possibly even allow them to force the lock. Then notify the lock loser that “Jo Smith has taken you lock, you lose your changes”. Let office politics sort that one out 🙂

I usually drive the fallback process by user complaints rather than bug reports. If users are complaining that they lose their edits too often in a particular process, change it. If users complain that records are locked too often, you will have to refactor your object mappings to increase lock granularity or make business process changes.