3 Using JMS/XLA for Event Management

How XLA reads records from the transaction log

As applications modify a database, TimesTen generates transaction log records that describe the changes made to the data and other events such as transaction commits.

New transaction log records are always written to the end of the transaction log buffer as they are generated. Transaction log records are periodically flushed in batches from the log buffer in memory to transaction log files on disk.

Applications can use XLA to monitor the transaction log for changes to the database. XLA reads through the transaction log, filters the log records, and delivers XLA applications with a list of transaction records that contain the changes to the tables and columns of interest.

XLA sorts the records into discrete transactions. If multiple applications are updating the database simultaneously, transaction log records from the different applications are interleaved in the transaction log.

XLA transparently extracts all transaction log records associated with a particular transaction and delivers them in a contiguous list to the application.

Only the records for committed transactions are returned. They are returned in the order in which their final commit record appears in the transaction log. XLA filters out records associated with changes to the database that have not yet committed.

If a change is made but then rolled back, XLA does not deliver the records for the aborted transaction to the application.

Consider the example transaction log illustrated in Figure 3-1 and Example 3-1 that follow, which illustrate most of these basic XLA concepts.

Figure 3-1 Records extracted from the transaction log

Description of "Figure 3-1 Records extracted from the transaction log"

XLA and materialized views

You can use XLA to track changes to both tables and materialized views. A materialized view provides a single source from which you can track changes to selected rows and columns in multiple detail tables. Without a materialized view, the XLA application would have to monitor and filter the update records from all of the detail tables, including records reflecting updates to rows and columns of no interest to the application.

In general, there are no operational differences between the XLA mechanisms used to track changes to a table or a materialized view. However, for asynchronous materialized views, be aware that the order of XLA notifications for an asynchronous view is not necessarily the same as it would be for the associated detail tables, or the same as it would be for a synchronous view. For example, if there are two inserts to a detail table, they may be done in the opposite order in the asynchronous materialized view. Furthermore, updates may be reported by XLA as a delete followed by an insert, and multiple operations (such as multiple inserts or multiple deletes) may be combined into a single operation. Applications that depend on precise ordering should not use asynchronous materialized views.

For more information about materialized views, see the following:

• "CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW" in Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database SQL Reference

• "Understanding materialized views" in Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database Operations Guide

XLA bookmarks

An XLA bookmark marks the read position of an XLA subscriber application in the transaction log. Bookmarks facilitate durable subscriptions, enabling an application to disconnect from a topic and then reconnect to continue receiving updates where it left off.

The rest of this section covers the following:

• How bookmarks work

• Replicated bookmarks

• XLA bookmarks and transaction log holds

JMS/XLA configuration file and topics

To connect to XLA, establish a connection to a JMS Topic object that corresponds to a particular database. The JMS/XLA configuration file provides the mapping between topic names and databases.

You can specify a replicated bookmark by setting replicatedBookmark="yes" in the <topic> element when you specify the topic. The default setting is "no". Also see "XLA bookmarks".

By default, JMS/XLA looks for a configuration file named jmsxla.xml in the current working directory. If you want to use another name or location for the file, you must specify it as part of the environment variable in the InitialContext class and add the location to the classpath.

Hashtable env = new Hashtable();
env.put(Context.INITIAL_CONTEXT_FACTORY,
  "com.timesten.dataserver.jmsxla.SimpleInitialContextFactory");
env.put(XlaConstants.CONFIG_FILE_NAME, "/newlocation.xml");
InitialContext ic = new InitialContext(env);

env.put(XlaConstants.CONFIG_FILE_NAME,
"/com/mycompany/myapplication/deepinside.xml");

<xlaconfig>
  <topics>
    <topic name="DemoDataStore"
      connectionString="DSN=TestDB"
      xlaPrefetch="100" />
  </topics>
</xlaconfig>

<xlaconfig>
  <topics>
    <topic name="DemoDataStore"
      connectionString="DSN=TestDB"
      xlaPrefetch="100" replicatedBookmark="yes" />
  </topics>
</xlaconfig>

XLA updates

Applications receive XLA updates as JMS MapMessage objects. A MapMessage object contains a set of typed name and value pairs that correspond to the fields in an XLA update header.

You can access the message fields using the MapMessage getter methods. The getMapNames() method returns an Enumeration object that contains the names of all of the fields in the message. You can retrieve individual fields from the message by name. All reserved field names begin with two underscores, for example __TYPE.

All update messages have a __TYPE field that indicates what type of update the message contains. The types are specified as integer values. As a convenience, you can use the constants defined in com.timesten.dataserver.jmsxla.XlaConstants to compare against the integer types. The supported types are described in Table 3-1.

For more information about the contents of an XLA update message, see "JMS/XLA MapMessage contents".

XLA acknowledgment modes

The XLA acknowledgment mechanism is designed to ensure that an application has not only received a message, but has successfully processed it. Acknowledging an update permanently resets the application XLA bookmark to the last record that was read. This prevents previously returned records from being reread, ensuring that an application receives only new batches of records if the bookmark is reused when an application reconnects to XLA.

JMS/XLA can automatically acknowledge XLA update messages, or applications can choose to acknowledge messages explicitly. You specify how updates are to be acknowledged when you create the Session object.

JMS/XLA supports three acknowledgment modes:

• AUTO_ACKNOWLEDGE: In this mode, updates are automatically acknowledged as you receive them. Each message is delivered only once. Duplicate messages are not sent, so messages might be lost if there is an application failure. Messages are always delivered and acknowledged individually, so JMS/XLA does not prefetch multiple records. The xlaprefetch attribute in the topic is ignored.

• DUPS_OK_ACKNOWLEDGE: In this mode, updates are automatically acknowledged, but duplicate messages might be delivered when there is an application failure. JMS/XLA prefetches records according to the xlaprefetch attribute specified for the topic and sends an acknowledgment when the last record in a prefetched block is read. If the application fails before reading all of the prefetched records, all of the records in the block are presented to the application it restarts.

  See "JMS/XLA configuration file and topics" for examples setting xlaprefetch.

• CLIENT_ACKNOWLEDGE: In this mode, applications are responsible for acknowledging receipt of update messages by calling acknowledge() on the MapMessage instance. JMS/XLA prefetches records according to the xlaprefetch attribute specified for the topic.

The following example sets the acknowledgment mode:

Session session = connection.createSession (false, Session.CLIENT_ACKNOWLEDGE);

Also see "Reduce frequency of update acknowledgments".

Access control impact on XLA

"Considering TimesTen features for access control" provides a brief overview of how TimesTen access control affects operations in the database. Access control impacts XLA, as follows:

• Any XLA functionality requires the system privilege XLA. This includes connecting to TimesTen (which also requires the CREATE SESSION privilege) as an XLA reader and executing the TimesTen XLA built-in procedures ttXlaBookmarkCreate, ttXlaBookmarkDelete, ttXlaSubscribe, and ttXlaUnsubscribe, all of which are documented in "Built-In Procedures" in Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database Reference.

• A user with the XLA privilege has capabilities equivalent to the SELECT ANY TABLE, SELECT ANY VIEW, and SELECT ANY SEQUENCE system privileges.

XLA limitations

Be aware of the following XLA limitations when you use TimesTen JMS/XLA:

• JMS/XLA is available on all platforms supported by TimesTen. However, XLA does not support data transfer between different platforms or between 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the same platform.

• JMS/XLA support for LOBs is limited. See "Monitoring tables for updates" for information.

• JMS/XLA does not support applications linked with a driver manager library or the client/server library.

• An XLA reader cannot subscribe to a table that uses in-memory columnar compression.

• For autorefresh cache groups, the change-tracking trigger on Oracle Database does not have column-level resolution. (To have that would be very expensive.) Therefore the autorefresh feature updates all the columns in the row, and XLA can only report that all the columns have changed, even if data did not actually change in all columns.

Closing the connection

To close the connection to XLA, call close() on the Connection object.

After a connection has been closed, any attempt to use it, its sessions, or its subscribers results in an IllegalStateException error. You can continue to use messages received through the connection, but you cannot call the acknowledge() method on the received message after the connection is closed.

Deleting bookmarks

Deleting XLA bookmarks during shutdown is optional. Deleting a bookmark enables the disk space associated with any unread update records in the transaction log to be freed.

If you do not delete the bookmark, it can be reused by a durable subscriber. If the bookmark is available when a durable subscriber reconnects, the subscriber receives all unacknowledged updates published since the previous connection was terminated. Keep in mind that when a bookmark exists with no application reading from it, the transaction log continues to grow and the amount of disk space consumed by your database increases.

To delete a bookmark, you can simply call unsubscribe() on the JMS Session, which invokes the ttXlaBookmarkDelete built-in procedure to remove the XLA bookmark.

Unsubscribing from a table

To turn off XLA publishing for a table, use the ttXlaUnsubscribe built-in procedure. If you use ttXlaSubscribe to enable XLA publishing for a table, use ttXlaUnsubscribe to unsubscribe from the table when shutting down your application.

When you unsubscribe from a table, specify the name of the table and the name of the bookmark used to track the table:

ttXlaUnsubscribe(user.table, mybookmark)

The following example calls ttXlaUnSubscribe through a CallableStatement object.

Connection con;
CallableStatement cStmt;
...
cStmt = con.prepareCall("{call ttXlaUnSubscribe(user.table, mybookmark)}");
cStmt.execute();

For more information about using TimesTen built-in procedures in a Java application, see "Using CALL to execute procedures and functions".

Applying JMS/XLA messages to a target database

The source database generates JMS/XLA messages. To apply the messages to a target database, you must extract the XLA descriptor from them. Use the MapMessage interface to extract the update descriptor:

MapMessage message;
/*
 *...other code
 */
try {
  byte[]updateMessage=
    mapMessage.getBytes(XlaConstants.UPDATE_DESCRIPTOR_FIELD);
}
catch (JMSException jex){
/*
 *...other code
 */
}

The target database may reside on a different system from the source database. The update descriptor is returned as a byte array and can be serialized for network transmission.

You must create a target database object that represents the target database so you can apply the objects from the source database. You can create a target database object named myTargetDataStore as an instance of the TargetDataStoreImpl class. For example:

TargetDataStore myTargetDataStore=
   new TargetDataStoreImpl("DSN=sampleDSN");

Apply messages to myTargetDataStore by using the TargetDataStore method apply(). For example:

myTargetDataStore.apply(updateDescriptor);

By default, TimesTen checks for conflicts on the target database before applying the update. If the target database has information that is later than the update, TargetDataStore throws an exception. If you do not want TimesTen to check for conflicts, use the TargetDataStore method setUpdateConflictCheckFlag() to change the behavior.

By default, TimesTen commits the update to the database based on commit flags and transaction boundaries contained in the update descriptor. If you want the application to perform manual commits instead, use the setAutoCommitFlag() method to change the autocommit flag. To perform a manual commit on myTargetDataStore, use the following command:

myTargetDataStore.commit();

You can perform a rollback if errors occur during the application of the update. Use the following command for myTargetDataStore:

myTargetDataStore.rollback();

Close myTargetDataStore by using the following command:

myTargetDataStore.close();

See "JMS/XLA replication API" for more information about the TargetDataStore interface.

TargetDataStore error recovery

Invoking TargetDataStore can yield transient and permanent errors.

TargetDataStore methods return a nonzero value when transient errors occur. The application can retry the operation and is responsible for monitoring update descriptors that must be reapplied. For more information about transient XLA errors, see "Handling XLA errors" in Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database C Developer's Guide.

TargetDataStore methods return a JMSException object for permanent errors. If the application receives a permanent error, it should verify that the database is valid. If the database is invalid, the target database object should be closed and a new one should be created. Other types of permanent errors may require manual intervention.

The following example shows how to recover errors from a TargetDataStore object.

TargetDataStore theTargetDataStore;
byte[] updateDescriptor;
int rc;

// Other code
try {
  ...
  if ( (rc = theTargetDataStore.apply(updateDescriptor) ) == 0 ) {
    // Apply successful.
  }
  else {
    // Transient error. Retry later.
  }
 }
catch (JMSException jex) {
  if (theTargetDataStore.isDataStoreValid() ) {
    // Database valid; permanent error that may need Administrator intervention.
  }
  else {
    try {
      theTargetDataStore.close();
  }
  catch (JMSException closeEx) {
    // Close errors are not usual. This may need Administrator intervention.
  }
}