Shahzad Bhatti Welcome to my ramblings and rants!

September 30, 2016

Review of “Simple architecture for complex enterprises”

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 11:24 am

“Simple architecture for complex enterprises” focuses on tackling complexity in IT systems. There are a number of methodologies such as Zachman, TOGAF and EA but they don’t address how to manage complexity. The author shares following concerns when implementing an enterprise architecture:

  • Unreliable Enterprise Information – when enterprise cannot access or trust its information
  • Untimely Enterprise Information – when reliable information is not available in a timely fashion.
  • New Projects Underway – when building a new complex IT project without understanding its relationship to the business processes.
  • New Companies Being Acquired
  • Enterprise Wants to Spin Off Unit
  • Need to Identify Outsourcing Opportunities
  • Regulatory Requirements
  • Need to Automate Relationships with Internal Partners
  • Need to Automate Relationships with Customers
  • Poor Relationship Between IT and Business Units
  • Poor Interoperability of IT Systems
  • IT Systems Unmanageable – when IT systems are built piecemeal and patched together.

The author defines enterprise architecture as:

“An enterprise architecture is a description of the goals of an organization, how these goals are realized by business processes, and how these business processes can be better served through technology.”

The author asserts need for planning when building enterprise IT systems and argues that complexity hinders success of these systems and cites several examples from Government and business industries. The author defines the Zachman framework for organizing architecture artifacts and design documents. John Zachman proposed six descriptive foci: data, function, network, people, time and motivation in the framework.

The author explains that Zachman framework does not address complexity of the systems. Next, author explains TOGAF (The Open Group Achitecture Framework) that has four categories:

  • Business architecture – business processes
  • Application architecture
  • Data architecture
  • Technical architecture – hardware / software infrastructure

TOGAF defines ADM (Architecture Development Method) as a recipe for creating architecture.  The author considers TOGAF as a process instead of framework that can complement Zachman. TOGAF defines following levels of enterprise continuum:

  • enterprise continuum
  • foundation architectures
  • common system architectures
  • industry architectures
  • organization architectures (ADM)

TOGAF defines knowledge bases such as TRM (Technical Reference Model) and SIB (Standards Information Base). The ADM defines following phases:

  • Phase: Prelim – framework and principles
  • Phase: A – architecture vision (statement of architecture work, architecture vision)
  • Phase: B – business architecture (input frame stakeholders to get baseline and business objectives)
  • Phase: C – information system architectures (baseline data architecture, review principles, models, data architecture)
  • Phase: D – technology architecture – infrastructure
  • Phase: E – opportunities and solutions
  • Phase: F – migration planning
  • Phase: G – implementation governance
  • Phase: H – architecture change management and then it goes back to Phase A.

TOGAF also lacks complexity management and the author then explains The Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) that includes reference models for business, service, components, technical and data. FEA organizes EA into segments of business functionality and enterprise services. FEA creates five reference models:

  • The Business Reference Model (BRM) – business view
  • The Component Reference Model (CRM)
  • The Technical Reference Model (TRM)
  • The Data Reference Model
  • The Performance Reference Model

In chapter two, the author explains how complexity affects system, e.g. a Rubik Cube of 2 x 2 x 2 dimensions has 8 interior cubes and 3.7 x 10^6 permutations but a Rubik Cube of 4 x 4 x 4 dimensions has 64 interior cubes and 7.4 x 10^45 permutations. The relative complexity of 4 x 4 x 4 dimensions Rubik Cube is much higher than Rubik Cube of 2 x 2 x 2 dimensions and the author argues that by partitioning 4 x 4 x 4 Rubik Cube into eight 2 x 2 x 2 Rubik Cube, you can lower its complexity. The author defines following five laws of partitions:

  • Partitions must be true partitions
  • Partition definitions must be appropriate (e.g. organizing clothing store by color may not be helpful to customers)
  • Partition subset numbers must be appropriate
  • Partition subset sizes must be roughly equal
  • Subset interactions must be minimal and well defined

Further, author suggests simplification to reduce complexity when partitioning by removing partition subsets along with their associated items and removal of other items from one or more partition subsets, leaving the subsets themselves in place. The process of partitioning can be done iteratively by choosing one of the partition subsets and simplifying it.  The author narrates story of Jon Boyd who came with the iterative process: observe, orient, plan, act (OOPA) when he was observing how pilots used aircrafts in dogfights at the Air Force. Also, he observed that faster you iterate on OOPA, better your chances of winning the dogfight.

In chapter three, the author shows how mathematics can be used for partitioning. He describes the number of system states as the best measure of complexity and relative complexity of two systems is ratio of the number of states in those systems. For example, a system with two variables, each taking six states can take 6^2 states. i.e,

C = S^v where C is the complexity, V is the number of variables and S is the number of significant states on average.

In business process, the number of paths and decision points within each path is the best measure of complexity, i.e.,

O = P^d where D is the number of decision points and P is the number of paths for each decision points and O is outcome.

The author introduces concept of homomorphism where observing one system make prediction on another system, e.g.   relationships between dice systems, software systems and business processes as homomorphic. A system with two six-sided dice has 36 possible states (P^d or 6^2). However, we can reduce number of states by dividing dices into multiple buckets, e.g. two dices with each bucket has 12 states instead of 36. The general formula for the number of states of B buckets with D dices and F faces per dice:

B * F^d

This chapter describes concept of equivalence relations with following properties:

  • E(a, a) – always true — reflexivity
  • E(a, b) implies E(b, a) — symmetry
  • E(a, b) and E(b, c) implies E(a, c) — transitivity

In chapter four, the author explains simple iterative partitions (SIP) to create a diagrammatic overview of the enterprise system that focus on what enterprise does (as opposed to how). The SIP starts with an autonomous business capability (ABC) that represents an equivalence class or one of the set that make up the partition. The ABC model includes process component and technology component including relationships for implementation and deployment. In addition to implementation and deployment, author adds ABC type that is used as a category of ABC such as human resources. These types can also be defined in hierarchical fashion and different implementations of same ABC types are considered siblings. The implementations can also be composed so that one ABC is part of another ABC. Another type of relationship is partner relationships at implementation or deployment levels where one ABC may create information request, information broadcast or work request.

In chapter five, author explains SIP process that has following goals:

  • Complexity control
  • Logic-based decisions
  • Value-driven deliverables
  • Reproducible results
  • Verifiable architectures
  • Flexible methodology

The SIP process consists of following six primary phases:

<------Preliminary------>   <--------------Preparatory------------------->   <------Iteration------>
Phase-0       Phase-1       Phase-2        Phase-3          Phase-4                 Phase-5
Evaluation    Preparation   Partitioning   Simplification   Prioritization          Iteration

The phase-0 (enterprise architecture evaluation) addresses following issue:

  • Unreliable enterprise information
  • Untimely enterprise information
  • New complex projects underway
  • New companies being acquired
  • Enterprise wants to spin off unit
  • Need to identify outsourcing opportunities
  • Regulatory requirements
  • Need to automate relationships with external partners
  • Need to automate relationships with customers
  • Poor relationships between IT and business units
  • Poor interoperability of IT systems
  • IT systems unmanageable

The phase-1 (SIP preparation) has following deliverables:

  • Audit of organizational readiness
  • Training
  • Governance model
  • SIP blend
  • Enterprise-specific tools

The phase-2 (partitioning) decomposes enterprise into ABC (discrete autonomous business capability) units. The phase-3 (partition simplification) defines five laws of partitions:

  • Partitions must be true partitions
  • Partition definitions must be appropriate
  • Partition numbers must be appropriate
  • Partition sizes must be roughly equal
  • Partition interactions must be minimal and well defined.

The phase-4 (ABC prioritization) uses value graph analysis to estimate potential payoff and risk. The value graph analysis addresses following factors:

  • Market drivers
  • Cost
  • Organizational risk
  • Technical risk
  • Financial value
  • Organizational preparedness
  • Team readiness
  • Status quo

The phase-5 (ABC iteration) uses iterative approach to simplify architecture.

The chapter six describes NPfit project as a case study in complexity. The NPfit promised integrated system connecting every patient, physician, laboratory, pharmacy and healthcare in the UK. Its infrastructure provided new national network, directory services, care records service (CRS). NPfit is split into five regional groups of patients and it allowed appointment to any facility, prescription fulfillment, and picture archiving. Despite huge budget of $9.8 billion dollars, there were several concerns such as failure to communicate, monolithic approach, stifling of innovation, lack of record confidentiality and quality of shared data. The SIP approach would have helped, e.g. phase-1 audits organizational readiness, training and partitioning. The phase-2 would have addressed complexity dropped multiple regional implementations. The phase-3 would have simplified partitions into subsets such as patient registration, appointment booking, prescriptions, patient records, and lab tests.

The chapter seven focuses on guarding boundaries in technical boundaries. For example two systems may communicate via RPC, shared databases or data access layer but it suggests service-oriented-architecture (SOA) for interoperability for better scalability. The author suggests use of guards or envoy entity for handling outgoing or incoming messages to the system. It defines following rules to encapsulate the software for a given ABC:

  • Autonomy
  • Explicit boundaries
  • Partitioning of functionality
  • Dependencies defined by policy
  • Asynchronicity
  • Partitioning of data
  • No cross-fortress transactions
  • Single-point security
  • Inside trust
  • Keep it simple

The chapter eight summarizes the book and it explains why complexity is the real enemy and how simplicity pays. It reiterates how SIP architecture can simplify architecture by partitioning system into ABC units.

February 6, 2016

Building a Generic Data Service

Filed under: Web Services — admin @ 10:44 pm

As REST based Micro-Services have become prevalent, I often find that web and mobile clients have to connect to different services for gathering data. You may have to call dozens of services to display data on a single screen or page. Also, you may only need subset of data from each service but you still have to pay for the bandwidth and parsing cost.

I created a new Java framework PlexDataProviders for aggregating and querying data from various underlying sources, which can be used to build a general-purpose data service. PlexDataProviders is a light-weight Java framework that abstract access to various data providers such as databases, files, web services, etc. It allows aggregation of data from various data providers.

The PlexDataProviders framework is divided into two components:

  • Data Provider – This component defines interfaces that are implemented to access data sources such as database or web services.
  • Query Engine – This component is used for querying and aggregating data.

The query engine can determine dependency between providers and it also allow you to use output of one of the data provider as input to another data provider. For example, let’s assume:

  • data-provider A requires input-a1, input-a2 and produces output-a1, output-a2
  • data-provider B requires input-b1 and output-a1 and produces output-b1, output-b2

Then you can pass input-a1, input-a2 to the query engine and request output-a1, output-a2, output-b1, output-b2 output data fields.

Benefits

PlexDataProviders provides offers following benefits:

  • It provides a unified way to search data and abstracts integration to underlying data sources.
  • It helps simplifying client side logic as they can use a single data service to query all data instead of using multiple data services.
  • This also help with managing end-points as you only a single end-point instead of connecting to multiple web services.
  • As clients can specify the data they need, this helps with payload size and network bandwidth.
  • The clients only need to create a single data parser so it keeps JSON parsing logic simple.
  • As PlexDataProviders supports multi-threading, it also helps with latency of the data fetch requests.
  • It partial failure so that a failure in a single data provider doesn’t effect other data providers and the data service can still return partial results. User
  • It supports timeout so that clients can receive available data that completes in given timeout interval

Data Structure

Following are primary data structures:

  • MetaField – This class defines meta information for each data field such as name, kind, type, etc.
  • MetaFieldType – This enum class supports primitive data types supported, i.e.
    • SCALAR_TEXT – simple text
    • SCALAR_INTEGER – integer numbers
    • SCALAR_DECIMAL – decimal numbers
    • SCALAR_DATE – dates
    • SCALAR_BOOLEAN – boolean
    • VECTOR_TEXT – array of text
    • VECTOR_INTEGER – array of integers
    • VECTOR_DECIMAL – array of decimals
    • VECTOR_DATE – array of dates
    • VECTOR_BOOLEAN – array of boolean
    • BINARY – binary data
    • ROWSET – nested data rowsets
  • Metadata – This class defines a set of MetaFields used in DataRow/DataRowSet
  • DataRow – This class abstracts a row of data fields
  • DataRowSet – This class abstracts a set of rows

PlexDataProviders also supports nested structures where a data field in DataRow can be instance of DataRowSet.

Adding a Data Provider

The data provider implements following two interfaces

[codesyntax lang="java"]
public interface DataProducer {
    void produce(DataRowSet requestFields, DataRowSet responseFields,
            QueryConfiguration config) throws DataProviderException;
}
[/codesyntax]

Note that QueryConfiguration defines additional parameters such as:

  • pagination parameters
  • ordering/grouping
  • filtering parameters
  • timeout parameters

The timeout parameter can be used to return all available data within defined time, e.g. query engine may invoke underlying data providers in multiple threads and if underlying query takes a long time then it would return available data.

[codesyntax lang="java"]
public interface DataProvider extends DataProducer, Comparable<DataProvider> {
    String getName();

    int getRank();

    Metadata getMandatoryRequestMetadata();

    Metadata getOptionalRequestMetadata();

    Metadata getResponseMetadata();

    TaskGranularity getTaskGranularity();
}
[/codesyntax]

Each provider defines name, rank (or priority when matching for best provider), set of mandatory/optional input and output data fields. The data provider can also define granularity as coarse grain or fine grain and the implementation may execute those providers on different threads.

PlexDataProviders also provides interfaces for converting data from domain objects to DataRowSet. Here is an example of provider implementation:

[codesyntax lang="java"]
public class SecuritiesBySymbolsProvider extends BaseProvider {
    private static Metadata parameterMeta = Metadata.from(SharedMeta.symbol);
    private static Metadata optionalMeta = Metadata.from();
    private static SecurityMarshaller marshaller = new SecurityMarshaller();

    public SecuritiesBySymbolsProvider() {
        super("SecuritiesBySymbolsProvider", parameterMeta, optionalMeta,
                marshaller.getMetadata());
    }

    @Override
    public void produce(DataRowSet parameter, DataRowSet response,
            QueryConfiguration config) throws DataProviderException {
        final String id = parameter.getValueAsText(SharedMeta.symbol, 0);
        Map<String, Object> criteria = new HashMap<>();
        criteria.put("symbol", id.toUpperCase());
        Collection<Security> securities = DaoLocator.securityDao.query(criteria);
        DataRowSet rowset = marshaller.marshal(securities);
        addRowSet(response, rowset, 0);
    }
}
[/codesyntax]

Typically, you will create data-provider for each different kind of query that you want to support. Each data provider specifies set of required and optional data fields that can be used to generate output data fields.

Here is an example of marshalling data from Securty domain objects to DataRowSet:

[codesyntax lang="java"]
public DataRowSet marshal(Security security) {
    DataRowSet rowset = new DataRowSet(responseMeta);
    marshal(rowset, security, 0);
    return rowset;
}

public DataRowSet marshal(Collection<Security> securities) {
    DataRowSet rowset = new DataRowSet(responseMeta);
    for (Security security : securities) {
        marshal(rowset, security, rowset.size());
    }
    return rowset;
}
...
[/codesyntax]

PlexDataProviders provides DataProviderLocator interface for registering and looking up provider, e.g.

[codesyntax lang="java"]
public interface DataProviderLocator {
    void register(DataProvider provider);

    Collection<DataProvider> locate(Metadata requestFields, Metadata responseFields);
...
}
[/codesyntax]

PlexDataProviders comes with a small application that provides data services by implementing various data providers. It uses PlexService framework for defining the service, e.g.

[codesyntax lang="java"]
@WebService
@Path("/data")
public class DataServiceImpl implements DataService {
    private DataProviderLocator dataProviderLocator = new DataProviderLocatorImpl();
    private QueryEngine queryEngine = new QueryEngineImpl(dataProviderLocator);

    public DataServiceImpl() {
        dataProviderLocator.register(new AccountsByIdsProvider());
        dataProviderLocator.register(new AccountsByUseridProvider());
        dataProviderLocator.register(new CompaniesBySymbolsProvider());
        dataProviderLocator.register(new OrdersByAccountIdsProvider());
        dataProviderLocator.register(new PositionGroupsBySymbolsProvider());
        dataProviderLocator.register(new PositionsBySymbolsProvider());
        dataProviderLocator.register(new QuotesBySymbolsProvider());
        dataProviderLocator.register(new SecuritiesBySymbolsProvider());
        dataProviderLocator.register(new UsersByIdsProvider());
        dataProviderLocator.register(new WatchlistByUserProvider());
        dataProviderLocator.register(new SymbolsProvider());
        dataProviderLocator.register(new UsersProvider());
        dataProviderLocator.register(new SymbolSearchProvider());
    }

    @Override
    @GET
    public DataResponse query(Request webRequest) {
        final DataRequest dataRequest = DataRequest.from(webRequest .getProperties());
        return queryEngine.query(dataRequest);
    }
}
[/codesyntax]

As you can see the data service simply builds DataRequest with input data fields and sends back response back to clients.

Here is an example client that passes a search query data field and requests quote data fields with company details

public void testGetQuoteBySearch() throws Throwable {
    String jsonResp = TestWebUtils.httpGet("http://localhost:" + DEFAULT_PORT
                    + "/data?responseFields=exchange,symbol,quote.bidPrice,quote.askPrice,quote.sales,company.name&symbolQuery=AAPL");
    ...

Note that above request will use three data providers, first it uses SymbolSearchProvider provider to search for matching symbols with given query. It then uses the symbol data field to request company and quote data fields from QuotesBySymbolsProvider and CompaniesBySymbolsProvider. The PlexDataProviders framework will take care of all dependency management for providers.

Here is an example JSON response from the data service:

[codesyntax lang="javascript"]
{
    "queryResponse": {
        "fields": [
            [{
                "symbol": "AAPL_X"
            }, {
                "quote.sales": [
                    [{
                        "symbol": "AAPL_X"
                    }, {
                        "timeOfSale.volume": 56
                    }, {
                        "timeOfSale.exchange": "DOW"
                    }, {
                        "timeOfSale.date": 1455426008762
                    }, {
                        "timeOfSale.price": 69.49132317180353
                    }],
                    [{
                        "symbol": "AAPL_X"
                    }, {
                        "timeOfSale.volume": 54
                    }, {
                        "timeOfSale.exchange": "NYSE"
                    }, {
                        "timeOfSale.date": 1455426008762
                    }, {
                        "timeOfSale.price": 16.677774132458076
                    }],
                    [{
                        "symbol": "AAPL_X"
                    }, {
                        "timeOfSale.volume": 99
                    }, {
                        "timeOfSale.exchange": "NASDAQ"
                    }, {
                        "timeOfSale.date": 1455426008762
                    }, {
                        "timeOfSale.price": 42.17891320885568
                    }],
                    [{
                        "symbol": "AAPL_X"
                    }, {
                        "timeOfSale.volume": 49
                    }, {
                        "timeOfSale.exchange": "DOW"
                    }, {
                        "timeOfSale.date": 1455426008762
                    }, {
                        "timeOfSale.price": 69.61680149649729
                    }],
                    [{
                        "symbol": "AAPL_X"
                    }, {
                        "timeOfSale.volume": 69
                    }, {
                        "timeOfSale.exchange": "NYSE"
                    }, {
                        "timeOfSale.date": 1455426008762
                    }, {
                        "timeOfSale.price": 25.353316897552833
                    }]
                ]
            }, {
                "quote.askPrice": 54.99300665695502
            }, {
                "quote.bidPrice": 26.935682182171643
            }, {
                "exchange": "DOW"
            }, {
                "company.name": "AAPL - name"
            }],
            [{
                "symbol": "AAPL"
            }, {
                "exchange": "NASDAQ"
            }]
        ],
        "errorsByProviderName": {},
        "providers": ["QuotesBySymbolsProvider", "SymbolSearchProvider", "CompaniesBySymbolsProvider"]
    }
}
[/codesyntax] 

PlexDataProviders is available from github and is licensed under liberal MIT license. It also comes with a small sample application for demo purpose. Feel free to send me your suggestions.

 

August 17, 2014

PlexService Overview – a Micro-service framework for defining HTTP/Websockets and JMS based Services

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 9:19 pm

I recently created a new framework PlexService for serving micro-services. which can be accessed by HTTP, Websockets or JMS interfaces. You can choose these different access mechanism by needs of your services. For example, as JMS services are inherently asynchronous, they provide good foundation for building scalable and reactive services. You may choose http stack for implementing REST services or choose websockets for implementing interactive services.

PlexService framework provides provides basic support for encoding POJO objects into JSON for service consumption. The developers define service configuration via annoations to specify gateway types, encoding scheme, end-points, etc.

PlexService provides support of role-based security, where you can specify list of roles who can access each service. The service providers implement how to verify roles, which are then enforced by PlexService framework.

If you implement all services in JMS, you can easily expose them via HTTP or Websockets by configuring web-to-jms bridge. The bridge routes all requests from HTTP/Websockets to JMS and listen for incoming messages, which are then routed back to web clients.

PlexService provides basic metrics such as latency, invocations, errors, etc., which are exposed via JMX interface. PlexService uses jetty for serving web services. The developers provide JMS containers at runtime if required.

Building/Installing

Checkout code using

 git clone git@github.com:bhatti/PlexService.git

Compile and build jar file using

 ./gradlew jar

Copy and add jar file manually in your application.

Defining role-based security

PlexService allows developers to define role-based security, which is invoked when accessing services, e.g.

 public class BuggerRoleAuthorizer implements RoleAuthorizer {
     private final UserRepository userRepository;
 
     public BuggerRoleAuthorizer(UserRepository userRepository) {
       this.userRepository = userRepository;
     }
 
     @Override
       public void authorize(Request request, String[] roles) throws AuthException {
         String sessionId = request.getSessionId();
         User user = userRepository.getUserBySessionId(sessionId);
         if (user == null) {
           throw new AuthException(Constants.SC_UNAUTHORIZED,
               request.getSessionId(), request.getRemoteAddress(),
               "failed to validate session-id");
         }
         for (String role : roles) {
           if (!user.getRoles().contains(role)) {
             throw new AuthException(Constants.SC_UNAUTHORIZED,
                 request.getSessionId(), request.getRemoteAddress(),
                 "failed to match role");
           }
         }
       }
 }

Typically, login-service will store session-id, which is then passed to the implementation of RoleAuthorizer, e.g.

 @ServiceConfig(gateway = GatewayType.HTTP, requestClass = Void.class, endpoint = "/login", method = Method.POST, codec = CodecType.JSON)
 public class LoginService extends AbstractUserService implements RequestHandler {
   public LoginService(UserRepository userRepository) {
     super(userRepository);
   }
 
   @Override
   public void handle(Request request) {
     String username = request.getStringProperty("username");
     String password = request.getStringProperty("password");
 
     User user = userRepository.authenticate(username, password);
     AbstractResponseBuilder responseBuilder = request.getResponseBuilder();
     if (user == null) {
       throw new AuthException(Constants.SC_UNAUTHORIZED,
               request.getSessionId(), request.getRemoteAddress(),
               "failed to authenticate");
     } else {
       responseBuilder.addSessionId(userRepository.getSessionId(user));
       responseBuilder.send(user);
     }   
   }
 }

In above example the session-id is added to response upon successful login, which is then passed for future requests. For http services, you may use cookies to store session-ids, otherwise you would need to pass session-id as a parameter.

Here is how you can invoke login-service from curl:

 
 curl --cookie-jar cookies.txt -v -k -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST "http://127.0.0.1:8181/login?username=erica&password=pass"

which would return:

 
 Content-Type: application/json
 Set-Cookie: PlexSessionID=5 Expires: Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT
 {"id":5,"username":"erica","email":"erica@plexobject.com","roles":["Employee"]}

Defining Services

Defining a REST service for creating a user

Here is how you can a REST service:

@ServiceConfig(gateway = GatewayType.HTTP, requestClass = User.class, 
     rolesAllowed = "Administrator", endpoint = "/users", method = Method.POST, 
     codec = CodecType.JSON)
 public class CreateUserService extends AbstractUserService implements
 RequestHandler {
   public CreateUserService(UserRepository userRepository) {
     super(userRepository);
   }
 
   @Override
     public void handle(Request request) {
       User user = request.getPayload();
       user.validate();
       User saved = userRepository.save(user);
       request.getResponseBuilder().send(saved);
     }
 }

The ServiceConfig annotation defines that this service can be accessed via HTTP at “/users” URI. PlexService will provide encoding from JSON to User object and will ensure that service can be accessed by user who has Administrator role.

Here is how you can invoke this service from curl:

 
 curl --cookie cookies.txt -k -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST "http://127.0.0.1:8181/users" -d "{\"username\":\"david\",\"password\":\"pass\",\"email\":\"david@plexobject.com\",\"roles\":[\"Employee\"]}"

Defining a Web service over Websockets for creating a user

Here is how you can a Websocket based service:

 @ServiceConfig(gateway = GatewayType.WEBSOCKET, requestClass = User.class, 
     rolesAllowed = "Administrator", endpoint = "/users", method = Method.POST, 
     codec = CodecType.JSON)
 public class CreateUserService extends AbstractUserService implements
 RequestHandler {
   public CreateUserService(UserRepository userRepository) {
     super(userRepository);
   }
 
   @Override
     public void handle(Request request) {
       User user = request.getPayload();
       user.validate();
       User saved = userRepository.save(user);
       request.getResponseBuilder().send(saved);
     }
 }

The ServiceConfig annotation defines that this service can be accessed via Websocketat “/users” endpoint. However, as opposed to HTTP based service, this endpoint is not enforced in HTTP request and can be in any format as long it’s unique for a service.

Here is how you can access websocket service from javascript:

 var ws = new WebSocket("ws://127.0.0.1:8181/users");
 ws.onopen = function() {
   var req = {"payload":"", "endpoint":"/login", "method":"POST", "username":"scott", "password":"pass"};
   ws.send(JSON.stringify(req));
 };
 
 ws.onmessage = function (evt) {
   alert("Message: " + evt.data);
 };
 
 ws.onclose = function() {
 };
 
 ws.onerror = function(err) {
 };

Note that websockets are not supported by all browsers and above code will work only supported browsers such as IE 11+, FF 31+, Chrome 36+, etc.

Defining a JMS service for creating a user

Here is how you can create JMS service:

 @ServiceConfig(gateway = GatewayType.JMS, requestClass = User.class, 
       rolesAllowed = "Administrator", endpoint = "queue:{scope}-create-user-service-queue", 
       method = Method.MESSAGE, 
       codec = CodecType.JSON)
 public class CreateUserService extends AbstractUserService implements RequestHandler {
     public CreateUserService(UserRepository userRepository) {
     super(userRepository);
     }
 
     @Override
     public void handle(Request request) {
       User user = request.getPayload();
       user.validate();
       User saved = userRepository.save(user);
       request.getResponseBuilder().send(saved);
     }
 }

Note that the only difference is type of gateway. PlexService also support variables in end-points, which are populated from configurations. For example, you may create scope variable to create different queues/topics for different developers/environments. PlexService will serialize POJO classes into JSON when delivering messages over JMS.

Defining a REST service with parameterized URLs

PlexService allows developers to define URIs for services, that contains variables. These variables are then populated actual requests. These can be used for implementing REST services, e.g.

 @ServiceConfig(gateway = GatewayType.HTTP, requestClass = BugReport.class, 
       rolesAllowed = "Employee", endpoint = "/projects/{projectId}/bugreports", 
       method = Method.POST, 
       codec = CodecType.JSON)
 public class CreateBugReportService extends AbstractBugReportService implements RequestHandler {
     public CreateBugReportService(BugReportRepository bugReportRepository,
         UserRepository userRepository) {
       super(bugReportRepository, userRepository);
     }
 
     @Override
       public void handle(Request request) {
         BugReport report = request.getPayload();
         report.validate();
         BugReport saved = bugReportRepository.save(report);
         request.getResponseBuilder().send(saved);
       }
 }

Here is an example of invoking this service from curl:

 
 curl --cookie cookies.txt -k -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST "http://127.0.0.1:8181/projects/2/bugreports" -d "{\"title\":\"As an administrator, I would like to assign roles to users so that they can perform required actions.\",\"description\":\"As an administrator, I would like to assign roles to users so that they can perform required actions.\",\"bugNumber\":\"story-201\",\"assignedTo\":\"mike\",\"developedBy\":\"mike\"}"
 

Using variables with Websocket based service

You can also create variables for websocket’s endpoints similar to JMS, which are initialized from parameters.

 @ServiceConfig(gateway = GatewayType.WEBSOCKET, requestClass = BugReport.class, 
       rolesAllowed = "Employee", endpoint = "{variable}-create-bugreport-service-channel", 
       method = Method.MESSAGE, codec = CodecType.JSON)
 public class CreateBugReportService extends AbstractBugReportService implements
         RequestHandler {
     public CreateBugReportService(BugReportRepository bugReportRepository,
             UserRepository userRepository) {
         super(bugReportRepository, userRepository);
     }
 
     @Override
     public void handle(Request request) {
         BugReport report = request.getPayload();
         report.validate();
         BugReport saved = bugReportRepository.save(report);
         request.getResponseBuilder().send(saved);
     }
 
 }

Here is another example of consuming websocket based service from javascript:

 var ws = new WebSocket("ws://127.0.0.1:8181/users");
 ws.onopen = function() {
   var req = {"payload":{"title":"my title", "description":"my description","bugNumber":"story-201", "assignedTo":"mike", "developedBy":"mike"},"PlexSessionID":"4", "endpoint":"/projects/2/bugreports/2/assign", "method":"POST"};
   ws.send(JSON.stringify(req));
 };
 
 ws.onmessage = function (evt) {
   alert("Message: " + evt.data);
 };
 
 ws.onclose = function() {
 };
 
 ws.onerror = function(err) {
 };

Defining a REST service for querying users

Here is an example REST service, which uses GET request to query users:

   @ServiceConfig(gateway = GatewayType.HTTP, requestClass = User.class, 
       rolesAllowed = "Administrator", endpoint = "/users", method = Method.GET, 
       codec = CodecType.JSON)
   public class QueryUserService extends AbstractUserService implements
   RequestHandler {
     public QueryUserService(UserRepository userRepository) {
       super(userRepository);
     }
     @Override
       public void handle(Request request) {
         Collection<User> users = userRepository.getAll(new Predicate<User>() {
             @Override
             public boolean accept(User u) {
             return true;
             }
             });
         request.getResponseBuilder().send(users);
       }
   }

Here is how you can invoke this service from curl

 
 curl --cookie cookies.txt -k -H "Content-Type: application/json" "http://127.0.0.1:8181/users"   

which would return json array such as:

 
 [{"id":2,"username":"alex","email":"alex@plexobject.com","roles":["Employee"]},{"id":3,"username":"jeff","email":"jeff@plexobject.com","roles":["Employee","Manager"]},{"id":4,"username":"scott","email":"scott@plexobject.com","roles":["Employee","Administrator","Manager"]},{"id":5,"username":"erica","email":"erica@plexobject.com","roles":["Employee"]}]

Defining a JMS service for querying users

Here is an example of defining query users via JMS service:

 @ServiceConfig(gateway = GatewayType.JMS, requestClass = User.class, 
       rolesAllowed = "Administrator", endpoint = "queue:{scope}-query-user-service-queue", 
       method = Method.MESSAGE, 
       codec = CodecType.JSON)
 public class QueryUserService extends AbstractUserService implements RequestHandler {
     public QueryUserService(UserRepository userRepository) {
       super(userRepository);
     }
     @Override
       public void handle(Request request) {
         Collection<User> users = userRepository.getAll(new Predicate<User>() {
             @Override
             public boolean accept(User u) {
             return true;
             }
             });
         request.getResponseBuilder().send(users);
       }
 }

The end-point can contain variables such as scope that are initialized from configuration.

Registering services and starting service container

You will need to register services with ServiceRegistry at runtime, which would initialize and start those services, e.g.

 Collection<RequestHandler> services = new HashSet<>();
 services.add(new CreateUserService(userRepository));
 services.add(new UpdateUserService(userRepository));
 services.add(new QueryUserService(userRepository));
 services.add(new DeleteUserService(userRepository));
 services.add(new LoginService(userRepository));
 services.add(new CreateProjectService(projectRepository, userRepository));
 services.add(new UpdateProjectService(projectRepository, userRepository));
 services.add(new QueryProjectService(projectRepository, userRepository));
 services.add(new AddProjectMemberService(projectRepository, userRepository));
 services.add(new RemoveProjectMemberService(projectRepository, userRepository));
 services.add(new CreateBugReportService(bugreportRepository, userRepository));
 services.add(new UpdateBugReportService(bugreportRepository, userRepository));
 services.add(new QueryBugReportService(bugreportRepository, userRepository));
 services.add(new QueryProjectBugReportService(bugreportRepository, userRepository));
 
 services.add(new AssignBugReportService(bugreportRepository, userRepository));
 serviceRegistry = new ServiceRegistry(config, services, new BuggerRoleAuthorizer(userRepository));
 serviceRegistry.start();
 

Creating Http to JMS bridge

You may choose to write all services as JMS and then expose them via HTTP using bridge provided by PlexService, e.g.

   final String mappingJson = IOUtils.toString(new FileInputStream( args[1]));
 Collection<HttpToJmsEntry> entries = new JsonObjectCodec().decode(
     mappingJson, new TypeReference<List<HttpToJmsEntry>>() {
     });
 WebToJmsBridge bridge = new WebToJmsBridge(new Configuration(args[0]), entries, GatewayType.HTTP);
 bridge.startBridge();

Creating Websocket to JMS bridge

Similarly, you may expose JMS services via websockets based transport using the bridge:

 
   final String mappingJson = IOUtils.toString(new FileInputStream( args[1]));
 Collection<HttpToJmsEntry> entries = new JsonObjectCodec().decode(
     mappingJson, new TypeReference<List<HttpToJmsEntry>>() {
     });
 WebToJmsBridge bridge = new WebToJmsBridge(new Configuration(args[0]), entries, GatewayType.WEBSOCKET);
 bridge.startBridge();

Here is JSON configuration for bridge:

[
   {"codecType":"JSON","path":"/projects/{projectId}/bugreports/{id}/assign","method":"POST",
     "destination":"queue:{scope}-assign-bugreport-service-queue","timeoutSecs":30},
   {"codecType":"JSON","path":"/projects/{projectId}/bugreports","method":"GET",
     "destination":"queue:{scope}-query-project-bugreport-service-queue","timeoutSecs":30},
   {"codecType":"JSON","path":"/users","method":"GET",
     "destination":"queue:{scope}-query-user-service-queue","timeoutSecs":30},
   {"codecType":"JSON","path":"/projects","method":"GET",
     "destination":"queue:{scope}-query-projects-service","timeoutSecs":30},
   {"codecType":"JSON","path":"/bugreports","method":"GET",
     "destination":"queue:{scope}-bugreports-service-queue","timeoutSecs":30},
   {"codecType":"JSON","path":"/projects/{id}/membership/add","method":"POST",
     "destination":"queue:{scope}-add-project-member-service-queue","timeoutSecs":30},
   {"codecType":"JSON","path":"/projects/{id}/membership/remove","method":"POST",
     "destination":"queue:{scope}-remove-project-member-service-queue","timeoutSecs":30},
   {"codecType":"JSON","path":"/projects/{projectId}/bugreports","method":"POST",
     "destination":"queue:{scope}-create-bugreport-service-queue","timeoutSecs":30},
   {"codecType":"JSON","path":"/users","method":"POST",
     "destination":"queue:{scope}-create-user-service-queue","timeoutSecs":30},
   {"codecType":"JSON","path":"/projects","method":"POST",
     "destination":"queue:{scope}-create-projects-service-queue","timeoutSecs":30},
   {"codecType":"JSON","path":"/users/{id}","method":"POST",
     "destination":"queue:{scope}-update-user-service-queue","timeoutSecs":30},
   {"codecType":"JSON","path":"/users/{id}/delete","method":"POST",
     "destination":"queue:{scope}-delete-user-service-queue","timeoutSecs":30},
   {"codecType":"JSON","path":"/projects/{id}","method":"POST",
     "destination":"queue:{scope}-update-project-service-queue","timeoutSecs":30},
   {"codecType":"JSON","path":"/projects/{projectId}/bugreports/{id}","method":"POST",
     "destination":"queue:{scope}-update-bugreport-service-queue","timeoutSecs":30},
   {"codecType":"JSON","path":"/login","method":"POST",
     "destination":"queue:{scope}-login-service-queue","timeoutSecs":30}]

Defining a Streaming Quotes Service over Websockets

Suppose you are building a high performance streaming quote service for providing real-time stock quotes, you can easily build it using PlexService framework, e.g.

@ServiceConfig(gateway = GatewayType.WEBSOCKET, requestClass = Void.class, endpoint = "/quotes", method = Method.MESSAGE, codec = CodecType.JSON)
 public class QuoteServer implements RequestHandler {
     public enum Action {
         SUBSCRIBE, UNSUBSCRIBE
     }
 
     static final Logger log = LoggerFactory.getLogger(QuoteServer.class);
 
     private QuoteStreamer quoteStreamer = new QuoteStreamer();
 
     @Override
     public void handle(Request request) {
         String symbol = request.getProperty("symbol");
         String actionVal = request.getProperty("action");
         log.info("Received " + request);
         ValidationException
                 .builder()
                 .assertNonNull(symbol, "undefined_symbol", "symbol",
                         "symbol not specified")
                 .assertNonNull(actionVal, "undefined_action", "action",
                         "action not specified").end();
         Action action = Action.valueOf(actionVal.toUpperCase());
         if (action == Action.SUBSCRIBE) {
             quoteStreamer.add(symbol, request.getResponseBuilder());
         } else {
             quoteStreamer.remove(symbol, request.getResponseBuilder());
         }
     }
 
     public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
         Configuration config = new Configuration(args[0]);
         QuoteServer service = new QuoteServer();
         Collection<RequestHandler> services = new ArrayList<>();
         services.add(new QuoteServer());
         //
         ServiceRegistry serviceRegistry = new ServiceRegistry(config, services, null);
         serviceRegistry.start();
         Thread.currentThread().join();
     }
 }

Above example defines a service that listen to websockets and responds to subscribe or unsubscribe requests from web clients.

You can define mock QuoteStreamer as follows, which periodically sends quotes to all subscribers:

public class QuoteStreamer extends TimerTask {
     private int delay = 1000;
     private Map<String, Collection<ResponseDispatcher>> subscribers = new ConcurrentHashMap<>();
     private QuoteCache quoteCache = new QuoteCache();
     private final Timer timer = new Timer(true);
 
     public QuoteStreamer() {
         timer.schedule(this, delay, delay);
     }
 
     public void add(String symbol, ResponseDispatcher dispatcher) {
         symbol = symbol.toUpperCase();
         synchronized (symbol.intern()) {
             Collection<ResponseDispatcher> dispatchers = subscribers
                     .get(symbol);
             if (dispatchers == null) {
                 dispatchers = new HashSet<ResponseDispatcher>();
                 subscribers.put(symbol, dispatchers);
             }
             dispatchers.add(dispatcher);
         }
     }
 
     public void remove(String symbol, ResponseDispatcher dispatcher) {
         symbol = symbol.toUpperCase();
         synchronized (symbol.intern()) {
             Collection<ResponseDispatcher> dispatchers = subscribers
                     .get(symbol);
             if (dispatchers != null) {
                 dispatchers.remove(dispatcher);
             }
         }
     }
 
     @Override
     public void run() {
         for (Map.Entry<String, Collection<ResponseDispatcher>> e : subscribers
                 .entrySet()) {
             Quote q = quoteCache.getLatestQuote(e.getKey());
             Collection<ResponseDispatcher> dispatchers = new ArrayList<>(
                     e.getValue());
             for (ResponseDispatcher d : dispatchers) {
                 try {
                     d.send(q);
                 } catch (Exception ex) {
                     remove(e.getKey(), d);
                 }
             }
         }
     }
 }

Here is a sample javascript/html client, which allows users to subscribe to different stock symbols:

       var ws = new WebSocket("ws://127.0.0.1:8181/quotes");
       ws.onopen = function() {
       };
       var lasts = {};
       ws.onmessage = function (evt) {
         //console.log(evt.data);
         var quote = JSON.parse(evt.data).payload;
         var d = new Date(quote.timestamp);
         $('#time').text(d.toString());
         $('#company').text(quote.company);
         $('#last').text(quote.last.toFixed(2));
         var prev = lasts[quote.company];
         if (prev != undefined) {
           var change = quote.last - prev;
           if (change >= 0) {
             $('#change').css({'background-color':'green'});
           } else {
             $('#change').css({'background-color':'red'});
           }
           $('#change').text(change.toFixed(2));
         } else {
           $('#change').text('N/A');
         }
         lasts[quote.company] = quote.last;
       };
 
       ws.onclose = function() {
       };
 
       ws.onerror = function(err) {
       };
       function send(payload) {
         $('#input').text(payload);
         ws.send(payload);
       }
       $(document).ready(function() {
         $("#subscribe").click(function() {
           var symbol = $("#symbol").val();
           var req = {"endpoint":"/quotes", "symbol":symbol, "action":"subscribe"};
           send(JSON.stringify(req));
         });
       });
       $(document).ready(function() {
         $("#unsubscribe").click(function() {
           var symbol = $("#symbol").val();                                                                                            
           var req = {"endpoint":"/quotes", "symbol":symbol, "action":"unsubscribe"};
           send(JSON.stringify(req));
         });
       });
    <script>
 
   <body>
     <form>
       Symbol:<input type="text" id="symbol" value="AAPL" size="4" />
       <input type="button" id="subscribe" value="Subscribe"/>
       <input type="button" id="unsubscribe" value="Unsubscribe"/>
     </form>
 
     <br>
 
     <table id="quotes" class="quote" width="600" border="2" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="3">
       <thead>
         <tr>
           <th>Time</th>
           <th>Company</th>
           <th>Last</th>
           <th>Change</th>
         </tr>
       </thead>
       <tbody>
         <tr>
           <td id="time"></td>
           <td id="company"></td>
           <td id="last"></td>
           <td id="change"></td>
         </tr>
       </tbody>
     </table>
   </body>

PlexService includes this sample code, where you can start streaming quote server by running “quote.sh” command and then open quote.html file in your browser.

Using JMX

PlexService uses JMX to expose key metrics and lifecycle methods to start or stop services. You can use jconsole to access the JMX controls, e.g.

 
 jconsole localhost:9191

Summary

PlexService comes a full-fledged sample application under plexsvc-sample folder and you browse JavaDocs to view APIs.

 

April 23, 2014

Implementing Reactive Extensions (RX) using Java 8

Filed under: Java — admin @ 11:52 pm

In my last blog, I described new lambda support in Java 8. In order to try new Java features in more depth, I implemented Reactive extensions in Java 8. In short, reactive extensions allows processing synchronous and asynchronous in data uniform manner. It provides unified interfaces that can be used as an iterator or callback method for asynchronous processing. Though, Microsoft RX library is huge but I only implemented core features and focused on Observable API. Here is brief overview of implementation:

Creating Observable from Collection

Here is how you can create Observable from a collection:

    List<String> names = Arrays.asList("One", "Two", "Three", "Four", "Five"); 
    Observable.from(names).subscribe(System.out::println, 
       Throwable::printStackTrace, () -> System.out.println("done"));
 

In Microsoft’s version of RX, Observable takes an Observer for subscription, which defines three methods: onNext, onError and onCompleted. onNext is invoked to push next element of data, onError is used to notify errors and onCompleted is called when data is all processed. In my implementation, the Observable interface defines two overloaded subscribe method, first takes callback functions for onNext and onError and second method takes three callback functions including onCompleted. I chose to use separate function parameters instead of a single interface so that caller can pass inline lambda functions instead of passing implementation of Observer interface.

Creating Observable from Array of objects

Here is how you can create Observable from stream:

    Observable.from("Erica", "Matt", "John", "Mike").subscribe(System.out::println, 
         Throwable::printStackTrace, () -> System.out.println("done"));
 

Creating Observable from Stream

Here is how you can create Observable from stream:

    Stream<String> names = Stream.of("One", "Two", "Three", "Four", "Five"); 
    // note third argument for onComplete is optional
    Observable.from(names).subscribe(name -> System.out.println(name), 
       error -> error.printStackTrace());
 

Creating Observable from Iterator

Here is how you can create Observable from iterator:

    Stream<String> names = Stream.of("One", "Two", "Three", "Four", "Five"); 
    Observable.from(names.iterator()).subscribe(name -> System.out.println(name), 
       error -> error.printStackTrace());
 

Creating Observable from Spliterator

Here is how you can create Observable from spliterator:

    List<String> names = Arrays.asList("One", "Two", "Three", "Four", "Five"); 
    Observable.from(names.spliterator()).subscribe(System.out::println, 
       Throwable::printStackTrace);
 

Creating Observable from a single object

Here is how you can create Observable from a single object:

    Observable.just("value").subscribe(v -> System.out.println(v), 
       error -> error.printStackTrace());
    // if a single object is collection, it would be treated as a single entity, e.g.
    Observable.just(Arrays.asList(1, 2, 3)).subscribe( num -> System.out.println(num), 
       error -> error.printStackTrace());
 

Creating Observable for an error

Here is how you can create Observable that would return an error:

    Observable.throwing(new Error("test error")).subscribe(System.out::println, 
       error -> System.err.println(error));
    // this will print error 
 

Creating Observable from a consumer function

Here is how you can create Observable that takes user function for invoking onNext, onError and onCompleted function:

    Observable.create(observer -> {
       for (String name : names) {
          observer.onNext(name);
       }
       observer.onCompleted();
    }).subscribe(System.out::println, Throwable::printStackTrace);
 

Creating Observable from range

Here is how you can create Observable from stream that would create numbers from start to end range exclusively.

    // Creates range of numbers starting at from until it reaches to exclusively
    Observable.range(4, 8).subscribe(num -> System.out.println(num), 
       error -> error.printStackTrace());
    // will print 4, 5, 6, 7
 

Creating empty Observable

It would call onCompleted right away:

    Observable.empty().subscribe(System.out::println, 
       Throwable::printStackTrace, () -> System.out.println("Completed"));
 

Creating never Observable

It would not call any of call back methods:

    Observable.never().subscribe(System.out::println, Throwable::printStackTrace);
 
 

Changing Scheduler

By default Observable notifies observer asynchronously using thread-pool scheduler but you can change default scheduler as follows:

Using thread-pool scheduler

    Stream<String> names = Stream.of("One", "Two", "Three", "Four", "Five"); 
    Observable.from(names).subscribeOn(Scheduler.getThreadPoolScheduler()).
       subscribe(System.out::println, Throwable::printStackTrace);
 

Using new-thread scheduler

It will create new thread

    Stream<String> names = Stream.of("One", "Two", "Three", "Four", "Five"); 
    Observable.from(names).subscribeOn(Scheduler.getNewThreadScheduler()).
       subscribe(System.out::println, Throwable::printStackTrace);
 

Using timer thread with interval

It will notify at each interval

    Stream<String> names = Stream.of("One", "Two", "Three", "Four", "Five"); 
    Observable.from(names).subscribeOn(Scheduler.getTimerSchedulerWithMilliInterval(1000)).
       subscribe(System.out::println, Throwable::printStackTrace);
    // this will print each name every second
 

Using immediate scheduler

This scheduler calls callback functions right away on the same thread. You can use this if you synchronous data and don’t want to create another thread. On the downside, you cannot unsubscribe with this scheduler.

    Stream<String> names = Stream.of("One", "Two", "Three", "Four", "Five"); 
    Observable.from(names).subscribeOn(Scheduler.getImmediateScheduler()).
       subscribe(System.out::println, Throwable::printStackTrace);
 

Transforming

Observables keep sequence of items as streams and they support map/flatMap operation as supported by standard Stream class, e.g.

Map

    Stream<String> names = Stream.of("One", "Two", "Three", "Four", "Five"); 
    Observable.from(names).map(name -> name.hashCode()).
       subscribe(System.out::println, Throwable::printStackTrace);
 

FlatMap

    Stream integerListStream = Stream.of( Arrays.asList(1, 2), 
       Arrays.asList(3, 4), Arrays.asList(5));
    Observable.from(integerListStream).flatMap(integerList -> integerList.stream()).
       subscribe(System.out::println, Throwable::printStackTrace);
 

Filtering

Observables supports basic filtering support as provided by Java Streams, e.g.

Filter

    Stream<String> names = Stream.of("One", "Two", "Three", "Four", 
       "Five"); 
    Observable.from(names).filter(name -> name.startsWith("T")).
       subscribe(System.out::println, Throwable::printStackTrace);
    // This will only print Two and Three
 

Skip

skips given number of elements

    Stream<String> names = Stream.of("One", "Two", "Three", "Four", "Five"); 
    Observable.from(names).skip(2).subscribe(System.out::println, 
       Throwable::printStackTrace);
    // This will skip One and Two
 

Limit

    Stream<String> names = Stream.of("One", "Two", "Three", "Four", "Five"); 
    Observable.from(names).limit(2).subscribe(System.out::println, 
       Throwable::printStackTrace);
    // This will only print first two strings
 

Distinct

    Stream<String> names = Stream.of("One", "Two", "Three", "One");
    Observable.from(names).distinct.subscribe(System.out::println, 
       Throwable::printStackTrace);
    // This will print One only once
 

Merge

This concates two observable data:

    Observable<Integer> observable2 = Observable.from(Stream.of(4, 5, 6));
    observable1.merge(observable2).subscribe(System.out::println, 
       Throwable::printStackTrace);
    // This will print 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
 

Summary

In summary, as Java 8 already supported a lot of functional primitives, adding support for reactive extensions was quite straight forward. For example, Nextflix’s implementation of reactive extensions in Java consists of over 80K lines of code but it took few hundred lines to implement core features with Java 8. You can download or fork the code from https://github.com/bhatti/RxJava8.


April 17, 2014

Introduction to Java 8 Lambda and Stream Syntax

Filed under: Java — admin @ 11:10 pm

Introduction

Java 8 was released in March 2014 with most language-level enhancements since Java 5 back in 2004. The biggest new feature is introduction to Lambda. Lambda or Closure is a block of code that you can pass to other methods or return from methods. Previously, Java supported a form of closure via anonymous class syntax, e.g.

 import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
 import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
 import java.awt.Dimension;
 import java.awt.FlowLayout;
 import javax.swing.JButton;
 import javax.swing.JFrame;
 
 public class SwingExample extends JFrame {
   public SwingExample() {
     this.getContentPane().setLayout(new FlowLayout());
     final JButton btn = new JButton("Click Me");
     btn.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(400,200));
     add(btn);
     btn.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
       public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
         btn.setText("Clicked");
         btn.setEnabled(false);
       }
     });
   }
 
   private static void createAndShowGUI() {
     JFrame frame = new SwingExample();
     frame.pack();
     frame.setVisible(true);
     frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
 
   }
 
   public static void main(String[] args) {
     javax.swing.SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
       public void run() {
         createAndShowGUI(); 
       }
     });
   }
 }

In above example, using anonymous class could use locally defined data in method that declares it as long as it is defined with final. Here is how the example looks like with Java 8 syntax:

 import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
 import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
 import java.awt.Dimension;
 import java.awt.FlowLayout;
 import javax.swing.JButton;
 import javax.swing.JFrame;
 
 public class SwingExample8 extends JFrame {
   public SwingExample8() {
     this.getContentPane().setLayout(new FlowLayout());
     JButton btn = new JButton("Click Me");
     btn.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(400,200));
     add(btn);
     btn.addActionListener(e -> {
         btn.setText("Clicked");
         btn.setEnabled(false);
       }
     );
   }
 
   private static void createAndShowGUI() {
     JFrame frame = new SwingExample8();
     frame.pack();
     frame.setVisible(true);
     frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
 
   }
 
   public static void main(String[] args) {
     javax.swing.SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
       public void run() {
         createAndShowGUI(); 
       }
     });
   }
 }

As you can see, lambda syntax is very minimal. In addition, lambda syntax doesn’t require that you declare externally accessible data as final, though it cannot be changed. Java lambda also adds type inferencing so that you don’t have to define types of arguments. The lambda features are implemented using “invokedynamic” instruction to dispatch method calls, which was added in Java 7 to support dynamic languages. For example, let’s take a simple example:

public class Run8 {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
     Runnable r = () -> System.out.println("hello there");
     r.run();
   }
 }

You can de-compile it using:

javap -p Run8

You will see, it generated lambda$main$0 method, e.g.

public class Run8 {
   public Run8();
   public static void main(java.lang.String[]);
   private static void lambda$main$0();
 }

You can see real byte code using:

javap -p -c Run8
public class Run8 {
public Run8();
Code:
0: aload_0
1: invokespecial #1 // Method java/lang/Object
4: return

public static void main(java.lang.String[]);
Code:
0: invokedynamic #2, 0 // InvokeDynamic #0:run:()Ljava/lang/Runnable;
5: astore_1
6: aload_1
7: invokeinterface #3, 1 // InterfaceMethod java/lang/Runnable.run:()V
12: return

private static void lambda$main$0();
Code:
0: getstatic #4 // Field java/lang/System.out:Ljava/io/PrintStream;
3: ldc #5 // String hello there
5: invokevirtual #6 // Method java/io/PrintStream.println:(Ljava/lang/String;)V
8: return
}

This means lambdas don’t have to keep reference of enclosing class and “this” inside lambda does not create new scope.

Types of Functions

Java 8 provides predefined functions (See http://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/util/function/package-summary.html), but there are four major types:

                 Supplier: () -> T
                 Consumer: T -> ()
                 Predicate: T -> boolean
                 Function: T -> R

The supplier method takes not arguments and produces an object, the consumer takes an argument for consumption, predicate evaluates given argument by returning true/false and function maps an argument of type T and returns an object of type R.

Supplier example

 import java.util.function.*;
 
 public class Supply8 {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
     Supplier<Double>> random1 = Math::random;
     System.out.println(random1.get());
     //
     DoubleSupplier random2 = Math::random;
     System.out.println(random2.getAsDouble());
   }
 }

Note: Java 8 provides special functions for primitive types that you can use instead of using wrapper classes for primitive types. Here is another example that shows how you can write efficient log messages:

 import java.util.function.*;
 public class SupplyLog {
   private static boolean debugEnabled;
   public static void debug(Supplier<String> msg) {
     if (debugEnabled) {
       System.out.println(msg.get());
     }
   }
   public static void main(String[] args) {
     debug(() -> "this will not be printed");
     debugEnabled = true;
     debug(() -> "this will be printed");
   }
 }

Consumer example

 import java.util.function.*;
 public class Consume8 {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
     Consumer<String> consumer = s -> System.out.println(s);
     consumer.accept("hello there");
     consumer.andThen(consumer).accept("this will be printed twice");
   }
 }

Predicate example

 import java.util.function.*;
 
 public class Predicate8 {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
     Predicate<Integer> gradeA = score -> score >= 90;
     System.out.println(gradeA.test(80));
     System.out.println(gradeA.test(90));
   }
 }

In addition to test method, you can also use and, negate, or method to combine other predicates.

Function example

 import java.util.function.*;
 
 public class Function8 {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
     BinaryOperator<Integer> adder = (n1, n2) -> n1 + n2;
     System.out.println("sum " + adder.apply(4, 5));
     Function<Double>,Double> square = x -> x * x;
     System.out.println("square " + square.apply(5.0));
   }
 }

Custom Functions

In addition to predefined functions, you can define your own interface for functions as long as there is a single method is declared. You can optionally declare interface with @FunctionalInterface annotation so that compiler can verify it, e.g.

public class CustomFunction8 {
   @FunctionalInterface
   interface Command<T> {
     void execute(T obj);
   }
 
   private static <T> void invoke(Command<T> cmd, T arg) {
     cmd.execute(arg);
   }
 
 
   public static void main(String[] args) {
     Command<Integer> cmd = arg -> System.out.println(arg);
     invoke(cmd, 5);
   }
 }

Method Reference

In addition to passing lambda, you can also pass instance or static methods as closures using method reference. There are four kinds of method references:

  • Reference to a static method ContainingClass::staticMethodName
  • Reference to an instance method of a particular object ContainingObject::instanceMethodName
  • Reference to an instance method of an arbitrary object of a particular type ContainingType::methodName
  • Reference to a constructor ClassName::new

Streams

In addition to lambda support, Java 8 has updated collection classes to support streams. Streams don’t really store anything but they behave as pipes for computation lazily. Though, collections have limited size, but streams can be unlimited and they can be only consumed once. Streams can be accessed from collections using stream() and parallelStream() methods or from an array via Arrays.stream(Object[]). There are also static factory methods on the stream classes, such as Stream.of(Object[]), IntStream.range(int, int), etc. Common intermediate methods using as pipes that you can invoke on streams:

  • filter()
  • distinct()
  • limit()
  • map()
  • peek()
  • sorted()
  • unsorted()

In above examples sorted, distinct, unsorted are stateful, whereas filter, map, limit are stateless. And here are terminal operations that trigger evaluation on streams:

  • findFirst()
  • min()
  • max()
  • reduce()
  • sum()

You can implement your own streams by using helper methods in StreamSupport class.

Iterating

Java 8 streams support forEach method for iterating, which can optionally take a consumer function, e.g.

 import java.util.stream.Stream;
 
 public class StreamForEach {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
     Stream<String> symbols = Stream.of("AAPL", "MSFT", "ORCL", "NFLX", "TSLA");
     symbols.forEach(System.out::println);
   }
 }

Parallel iteration:

 import java.util.Arrays;
 import java.util.List;
 import java.util.stream.Stream;
 
 public class ParStreamForEach {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
     List<String> symbols = Arrays.asList("AAPL", "MSFT", "ORCL", "NFLX", "TSLA");
     System.out.println("unordered");
     symbols.parallelStream().forEach(System.out::println);
     System.out.println("ordered");
     symbols.parallelStream().forEachOrdered(System.out::println);
   }
 }

Note that by default iterating parallel stream would be unordered but you can force ordered iteration using forEachOrdered method instead of forEach.

Filtering

We already saw predicate functions and filtering support in streams allow extract elements of collections that evaluates true to given predicate. Let’s create a couple of classes that we will use later:

 import java.util.ArrayList;
 import java.util.Collection;
 import java.util.function.IntPredicate;
 public class Game implements IntPredicate {
   enum Type {
     AGE_ALL,
     AGE_13_OR_ABOVE,
     AGE_18_OR_ABOVE
   }
   public final String name;
   public final Type type;
   public final Collection<Player> players = new ArrayList<>();
   public Game(String name, Type type) {
     this.name = name;
     this.type = type;
   }
   public boolean suitableForAll() {
     return type == Type.AGE_ALL;
   }
   public void add(Player player) {
     if (test(player.age)) {
       this.players.add(player);
     }
   }
   @Override
   public boolean test(int age) {
     switch (type) {
       case AGE_18_OR_ABOVE:
         return age >= 18;
       case AGE_13_OR_ABOVE:
         return age >= 13;
       default:
         return true;
     }
   }
   @Override
   public String toString() {
     return name;
   }
 }
 public class Player {
   public final String name;
   public final int age;
   public Player(String name, int age) {
     this.name = name;
     this.age = age;
   }
   @Override 
   public String toString() {
     return name;
   }
 }

Now let’s create a class that will filter games by types:

 import java.util.Arrays;
 import java.util.Collection;
 import static java.util.stream.Collectors.*;
 import java.util.stream.Stream;
 
 
 public class GameFilter {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
     Collection<Game>> games = Arrays.asList(new Game("Birdie", Game.Type.AGE_ALL), new Game("Draw", Game.Type.AGE_ALL), new Game("Poker", Game.Type.AGE_18_OR_ABOVE), new Game("Torpedo", Game.Type.AGE_13_OR_ABOVE));
     Collection<Game>> suitableForAll = games.stream().filter(Game::suitableForAll).collect(toList());
     System.out.println("suitable for all");
     suitableForAll.stream().forEach(System.out::println);
     Collection<Game>> adultOnly = games.stream().filter(game -> game.type == Game.Type.AGE_18_OR_ABOVE).limit(10).collect(toList());
     System.out.println("suitable for adults only");
     adultOnly.stream().forEach(System.out::println);
   }
 }

As you can see, filter can accept lambda or method reference.

Map

Map operation on streams applies a given function to transform each element in stream and produces another stream with transformed elements.

 import java.util.Arrays;
 import java.util.Collection;
 import static java.util.stream.Collectors.*;
 import java.util.stream.Stream;
 
 
 public class GameMap {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
     Collection<Game>> games = Arrays.asList(new Game("Birdie", Game.Type.AGE_ALL), new Game("Draw", Game.Type.AGE_ALL), new Game("Poker", Game.Type.AGE_18_OR_ABOVE), new Game("Torpedo", Game.Type.AGE_13_OR_ABOVE));
     Collection<Player> players = Arrays.asList(new Player("John", 10), new Player("David", 15), new Player("Matt", 20), new Player("Dan", 30), new Player("Erica", 5));
     for (Game game : games) {
       for (Player player : players) {
         game.add(player);
       }
     }
     //
     Collection<Game>.Type> types = games.stream().map(game -> game.type).collect(toList());
     System.out.println("types:");
     types.stream().forEach(System.out::println);
     Collection<Player> allPlayers = games.stream().flatMap(game -> game.players.stream()).collect(toList());
     System.out.println("\nplayers:");
     players.stream().forEach(System.out::println);
   }
 }

Note that flatMap takes collection of objects for each input and flattens it and produces a single collection. Java streams also produces map methods for primitive types such as mapToLong, mapToDouble, etc.

Sorting

Previously, you had to implement Comparable interface or provide Comparator for sorting but you can now pass lambda for comparison, e.g.

 import java.util.Arrays;
 import java.util.List;
 import static java.util.stream.Collectors.*;
 import java.util.stream.Stream;
 import java.util.Comparator;
 
 
 public class GameSort {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
     List<Player> players = Arrays.asList(new Player("John", 10), new Player("David", 15), new Player("Matt", 20), new Player("Dan", 30), new Player("Erica", 5));
     players.sort(Comparator.comparing(player -> player.age));
     System.out.println(players);
   }
 }

Min/Max

Java streams provide helper methods for calculating min/max, e.g.

 import java.util.Arrays;
 import java.util.Collection;
 import static java.util.stream.Collectors.*;
 import java.util.stream.Stream;
 import java.util.Comparator;
 public class GameMinMax {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
     Collection<Player> players = Arrays.asList(new Player("John", 10), new Player("David", 15), new Player("Matt", 20), new Player("Dan", 30), new Player("Erica", 5));
     Player min = players.stream().min(Comparator.comparing(player -> player.age)).get();
     Player max = players.stream().max(Comparator.comparing(player -> player.age)).get();
     System.out.println("min " + min + ", max " + max);
   }
 }

Reduce/Fold

Reduce or fold generalizes the problem where we compuate a single value from collection, e.g.

 import java.util.Arrays;
 import java.util.Collection;
 import static java.util.stream.Collectors.*;
 import java.util.stream.Stream;
 
 
 public class GameReduce {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
     Collection<Player> players = Arrays.asList(new Player("John", 10), new Player("David", 15), new Player("Matt", 20), new Player("Dan", 30), new Player("Erica", 5));
     double averageAge1 = players.stream().mapToInt(player -> player.age).average().getAsDouble();
     double averageAge2 = players.stream().mapToInt(player -> player.age).reduce(0, Integer::sum) / players.size();
     double averageAge3 = players.stream().mapToInt(player -> player.age).reduce(0, (sum, age) -> sum + age) / players.size();
     System.out.println("average age " + averageAge1 + ", " + averageAge2 + ", or " + averageAge3);
   }
 }

Grouping/Partitioning

groupingBy method of Collectors allows grouping collection, e.g.

 import java.util.Arrays;
 import java.util.Collection;
 import java.util.List;
 import java.util.Map;
 import static java.util.stream.Collectors.*;
 import java.util.stream.Stream;
 
 
 public class GameGrouping {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
     Collection<Player> players = Arrays.asList(new Player("John", 10), new Player("David", 15), new Player("Matt", 20), new Player("Dan", 30), new Player("Erica", 5));
     Map<Integer, List<Player>> playersByAge = players.stream().collect(groupingBy(player -> player.age));
     System.out.println(playersByAge);
   }
 }

partitioningBy groups collection into two collection, e.g.

 import java.util.Arrays;
 import java.util.Collection;
 import java.util.List;
 import java.util.Map;
 import static java.util.stream.Collectors.*;
 import java.util.stream.Stream;
 
 
 public class GamePartition {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
     Collection<Player> players = Arrays.asList(new Player("John", 10), new Player("David", 15), new Player("Matt", 20), new Player("Dan", 30), new Player("Erica", 5));
     Map<Boolean, List<Player>> playersByAge = players.stream().collect(groupingBy(player -> player.age >= 18));
     System.out.println(playersByAge);
   }
 }

String joining

Here is an example of creating a string from collection:

 import static java.util.stream.Collectors.*;
 import java.util.stream.Stream;
 
 
 public class GameJoin {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
     Stream<Player> players = Stream.of(new Player("John", 10), new Player("David", 15), new Player("Matt", 20), new Player("Dan", 30), new Player("Erica", 5));
     System.out.println(players.map(Player::toString).collect(joining(",", "[", "]")));
   }
 }

Lazy Evaluation

Java Map interface now supports lazy evaluation by adding object to Map if the key is not present:

 import java.util.HashMap;
 import java.util.Map;
 
 public class Fib {
   private final static Map<Integer,Long> cache = new HashMap<Integer, Long>() {{
     put(0,0L);
     put(1,1L);
   }};
   public static long fib(int x) {
     return cache.computeIfAbsent(x, n -> fib(n-1) + fib(n-2));
   }
 
   public static void main(String[] args) {
     System.out.println(fib(10));
   }
 }

Parallel Streams

Though, streams processes elements serially but you can change stream() method of collection to parallelStream to take advantage of parallel processing of stream. Parallel stream use ForkJoinPool by default and use as many threads as you have processors (Runtime.getRuntime().availableProcessors()), e.g.

 import java.util.Arrays;
 import java.util.List;
 import java.util.stream.IntStream;
 import java.util.stream.Stream;
 
 public class ParStreamPrime {
   private static boolean isPrime(int n) {
     if (n%2==0) return false;
     for(int i=3;i*i<=n;i+=2) {
       if(n%i==0) return false;
     }
     return true;
   }
   private static long serialTest(int max) {
     long started = System.currentTimeMillis();
     IntStream.rangeClosed(1, max).forEach(num -> isPrime(num));
     return System.currentTimeMillis() - started;
   }
   private static long parallelTest(int max) {
     long started = System.currentTimeMillis();
     IntStream.rangeClosed(1, max).parallel().forEach(num -> isPrime(num));
     return System.currentTimeMillis() - started;
   }
   //
   public static void main(String[] args) {
     int max = 1000000;
     System.out.println("Serial " + serialTest(max));
     System.out.println("Parallel " + parallelTest(max));
   }
 }

If you need to customize thread pool size, you can create parallel stream inside fork-join-pool, e.g.

  private static void parallelTest(final int max) {
     ForkJoinPool forkJoinPool = new ForkJoinPool(2);
     forkJoinPool.submit(() ->
        IntStream.rangeClosed(1, max).parallel().forEach(num -> isPrime(num));
     ).get();
   }

Default methods and Mixins

For anyone who has to support interfaces for multiple clients knows the frustration of adding new methods because it requires updating all clients. You can now add default methods on interfaces and add static methods, e.g.

 interface Vehicle {
   float getMaxSpeedMPH();
   public static String getType(Vehicle v) {
     return v.getClass().getSimpleName();
   }
 }
 
 interface Car extends Vehicle {
   void drive();
   public default float getMaxSpeedMPH() {
     return 200;
   }
 }
 interface Boat extends Vehicle {
   void row();
   public default float getMaxSpeedMPH() {
     return 100;
   }
 }
 
 interface Plane extends Vehicle {
   void fly();
   public default float getMaxSpeedMPH() {
     return 500;
   }
 }
 
 public class AmphiFlyCar implements Car, Boat, Plane {
   @Override
   public void drive() {
     System.out.println("drive");
   }
   @Override
   public void row() {
     System.out.println("row");
   }
   @Override
   public void fly() {
     System.out.println("fly");
   }
   public float getMaxSpeedMPH() {
     return Plane.super.getMaxSpeedMPH();
   }
   public static void main(String[] args) {
     AmphiFlyCar v = new AmphiFlyCar();
     System.out.println(Vehicle.getType(v) + ": " + v.getMaxSpeedMPH());
   }
 }

Optional

Tony Hoare called nulls a billion dollar mistake and Java has an infamous NullPointerException error when you dereference a null object. Now you can get rid of those nasty errors using Optional, which acts as Maybe monads in other languages, e.g.

 import java.util.HashMap;
 import java.util.Map;
 import static java.util.stream.Collectors.*;
 import java.util.stream.Stream;
 import java.util.Optional;
 
 
 public class OptionalExample {
   private static Map<String, Player> players = new HashMap<String, Player>() {{
     put("John", new Player("John", 10));
     put("David", new Player("David", 15));
     put("Matt", new Player("Matt", 20));
     put("Erica", new Player("Erica", 25));
   }};
 
   private static Optional<Player> findPlayerByName(String name) {
     Player player = players.get(name);
     return player == null ? Optional.empty() : Optional.of(player);
   }
 
   private static Integer getAge(Player player) {
     return player.age;
   }
 
 
   public static void main(String[] args) {
     findPlayerByName("John").ifPresent(System.out::println);
     Player player = findPlayerByName("Jeff").orElse(new Player("Jeff", 40));
     System.out.println("orElse " + player);
     Integer age = findPlayerByName("Jeff").map(OptionalExample::getAge).orElse(-1);
     System.out.println("Jeff age " + age);
   }
 }

CompletableFuture

Java has long supported future, but previously you had to call blocking get() to retrieve the result. With Java 8, you can use CompletableFuture to define the behavior when asynchronous processing is completed, e.g.

 private static final ExecutorService executor = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(2);
 public static CompletableFuture getPlayer(String name) {
    return CompletableFuture.supplyAsync(() -> new Player(), executor);
 }
 getQuote("name").thenAccept(player -> System.out.println(player));
 

Summary

Over the past few years, functional programming languages have become mainstream and Java 8 brings many of those capabilities despite being late. These new features help write better and more concise code. You will have to change existing code to make more use of immutable objects and use streams instead of objects when possible. As far as stability, I found java 8 compiler on Linux environment a bit buggy that crashed often so it may take a little while before Java 8 can be used in production.

September 12, 2013

NFJS Seattle 2013 Review

Filed under: Computing — admin @ 7:38 pm

I attended NFJS conference over the weekend. It was a short conference from Friday, Sep 6 to Sunday, Sep 8. It had a number of sessions on Java 8, Javascript, Mobile, and functional areas. Here are some of the sections that I enjoyed:

Java 8 Language Capabilities

This session gave a brief overview of new features of Java 8 mainly new closure/lambda syntax. Venkat is a great speaker and he was coding live throughout the session.

Concurrency without Pain in Pure Java

This was related to first talk by Venkat Subramaniam and covered a number of patterns such as Actors and STM for concurrency.

Functional SOLID

In this talk Matt Stine gave overview of SOLID principles and how functional programming make it easier to apply these patterns. This was more abstract talk and didn’t go into examples of those patterns.

Programming with Immutability

This was more practical talk by Matt Stine and he gave examples of immutability and functional programming in Java and Groovy with live coding. He mentioned a number of tools that can make it easier to build mutable and immutable pair of classes and how immutable classes can be used in other frameworks such as Hibernate.

Rich Web Apps with Angular

This was a short introduction to Angular by Raju Gandhi.

Vagrant: Virtualized Development Environments Made Simple

This was a great introduction to Vagrant and how to setup a complete development, testing and production environments on your local desktop.

Simulation Testing with Simulant

This was a short introduction to Simulant testing library that Stuart Halloway has been using for testing Datomic database. This testing library can be used for functional testing and load testing. It saves all data in datomic database and can be populated from existing data.

Generative Testing

This was another session of testing framework by Stuart Halloway. This framework provides great support for generating test data and is somewhat similar to QuickCheck, though it doesn’t offer reduction.

Summary

I didn’t go to OSCON this year and enjoyed smaller pavilion that NFJS provided. There were a couple of dud sessions, but overall I enjoyed it.


March 6, 2013

Tour of iOS game – ‘Passion Investment Portfolio’

Filed under: iPhone development — admin @ 9:25 pm

I recently finished an iOS (iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch) game called “Passion Investment Portfolio”, which provides a virtual stock trading for learning purpose. A unique feature of this application is that it chooses stocks for you based on your lifestyle. When you join this game, you receive $10,000 virtual cash money and then you are asked to add your life passions, interests, hobbies, products you like, stores where you shop, etc. The Passion Investment Portfolio game then finds companies that match your passions. It keeps updating those companies on daily basis and gives away free stocks from your matching companies. You can watch which companies grow with time and customize your favorite companies. The Passion Investment Portfolio game also provides analysts ratings, charts, fundamental data and news for your companies. Here is a short tour of the app:

Adding your passions

On iPhone/iPod touch, you can just select ‘My Passions’ from the menu, then choose category of passion. You can add new passions by touching (+) icon. You can also edit your existing passions by touching them and rewriting your passions. If you need to delete any passion, then select Edit option and touch (-) button.



On iPad, you can see categories and list of passions on the same screen but the process of adding or removing passions is same as iPhone, e.g.


Your portfolio

When you initially join “Passion Investment Portfolio”, you don’t have any existing stocks, but as you play the game, you will see how your portoflio grows over time, e.g.




Your Passion Companies

You can view your passion companies by selecting “My Passion Quotes” from the menu. You will be able to see all companies next to each passion along with delayed quotes. Also, you will be able to see thumbs up sign if the analysts rating is buy and thumbs down sign if analysts rating is sell.



Your Stocks

You can view all the stocks you own by selecting “My Stocks” from the menu. You will also see latest quotes for those companies and gain/loss for your stocks based on market prices. If you choose to dump the stocks, then just touch “Sell” button.



Your Capital Gains/Loss

When you sell stocks, the difference between initial purchase and final sell price is calculated and is recorded as your capital gain/loss. You can view history of all your capital gains by selecting “My Capital Gains”:

Orders History

When you buy or sell stocks or the game buys stocks for free giveaways, an order is created. You can browse past orders by selecting “My Orders”.



Quote Lookup

You can lookup any stock by symbol, name or description using “Quote Lookup” option. You can view delayed quotes, fundamental data, analysts rating and news.



Badges and Leaderboard

The “Passion Investment Portfolio” game gives away badges based on performance of your portfolio and top users are listed on the leaderboard.

Help and Feedback

The “Passion Investment Portfolio” also comes with help tips and a quick way to send any feedback, suggestions and comments.

Screencasts

You can also watch at for iPhone and for iPad respectively.

Download

You can download the app from Apple Appstore. Here are a few promotion codes that you can use to try the game (first come first serve):

RRTWFNNJRTAY
3WM96W9NLYTK
KLR7PE963K7E
NWXWJ7ATY6R7
7NHREJHWJMTH
XJPFHLAAXJLW
PTJXP6XXFRP3
FHLNATLKNRR3
X3KHXXT9LAY6
KKMJWA76MW7W
FHYR6XFLXJR3
3F6HHETJWR36
K6XJLMARMMET
H63RRP44KWWH
3P7KH763TEMA
X7NA4R7YN3H7
MX43TPNEJLL

Twitter

Follow the app at http://twitter.com/#!/passionportfol.


October 8, 2012

Comparing Server side Websockets using Atmosphere, Netty, Node.js and Vertx.io

Filed under: Javascript — admin @ 1:31 pm

My last two bogs (Pub/sub in Node.js and Websockets and Scaling Node.js) described how I have been evaluating Node.js and Websockets for streaming data. I would describe results of that evaluation along with a few other frameworks that I have been testing.

Use Case

The primary use case for my application is pub/sub where clients subscribe to some channel and receive updates such as subscribing for stock quotes or notifications about orders.

Node.js

In my last blog, I described all the issues I had with socket.io library for Node.js and after a lot of frustration I gave up on it. Instead, I used WS library for WebSockets and though it doesn’t provide fallback options for other protocols but’s it much more stable and efficient.

Pub/Sub Server

Here is the pub/sub server that provides methods to subscribe some channel identifier and sends update to a random channel continuously.

var OUTLIER_SIZE = process.env.OUTLIER_SIZE || 5;
 var MAX_THREADS = process.env.MAX_THREADS || 5;
 var MAX_ROWS = process.env.MAX_ROWS || 10;
 var SEND_MESSAGE_INTERVAL = SEND_MESSAGE_INTERVAL || 1;
 
 var nextClientId = 0;
 var errors = 0;
 //
 var hwUsage = require('hardware_usage');
 var metrics = require('metrics')(OUTLIER_SIZE);
 var cluster = require('cluster');
 hwUsage.start();
 
 if (cluster.isMaster) {
     for (var i = 0; i < MAX_THREADS; i++) {
         cluster.fork();
     }
     cluster.on('exit', function(worker, code, signal) {
     });
     console.log('clients, errors, ' + metrics.heading() + ',' + hwUsage.heading());
 } else {
     var pubsubController = require('pubsub_controller')(cluster.worker.id, MAX_ROWS, hwUsage, metrics);
     var WebSocketServer = require('ws').Server
     , wss = new WebSocketServer({port: 8124});
     wss.on('connection', function(ws) {
         ws.key = ++nextClientId;
         ws.on('close', function() {
             pubsubController.unsubscribeAll(ws);
         });
         ws.on('error', function() {
             errors++;
         });
         ws.on('message', function(text) {
             var msg = JSON.parse(text);
             if (msg.action === 'subscribe') {
                 pubsubController.subscribe(ws, msg.identifier);
             } else if (msg.action === 'unsubscribe') {
                 pubsubController.subscribe(ws, msg.identifier);
             }
         });
     });
 
     setInterval(function() {
         pubsubController.push();
     }, SEND_MESSAGE_INTERVAL);
     setInterval(function() {
         hwUsage.stop(function(usage) {
             console.log(nextClientId+ ',' + errors + metrics.summary().toString() + ',' + usage.toString());
         });
     }, 15000);
 }
 
 
 process.on('uncaughtException', function(err) {
     console.log("GLOBAL " + err + "\n" + err.stack);
 });
 

Subscription management

Following module defines APIs for managing subscriptions and as I mentioned when number of messages received by client reaches maxMessages, it unsubscribes from the server.

var helper = require('helper');
 
 module.exports = function(workerId, numElements, hwUsage, metrics) {
     var channelSubscribers = {};
     var nextRequestId = 0;
     var allKeys = {};
     allKeys[workerId] = [];
     var generatePayload = function(identifier) {
         var elements = [];
         var date = new Date();
         for (var i=0; i<numElements; i++) {            elements.push({sequence:i, price: helper.random(100), identifierId:identifier, symbol:"QQQ", transaction:"STO", qty: helper.random(200)});
         }
         var reqId = Number(++nextRequestId + '.' + workerId);
 
         var payload = {request: reqId, rows:numElements, timestamp : date.getTime(), identifier:Number(identifier), elements: elements};
         return payload;
     };
     var makeKey = function(socket) {
         return workerId + '_' + socket.key;
     };
     var getSubscriber = function(socket) {
         return channelSubscribers[makeKey(socket)];
     };
     var setSubscriber = function(socket, rec) {
         channelSubscribers[makeKey(socket)] = rec;
     };  
     var removeSubscribers = function(socket) {
         delete channelSubscribers[makeKey(socket)];
     };  
     return {
         subscribe: function(socket, identifier) {
             var rec = getSubscriber(socket);
             if (typeof rec === "undefined") {
                 rec = {socket : socket, identifiers : []};
             }
             rec.identifiers.push(identifier);
             allKeys[workerId].push(makeKey(socket)); 
             setSubscriber(socket, rec);
         },  
         unsubscribe: function(socket, identifier) {
             var rec = getSubscriber(socket);
             if (typeof rec === "undefined") {
                 return false;
             }
             var ndx = rec.identifiers.indexOf(identifier);
             rec.identifiers.splice(ndx, 1);
             if (rec.identifiers.length == 0) {
                 removeSubscribers(socket);
             } else {
                 setSubscriber(socket, rec);
             }
         },
         unsubscribeAll: function(socket) {
             removeSubscribers(socket);
         },
         count: function() {
             return helper.size(channelSubscribers);
         },
         push: function() {
             if (allKeys[workerId].length == 0) return 0;
             var key = allKeys[workerId][helper.random(allKeys[workerId].length)];
             var rec = channelSubscribers[key];
             if (typeof rec === "undefined") {
                 return -1;
             }
             //
             for (var i=0; i<rec.identifiers.length; i++) {
                 var identifier = rec.identifiers[i];
                 try {
                     var request = generatePayload(identifier);
                     var text = JSON.stringify(request);
                     rec.socket.send(text);
                     metrics.update(nextRequestId, new Date().getTime(), text.length);
                 } catch (err) {
                     console.log('failed to send execution report' + err);
                     try {
                         rec.socket.disconnect();
                     } catch (ex) {
                         console.log('failed to close socket ' + ex);
                     }
                     delete channelSubscribers[key];
                 }
             }
         }
     };
 }
 

I am skipping some of helper modules, but you can find them from the source code.

Vertx.io

The Vertx.io framework follows Node.js design for single-thread event loop with asynchronous I/O but is written in Java. It also provides polyglot support for a number of languages such as Java, Javascript, Ruby, Groovy, and Python. Here is similar implementation of Pub/Sub server in Java:

 package com.plexobject.vertx;
 
 import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;
 import com.fasterxml.jackson.core.JsonFactory;
 import com.fasterxml.jackson.core.JsonParser;
 import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.JsonNode;
 
 import org.vertx.java.core.Handler;
 import org.vertx.java.core.buffer.Buffer;
 import org.vertx.java.core.http.HttpServerRequest;
 import org.vertx.java.core.http.ServerWebSocket;
 import org.vertx.java.deploy.Verticle;
 
 import org.slf4j.Logger;
 import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;
 
 import java.io.IOException;
 import java.util.HashSet;
 import java.util.Map;
 import java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap;
 import java.util.Random;
 import java.util.Set;
 import java.util.Timer;
 import java.util.TimerTask;
 import java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicLong;
 
 public class VertxServer extends Verticle {
     private static final Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(VertxServer.class);
     private final ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
     private final JsonFactory jsonFactory = mapper.getJsonFactory();
     private Map<String, Set<ServerWebSocket>> subscriptions = new ConcurrentHashMap<String, Set<ServerWebSocket>>();
     private Timer sendTimer = new Timer(true);
     private Timer metricsTimer = new Timer(true);
     private final AtomicLong nextRequestId = new AtomicLong();
     private final Metrics metrics = new Metrics();
     private final StringBuilder elements = new StringBuilder();
     private final Random random = new Random();
     private int maxIdentifier;
 
     public VertxServer() {
         logger.info("identifiers," + Metrics.getHeading());
         for (int i=0; i<500; i++) {
             elements.append(String.valueOf(i));
         }
         metricsTimer.schedule(new TimerTask() {
             @Override
             public void run() {
                 logger.info(subscriptions.size() + metrics.getSummary().toString());
             }
         }, 5000, 15000);
         sendTimer.schedule(new TimerTask() {
             @Override
             public void run() {
                while (true) {
                   sendMessageForRandomIdentifier();
                }
             }
         }, 1000);
     }
     public void start() {
         vertx.createHttpServer().setAcceptBacklog(10000).websocketHandler(new Handler<ServerWebSocket>() {
             public void handle(final ServerWebSocket ws) {
                 if (ws.path.equals("/channels")) {
                     ws.dataHandler(new Handler<Buffer>() {
                         public void handle(Buffer data) {
                             try {
                                 JsonParser jp = jsonFactory.createJsonParser(data.toString());
                                 JsonNode jsonObj = mapper.readTree(jp);
                                 String action = jsonObj.get("action").asText();
                                 String identifier = jsonObj.get("identifier").asText();
                                 if (action == null || identifier == null) {
                                     return;
                                 }
                                 if ("subscribe".equals(action)) {
                                     maxIdentifier = Math.max(Integer.parseInt(identifier), maxIdentifier);
                                     logger.info("Max " + maxIdentifier);
                                     Set<ServerWebSocket> sockets = subscriptions.get(identifier);
                                     if (sockets == null) {
                                         sockets = new HashSet<ServerWebSocket>();
                                         subscriptions.put(identifier, sockets);
                                     }
                                     sockets.add(ws);
                                 } else if ("unsubscribe".equals(action)) {
                                     Set<ServerWebSocket> sockets = subscriptions.get(identifier);
                                     if (sockets == null) {
                                         return;
                                     }
                                     sockets.remove(ws);
                                     if (sockets.size() == 0) {
                                         subscriptions.remove(identifier);
                                     }
                                 }
                             } catch (IOException e) {
                                 logger.error("Failed to handle " + data, e);
                             }
                         }
                     });
                 } else {
                     ws.reject();
                 }
             }
         }).requestHandler(new Handler<HttpServerRequest>() {
             public void handle(HttpServerRequest req) {
                 //if (req.path.equals("/")) req.response.sendFile("websockets/ws.html"); // Serve the html
             }
         }).listen(8080);
     }
 
     //
     private String getRandomIdentifier() {
         return String.valueOf(Math.abs(random.nextInt(maxIdentifier)) + 1);
     }
 
     public void sendMessageForRandomIdentifier() {
         if (subscriptions.size() == 0) {
             return;
         }
         String identifier = getRandomIdentifier();
         if (identifier == null) {
             return;
         }
         Set<ServerWebSocket> sockets = subscriptions.get(identifier);
         if (sockets == null || sockets.size() == 0) {
             return;
         }
         final long t = System.currentTimeMillis();
         String msg = "{\"request\":" + nextRequestId.incrementAndGet() + ", \"timestamp\":" + t + ", \"identifier\":" + identifier + ", \"elements\": \"" + elements + "\"}";
         for (ServerWebSocket ws : sockets) {
             try {
                 ws.writeTextFrame(msg);
             } catch (Exception e) {
                 subscriptions.remove(ws);
                 logger.error("Failed to send " + msg, e);
             }
         }
         metrics.update(msg);
     }
 }
 

Note that Vertx.io requires JDK 7 and here is how you can start the server:

 export PATH=/home/sbhatti/jdk1.7.0_10/bin:$PATH
 export JAVA_HOME=/home/sbhatti/jdk1.7.0_10
 mvn package
 bin/vertx run com.plexobject.vertx.VrtxServer -cp target/classes/ -instances=5

Note that I started Vertx.io with 5 instances of the server to match Node.js’ clustering options.

Netty

Netty.io is a lightweight application server that provides asynchronous events and I/O so I also tested its Websocket’s support in its latest 4.0-beta version.

Bootstrap

Here is the main server implementation that bootstraps web-socket server:

 package com.plexobject.netty.server;
 
 import io.netty.bootstrap.ServerBootstrap;
 import io.netty.channel.Channel;
 import io.netty.channel.socket.nio.NioEventLoopGroup;
 import io.netty.channel.socket.nio.NioServerSocketChannel;
 
 public class WebSocketServer {
 
         private final int port;
 
         public WebSocketServer(int port) {
                 this.port = port;
         }
 
         public void run() throws Exception {
                 ServerBootstrap b = new ServerBootstrap();
                 try {
                         b.group(new NioEventLoopGroup(), new NioEventLoopGroup())
                                         .channel(NioServerSocketChannel.class).localAddress(port)
                                         .childHandler(new WebSocketServerInitializer());
 
                         Channel ch = b.bind().sync().channel();
 
                         ch.closeFuture().sync();
                 } finally {
                         b.shutdown();
                 }
         }
 
         public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
                 int port;
                 if (args.length > 0) {
                         port = Integer.parseInt(args[0]);
                 } else {
                         port = 8124;
                 }
                 new WebSocketServer(port).run();
         }
 }
 

Pub/Sub Server

Here is implementation of websocket handler that provides pub/sub functionality:

 package com.plexobject.netty.server;
 
 import java.io.IOException;
 import java.util.ArrayList;
 import java.util.HashSet;
 import java.util.List;
 import java.util.Map;
 import java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap;
 import java.util.Random;
 import java.util.Set;
 import java.util.Timer;
 import java.util.TimerTask;
 import java.math.BigInteger;
 import java.security.SecureRandom;
 import java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicLong;
 
 import static io.netty.handler.codec.http.HttpHeaders.isKeepAlive;
 import static io.netty.handler.codec.http.HttpHeaders.setContentLength;
 import static io.netty.handler.codec.http.HttpMethod.GET;
 import static io.netty.handler.codec.http.HttpResponseStatus.FORBIDDEN;
 import static io.netty.handler.codec.http.HttpResponseStatus.NOT_FOUND;
 import static io.netty.handler.codec.http.HttpVersion.HTTP_1_1;
 import io.netty.buffer.Unpooled;
 import io.netty.channel.ChannelFuture;
 import io.netty.channel.ChannelFutureListener;
 import io.netty.channel.ChannelHandlerContext;
 import io.netty.channel.ChannelInboundMessageHandlerAdapter;
 import io.netty.handler.codec.http.DefaultHttpResponse;
 import io.netty.handler.codec.http.HttpHeaders;
 import io.netty.handler.codec.http.HttpRequest;
 import io.netty.handler.codec.http.HttpResponse;
 import io.netty.handler.codec.http.websocketx.CloseWebSocketFrame;
 import io.netty.handler.codec.http.websocketx.PingWebSocketFrame;
 import io.netty.handler.codec.http.websocketx.PongWebSocketFrame;
 import io.netty.handler.codec.http.websocketx.TextWebSocketFrame;
 import io.netty.handler.codec.http.websocketx.WebSocketFrame;
 import io.netty.handler.codec.http.websocketx.WebSocketServerHandshaker;
 import io.netty.handler.codec.http.websocketx.WebSocketServerHandshakerFactory;
 import io.netty.logging.InternalLogger;
 import io.netty.logging.InternalLoggerFactory;
 import io.netty.util.CharsetUtil;
 
 import org.codehaus.jackson.JsonFactory;
 import org.codehaus.jackson.JsonNode;
 import org.codehaus.jackson.JsonParser;
 import org.codehaus.jackson.map.ObjectMapper;
 
 public class WebSocketServerHandler extends ChannelInboundMessageHandlerAdapter<Object> {
     @SuppressWarnings("unused")
     private static final InternalLogger LOGGER = InternalLoggerFactory
             .getInstance(WebSocketServerHandler.class);
     private static final ObjectMapper jsonMapper = new ObjectMapper();
     private static final JsonFactory jsonFactory = jsonMapper.getJsonFactory();
 
     private static final String WEBSOCKET_PATH = "/";
     private WebSocketServerHandshaker handshaker;
     private static Map<String, Set<ChannelHandlerContext>> subscriptions = new ConcurrentHashMap<String, Set<ChannelHandlerContext>>();
     private static Timer timer = new Timer(true);
     private static final AtomicLong REQUEST_ID = new AtomicLong();
     private static final Metrics METRICS = new Metrics();
 
     static {
         timer.schedule(new TimerTask() {
             @Override
             public void run() {
                while (true) {
                   sendMessageForRandomIdentifier();
                }
             }
         }, 1000);
     }
 
     @Override
     public void messageReceived(ChannelHandlerContext ctx, Object msg)
             throws Exception {
         if (msg instanceof HttpRequest) {
             handleHttpRequest(ctx, (HttpRequest) msg);
         } else if (msg instanceof WebSocketFrame) {
             handleWebSocketFrame(ctx, (WebSocketFrame) msg);
         }
     }
 
     private void handleHttpRequest(ChannelHandlerContext ctx, HttpRequest req)
             throws Exception {
         // Allow only GET methods.
         if (req.getMethod() != GET) {
             sendHttpResponse(ctx, req, new DefaultHttpResponse(HTTP_1_1,
                     FORBIDDEN));
             return;
         }
         if (req.getUri().equals("/favicon.ico")) {
             HttpResponse res = new DefaultHttpResponse(HTTP_1_1, NOT_FOUND);
             sendHttpResponse(ctx, req, res);
             return;
         }
 
         // Handshake
         WebSocketServerHandshakerFactory wsFactory = new WebSocketServerHandshakerFactory(
                 getWebSocketLocation(req), null, false);
         handshaker = wsFactory.newHandshaker(req);
         if (handshaker == null) {
             wsFactory.sendUnsupportedWebSocketVersionResponse(ctx.channel());
         } else {
             handshaker.handshake(ctx.channel(), req);
         }
     }
 
     private void handleWebSocketFrame(ChannelHandlerContext ctx,
             WebSocketFrame frame) throws IOException {
         // Check for closing frame
         if (frame instanceof CloseWebSocketFrame) {
             handshaker.close(ctx.channel(), (CloseWebSocketFrame) frame);
             return;
         } else if (frame instanceof PingWebSocketFrame) {
             ctx.channel().write(new PongWebSocketFrame(frame.getBinaryData()));
             return;
         } else if (!(frame instanceof TextWebSocketFrame)) {
             throw new UnsupportedOperationException(String.format(
                     "%s frame types not supported", frame.getClass().getName()));
         }
 
         String jsonText = ((TextWebSocketFrame) frame).getText();
         JsonParser jp = jsonFactory.createJsonParser(jsonText);
         JsonNode actualObj = jsonMapper.readTree(jp);
         String action = actualObj.get("action").getTextValue();
         String identifier = actualObj.get("identifier").getTextValue();
         if (action == null || identifier == null) {
               return;
         }
         if ("subscribe".equals(action)) {
             Set<ChannelHandlerContext> contexts = subscriptions.get(identifier);
             if (contexts == null) {
                 contexts = new HashSet<ChannelHandlerContext>();
                 subscriptions.put(identifier, contexts);
             }
             contexts.add(ctx);
         } else if ("unsubscribe".equals(action)) {
             Set<ChannelHandlerContext> contexts = subscriptions.get(identifier);
             if (contexts == null) {
                 return;
             }
             contexts.remove(ctx);
             if (contexts.size() == 0) {
                 subscriptions.remove(identifier);
             }
         }
     }
 
     private static String getRandomIdentifier() {
         List<String> identifiers = new ArrayList<String>(subscriptions.keySet());
         if (identifiers.size() == 0) {
             return null;
         }
         int n = new Random().nextInt(identifiers.size());
         return identifiers.get(n);
     }
 
 
     public static void sendMessageForRandomIdentifier() {
         String identifier = getRandomIdentifier();
         if (identifier == null) {
             return;
         }
         Set<ChannelHandlerContext> contexts = subscriptions.get(identifier);
         if (contexts == null || contexts.size() == 0) {
             return;
         }
         SecureRandom random = new SecureRandom();
         String elements = new BigInteger(500, random).toString(32);
         String json = "{\"request\":" + REQUEST_ID.incrementAndGet() + ", \"timestamp\":" + System.currentTimeMillis() + ", \"identifier\":\"" + identifier + "\", \"elements\": \"" + elements + "\"}";
         TextWebSocketFrame frame = new TextWebSocketFrame(json);
         METRICS.update(json);
         for (ChannelHandlerContext ctx : contexts) {
             try {
                 ctx.channel().write(frame);
             } catch (Exception e) {
                 subscriptions.remove(ctx);
             }
         }
         if (System.currentTimeMillis() % 1000 == 0) {
             System.out.println("identifiers," + Metrics.getHeading());
             System.out.println(subscriptions.size() + METRICS.getSummary().toString());
         }
     }
 
     private static void sendHttpResponse(ChannelHandlerContext ctx,
             HttpRequest req, HttpResponse res) {
         // Generate an error page if response status code is not OK (200).
         if (res.getStatus().getCode() != 200) {
             res.setContent(Unpooled.copiedBuffer(res.getStatus().toString(),
                     CharsetUtil.UTF_8));
             setContentLength(res, res.getContent().readableBytes());
         }
 
         // Send the response and close the connection if necessary.
         ChannelFuture f = ctx.channel().write(res);
         if (!isKeepAlive(req) || res.getStatus().getCode() != 200) {
             f.addListener(ChannelFutureListener.CLOSE);
         }
     }
 
     @Override
     public void exceptionCaught(ChannelHandlerContext ctx, Throwable cause)
             throws Exception {
         if (cause instanceof java.nio.channels.ClosedChannelException == false) {
             //cause.printStackTrace();
         }
         ctx.close();
     }
 
     private static String getWebSocketLocation(HttpRequest req) {
         return "ws://" + req.getHeader(HttpHeaders.Names.HOST) + WEBSOCKET_PATH;
     }
 }
 

As, you can see its implementation is a bit verbose and I am skipping some of other boiler code.

Atmosphere

Atmosphere is another Java framework that provides support for Websockets so I tried it as well and here is its implementation:

 package com.plexobject;
 
 import org.atmosphere.config.service.WebSocketHandlerService;
 import org.atmosphere.cpr.Broadcaster;
 import org.atmosphere.cpr.BroadcasterFactory;
 import org.atmosphere.websocket.WebSocket;
 import org.atmosphere.websocket.WebSocketHandler;
 import org.atmosphere.websocket.WebSocketProcessor.WebSocketException;
 
 import org.slf4j.Logger;
 import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;
 
 import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;
 import com.fasterxml.jackson.core.JsonFactory;
 import com.fasterxml.jackson.core.JsonParser;
 import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.JsonNode;
 
 import java.util.Random;
 import java.util.Timer;
 import java.util.TimerTask;
 import java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicLong;
 
 import org.eclipse.jetty.server.Connector;
 import org.eclipse.jetty.server.Server;
 import org.eclipse.jetty.server.nio.SelectChannelConnector;
 import org.eclipse.jetty.servlet.ServletContextHandler;
 import org.eclipse.jetty.servlet.ServletHolder;
 import org.atmosphere.cpr.AtmosphereServlet;
 import org.atmosphere.websocket.WebSocketHandler;
 
 @WebSocketHandlerService
 public class ChannelResponseHandler extends WebSocketHandler {
     private static final Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(ChannelResponseHandler.class);
 
     private static final Metrics METRICS = new Metrics();
     private static final String PATH_PREFIX = "/channels";
     private boolean started;
     private int maxIdentifier;
     private final Random random = new Random();
     private Timer timer = new Timer(true);
     private final ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
     private final JsonFactory jsonFactory = mapper.getJsonFactory();
     private final AtomicLong opened = new AtomicLong();
     private final AtomicLong closed = new AtomicLong();
     private final AtomicLong nextRequestId = new AtomicLong();
     private final StringBuilder elements = new StringBuilder();
 
     public ChannelResponseHandler() {
         for (int i=0; i<500; i++) {
             elements.append(String.valueOf(i));
         }
     }
 
     @Override
     public void onTextMessage(WebSocket webSocket, String msg) {
         try {
             JsonParser jp = jsonFactory.createJsonParser(msg);
             JsonNode jsonObj = mapper.readTree(jp);
             String action = jsonObj.get("action").asText();
             String identifier = jsonObj.get("identifier").asText();
             logger.debug("onMessage " + action + " - " + identifier);
             if (action == null || identifier == null) {
                   return;
             }
             if ("subscribe".equals(action)) {
                 getBroadcaster(identifier).addAtmosphereResource(webSocket.resource());
                 maxIdentifier = Math.max(Integer.parseInt(identifier), maxIdentifier);
             } else if ("unsubscribe".equals(action)) {
                 getBroadcaster(identifier).removeAtmosphereResource(webSocket.resource());
             }
             start();
         } catch (Exception e) {
             logger.error("Failed to handle message " + msg, e);
         }
     }
 
     @Override
     public void onOpen(WebSocket webSocket) {
         logger.trace("onOpen {}", webSocket.resource().getRequest());
         webSocket.resource().suspend();
         opened.incrementAndGet();
     }
 
     @Override
     public void onClose(WebSocket webSocket) {
         logger.trace("onClose");
         getBroadcaster().removeAtmosphereResource(webSocket.resource());
         super.onClose(webSocket);
         closed.incrementAndGet();
     }
 
     @Override
     public void onError(WebSocket webSocket, WebSocketException t) {
         System.err.println("error " + t);
         logger.trace("onError {}", t.getStackTrace());
         super.onError(webSocket, t);
     }
 
     public void sendMessageForRandomIdentifier() {
         try {
             if (opened.get() <= closed.get()) {
                 return;
             }
             String identifier = getRandomIdentifier();
             Broadcaster bc = getBroadcaster(identifier);
             if (bc == null) {
                 logger.debug("Failed to find broadcaster for " + identifier);
                 return;
             }
             long t = System.currentTimeMillis();
             String msg = "{\"request\":" + nextRequestId.incrementAndGet() + ", \"timestamp\":" + t + ", \"identifier\":" + identifier + ", \"elements\": \"" + elements + "\"}";
             bc.broadcast(msg);
             METRICS.update(msg);
             if (t % 1000 == 0) {
                 logger.info(METRICS.getSummary().toString());
             }
         } catch (Exception e) {
             logger.error("Failed to send message", e);
         }
     }
     private Broadcaster getBroadcaster() {
         return getBroadcaster(null);
     }
     //
     private Broadcaster getBroadcaster(String identifier) {
         String path = identifier == null ? PATH_PREFIX : PATH_PREFIX + "/" + identifier;
         BroadcasterFactory factory = BroadcasterFactory.getDefault();
         return factory != null ? factory.lookup(path, true) : null;
     }
 
     synchronized void start() {
         if (started) return;
         started = true;
         timer.schedule(new TimerTask() {
                 @Override
                 public void run() {
                   while (started) {
                      sendMessageForRandomIdentifier();
                   }
                 }
             }, 1000);
     }
 
     synchronized void stop() {
         timer.cancel();
     }
 
     private String getRandomIdentifier() {
         return String.valueOf(random.nextInt(maxIdentifier) + 1);
     }
 
     public static void main(String[] arguments) throws Exception {
         try {
             Server server = new Server();
             Connector con = new SelectChannelConnector();
             con.setPort(8124);
             server.addConnector(con);
             ServletContextHandler context = new ServletContextHandler(ServletContextHandler.SESSIONS);
             context.setContextPath("/");
             server.setHandler(context);
             context.addServlet(new ServletHolder(new AtmosphereServlet()), "/*");
             server.start();//WebSocketHandler
             server.join();
         } catch (Exception ex) {
             System.err.println(ex);
         }
     }
 }
 

Note that I had to deploy Atmosphere in Jetty 8.1.7 as a war file and here is web.xml

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 <web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
          xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:web="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd"
          xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd"
          id="WebApp_ID" version="2.5">
 
     <display-name>WebSocket Load Test</display-name>
     <servlet>
         <description>AtmosphereServlet</description>
         <servlet-name>AtmosphereServlet</servlet-name>
         <servlet-class>org.atmosphere.cpr.AtmosphereServlet</servlet-class>
         <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
     </servlet>
     <servlet-mapping>
         <servlet-name>AtmosphereServlet</servlet-name>
         <url-pattern>/channels/*</url-pattern>
     </servlet-mapping>
 </web-app>
 

Client

I previously wrote client in Javascript but I rewrote in Java so that I can use Java’s concurrent library to manage counters.

WebSocket Client

I tried Netty and weberknecht libraries and settled on weberknecht. Here is its implementation:

 package com.plexobject.websocket.client;
 
 import java.io.BufferedReader;
 import java.io.DataOutputStream;
 import java.io.IOException;
 import java.io.InputStreamReader;
 import java.net.HttpURLConnection;
 import java.net.URI;
 import java.net.URL;
 import java.util.Calendar;
 import java.util.HashMap;
 import java.util.Map;
 import de.roderick.weberknecht.*;
 
 public class WebSocketClient implements ClientProtocol {
     private WebSocket webSocket;
         private final String identifier;
 
         public WebSocketClient(final String identifier, final URI server, final ClientEventListener listener) throws Exception {
                 this.identifier = identifier;
 
         webSocket = new WebSocketConnection(server);
         webSocket.setEventHandler(new WebSocketEventHandler() {
 
             @Override
             public void onClose() {
                         listener.onClose();
             }
 
             @Override
             public void onMessage(WebSocketMessage msg) {
                             listener.onMessage(identifier, msg.getText());
             }
 
             @Override
             public void onOpen() {
                         listener.onOpen();
             }
         });
         webSocket.connect();
         }
 
     @Override
     public void close() throws Exception {
         webSocket.close();
     }
     @Override
     public void send(String text) throws Exception {
         webSocket.send(text);
     }
 
     @Override
     public String getIdentifier() {
         return identifier;
     }
 }
 

Kaazing

I also tested Kaazing a bit but it is a commercial software and their trial license limited connections so I gave up on it.

Load Tester

The load tester takes arguments about how many connections to open and how long to run the test. It generates identifiers from 1 to 10,000 and sends subscription message to the server for each of those channel identifiers. It then keeps track of messages received in a helper class Metrics and logs that information on regular interval, i.e.,

 package com.plexobject.websocket.client;
 
 
 import java.io.BufferedWriter;
 import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
 import java.io.FileWriter;
 import java.io.IOException;
 import java.math.BigInteger;
 import java.net.URI;
 import java.security.SecureRandom;
 import java.util.ArrayList;
 import java.util.HashMap;
 import java.util.HashSet;
 import java.util.Iterator;
 import java.util.List;
 import java.util.Map;
 import java.util.Set;
 import java.util.Timer;
 import java.util.TimerTask;
 
 import java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicLong;
 
 public class LoadTester implements ClientEventListener {
     private static final AtomicLong OPEN_CONNECTIONS = new AtomicLong();
     private static final AtomicLong CLOSE_CONNECTIONS = new AtomicLong();
     private static final AtomicLong REQUEST_ID = new AtomicLong();
     private static final Metrics METRICS = new Metrics();
     private List<ClientProtocol> clients = new ArrayList<ClientProtocol>();
     private static final List<Integer> identifiers = new ArrayList<Integer>();
     static {
         for (int i=1; i<=10000; i++) {
             identifiers.add(i);
         }
     }
 
     public LoadTester(String url, int maxConnections) throws Exception {
         try {
             URI uri = new URI(url);
             for (int i=0; i<maxConnections; i++) {
                 String identifier = String.valueOf(identifiers.get(i%identifiers.size()));
                 ClientProtocol client = new WebSocketClient(identifier, uri, this);
                 String json = "{\"action\":\"subscribe\", \"identifier\":\"" + identifier + "\"}";
                 client.send(json);
                 clients.add(client);
                 try {
                     Thread.sleep(1);
                 } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                 }
             }
         } catch (OutOfMemoryError e) {
             System.err.println(e);
             System.exit(0);
         }
     }
 
     //
     public void close() {
         for (ClientProtocol client : clients) {
             try {
                 client.close();
             } catch (Exception e) {
             }
         }
         System.exit(0);
     }
 
     @Override
     public void onError(Throwable e) {
         System.err.println(e);
     }  
 
     @Override
     public void onMessage(String identifier, String message) {
         String act = METRICS.update(message);
         if (!identifier.equals(act)) {
             System.out.println("Expected " + identifier + ", but received " + act + " for " + message);
         }
     }
 
     @Override
     public void onClose() {
         CLOSE_CONNECTIONS.incrementAndGet();
     }
 
     @Override
     public void onOpen() {
         OPEN_CONNECTIONS.incrementAndGet();
     }
     public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
         if (args.length == 0) {
             System.err.println("Usage client.LoadTester url connections max-runtime-in-minutes");
             System.exit(1);
         }
         final String url = args[0]; // "ws://localhost:8124/"
         final int maxConnections = Integer.parseInt(args[1]);
         final int maxRuntimeMins = Integer.parseInt(args[2]);
         System.out.println("connections,connected," + Metrics.getHeading());
         final long started = System.currentTimeMillis();
         final Timer timer = new Timer(true);
         timer.schedule(new TimerTask() {
                 @Override
                 public void run() {
                     System.out.println(maxConnections + "," + (OPEN_CONNECTIONS.get()-CLOSE_CONNECTIONS.get()) + "," + METRICS.getSummary());
                     long elapsed = System.currentTimeMillis() - started;
                     if (elapsed > (maxRuntimeMins * 1000 * 60)) {
                         System.out.println("time done");
                         System.exit(0);
                     }
                 }
             }, 5000, 15000);
         //
         LoadTester runner = new LoadTester(url, maxConnections);
         while (true) {
             try {
                 Thread.sleep(5000);
             } catch (InterruptedException e) {
             }
             //
             if (CLOSE_CONNECTIONS.get() == maxConnections) {
                 System.out.println("all clients closed");
                 runner.close();
             }
         }
     }
 
 }
  

I am skipping some of helper classes and interfaces, but you can find them from the source code.

Test Script

I created a simple shell script to launch load test for 5 minutes and given number of connections and collected results in a comma delimited file, i.e,

 #!/bin/bash 
 mvn package
 export MAVEN_OPTS="-Xmx1000m -Xss128k"
 export url=ws://localhost:8080/atmosphere-1.0/channels
 #export url=ws://localhost:8080/channels
 #export url=ws://localhost:8124/
 clients=500
 while [ $clients -lt 100000 ]
 do
    mvn exec:java -Dexec.mainClass="com.plexobject.websocket.client.LoadTester" -Dexec.classpathScope=runtime -Dexec.args="$url $clients 5"
    clients=`expr $clients + 500|awk '{print $1}'`
 done
 

Note that I specified stack size of thread to be 128k as default stack size per thread is 2MB, which takes a lot of memory.

TCP Settings

As I mentioned in my last blog, I made some changes to my Linux machine to improve TCP settings, i.e.,

 net.core.rmem_max = 33554432
 net.core.wmem_max = 33554432
 net.ipv4.tcp_rmem = 4096 16384 33554432
 net.ipv4.tcp_wmem = 4096 16384 33554432
 net.ipv4.tcp_mem = 786432 1048576 26777216
 net.ipv4.tcp_max_tw_buckets = 360000
 net.core.netdev_max_backlog = 2500
 vm.min_free_kbytes = 65536
 vm.swappiness = 0
 net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65535

I then applied above changes using:

 sudo sysctl -w net.core.somaxconn=10000
 sudo sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog=10000 
 sudo sysctl -p

Results

Here are results of testing up to 5000 connections, where server sends a message to a random channel continuously:

Atmosphere

connections connected average response (ms) average size messages msg/sec walltime(secs)
500 500 1 1462 282431 943.317 301
1000 1000 1 1462 282100 940.967 302
1500 1500 1 1463 274156 920.233 304
2000 2000 1 1463 268180 936.733 309
2500 2500 1 1463 263443 926 307
3000 2985 1 1463 280809 932.233 332
3500 3500 2 1463 278412 934.333 384

Netty

connections connected average response (ms) average size messages msg/sec walltime(secs)
500 500 0.000 172.000 284165 937.833 305.000
1000 1000 0.000 172.000 279883 921.717 305.000
1500 1500 0.000 173.000 290317 959.983 305.000
2000 2000 0.000 173.000 286110 946.467 305.000
2500 2500 0.000 174.000 285122 949.550 305.000
3000 3000 0.000 174.000 281650 939.150 305.000
3500 3500 0.000 174.000 282833 942.700 305.000
4000 4000 0.000 174.000 283829 948.700 305.000
4500 4500 0.000 174.000 273293 921.583 305.000
5000 5000 0.000 174.000 264433 881.733 305.000
1000 1000 0.000 172.000 279883 921.717 305.000
1500 1500 0.000 173.000 290317 959.983 305.000
2000 2000 0.000 173.000 286110 946.467 305.000
2500 2500 0.000 174.000 285122 949.550 305.000
3000 3000 0.000 174.000 281650 939.150 305.000
3500 3500 0.000 174.000 282833 942.700 305.000
4000 4000 0.000 174.000 283829 948.700 305.000
4500 4500 0.000 174.000 273293 921.583 305.000
5000 5000 0.000 174.000 264433 881.733 305.000
5500 5500 0.000 174.000 289230 977.300 305.000
6000 6000 0.000 174.000 277692 934.800 305.000
6500 6500 0.000 174.000 148223 847.517 185.000

Vertx.io

connections average response (ms) average size messages msg/sec walltime(secs)
1000 1 1462 1487141 4056.433 365
2000 1 1464 1607431 5003.033 365
3000 1 1464 1663777 5061.717 365
4000 1 1464 1607104 5109.65 365
5000 1 1464 1706898 5374.433 365
6000 2 1465 1750757 5341.05 365
7000 3 1465 1723124 5263.283 365
8000 3 1465 1758174 5224.85 365
9000 2 1465 1717950 5038.45 365
10000 3 1465 1789671 5160.517 365
11000 3 1465 1789760 5140.8 365
12000 3 1465 1792477 5097.5 365
13000 4 1465 1778748 5128.917 365
14000 4 1465 1746830 4895.433 365
15000 3 1465 1760734 4960.367 365
16000 3 1465 1739786 4933.583 365
17000 4 1465 1727759 4902.883 365
18000 3 1465 1730165 5158.7 365
19000 4 1465 1725660 4904.2 367
20000 4 1465 1704129 4852.567 365
21000 4 1465 1703201 4849.833 365
22000 3 1465 1705387 5077.417 366
23000 3 1465 1671165 4861.233 365
24000 4 1465 1670471 4942.217 365
25000 4 1465 1639296 5108.317 365

Node.js

connections average response (ms) average size messages msg/sec walltime(secs)
1000 2 1363 1550155 4252.95 365
2000 1 1368 863997 2384.8 365
3000 1 1368 644806 1776.717 365
4000 1 1369 555496 1541.683 365
5000 1 1370 483624 1338 365
6000 1 1370 426728 1185.883 365
7000 1 1371 358331 994.017 365
8000 1 1371 322960 898.55 365
9000 1 1371 281227 787.633 365
10000 1 1371 260502 732.3 365
11000 1 1370 262209 733.633 365
12000 1 1371 243954 690.067 365
13000 2 1370 230117 647.833 365
14000 2 1371 235591 668.983 365
15000 2 1371 240632 685.35 365
16000 2 1371 192929 551.083 365
17000 2 1371 166705 474.217 365
18000 2 1371 142557 406.4 365
19000 2 1371 110873 319.467 365
20000 2 1371 106047 305.967 365
21000 2 1371 107947 307.633 365
22000 1 1371 89779 257.883 365
23000 2 1371 89890 259.367 365
24000 2 1371 34414 240.833 155

Summary

I tried to push limits for each framework, however Atmosphere could not handle more than 3500 connections and it slowed my machine to crawl. I was using 4.0-beta version of Netty, which also crashed after 6500 connections. Vertx.io was able to scale for upto 25,000 connections, but then server ran out of memory on my machine. Similarly, node.js kept going for about 24,000 but it became very slow and my load test client could not allocate more memory for connections. Both Vertx.io and Node.js proved to be leading contenders but Vertx.io was able to scale much better and maintain throughput better than Node.js. As a result, I picked Vertx.io for my project. You can download the source code and compare results yourself.

September 24, 2012

Scaling Node.js

Filed under: Javascript — admin @ 12:22 pm

As I described in my earlier blog, I have been testing Node.js and Websockets for streaming data to large number of clients. I am evaluating Node.js and WebSockets in both pub/sub model such as clients connecting to receive streaming quotes and request/reply model where clients are invoking an API and waiting for reply. Below are some of my experience with those technologies so far:

Pub/Sub Server

The server code uses cluster module to provide multiprocessing support and each process starts a Websocket server and listens for incoming connections. I used socket.io library for WebSockets. The server keeps track of all clients that have subscribed and then send random data every 10-100 milli-seconds.
Here is basic implementation of the server:

 var MAX_THREADS = process.env.MAX_THREADS || 10;
 var MAX_ROWS = process.env.MAX_ROWS || 2;
 var nextClientId = 0;
 //
 var helper = require('helper')
 
 var pubsubController = require('pubsub_controller')(MAX_ROWS)
 var cluster = require('cluster');
 
 if (cluster.isMaster) {
    for (var i = 0; i < MAX_THREADS; i++) {
       cluster.fork();
    }
    cluster.on('exit', function(worker, code, signal) {
       console.log('worker ' + worker.process.pid + ' died');
    });
 } else {
    var socketsByAddr = {};
    var io = require('socket.io').listen(8124);
    io.set('log level', 1);
    io.set('transports', ['websocket']);
    io.set('force new connection', true);
    io.enable('browser client gzip');
 
    io.sockets.on('connection', function(socket) {
       socket.address = socket.handshake.address.address + ':' + socket.handshake.address.port;
       socket.key = socket.handshake.address.address + ':' + socket.handshake.address.port + ':' + (++nextClientId);
       socketsByAddr[socket.address] = true;
       pubsubController.subscribe(socket);
       socket.on('disconnect', function() {
          pubsubController.unsubscribe(socket);
          delete socketsByAddr[socket.address];
       });
 
       socket.on('end', function() {
       });
    });
 
    setInterval(function() {
       pubsubController.pushUpdates();
    }, helper.random(100) + 10);
 }
 
 process.on('uncaughtException', function(err) {
   console.log("GLOBAL " + err + "\n" + err.stack);
 });
 
 

Pub/Sub Client

The pub/sub client subscribes for data and receies data every 10-100 milli-seconds. The client code builds up 100 more connections every 15 seconds and it logs the response time information. On client side, I used socket.io-client library. The client calls 'subscribe-execs' to subscribe and then receive messages under 'receive-execs'. Upon receiving message, the client tracks various metrics such as response time, CPU, memory usage, etc. As, I am running both client and server on the same machine, it gives accurate representation of latency without network hops or clocks mismatch. Another thing to note is that the client passes 'force new connection' flag to force new socket for each client as by default all clients share same socket.

 var OUTLIER_SIZE = process.env.OUTLIER_SIZE || 10;
 
 var hwUsage = require('hardware_usage');
 var metrics = require('metrics')({}, OUTLIER_SIZE);
 hwUsage.start();
       
 var client = require('pubsub_client')(metrics, hwUsage);
 var clients = [];
 
 // create connections for this client
 var buildClients = function() {
    for (var i=0; i<100; i++) {
       var client = client.newClient(i+0);
       clients.push(client);
    }
    hwUsage.stop(function(usage) {
       console.log('clients,connected,', hwUsage.heading() + ',' + metrics.heading());
       console.log(clients.length + ',' + client.totalConnected() + ',' + usage.toString() + ',' + metrics.summary().toString());
    });
 };
 
 
 setInterval(buildClients, 15000);
 
 
 process.on('uncaughtException', function(err) {
   console.log("GLOBAL " + err + "\n" + err.stack);
 });
 
 

The actual client is defined as a module, e.g.:

 var io = require('socket.io-client');
 var helper = require('helper');
 var totalConnected = 0;
 
 module.exports = function(metrics, hwUsage) {
    var ExecClient = function(id) {
       this.id = id;
       this.client = io.connect('localhost', { port: 8124,
                               transports: ['websocket'],
                               'force new connection': true,
                               'sync on disconnect' : true,
                               'connect timeout': 500,
                               'reconnect': true,
                               'reconnection delay': 500,
                               'reopen delay': 500,
                               'max reconnection attempts': 5});
    };
    
    // 
    ExecClient.prototype.setupConnectListener = function() {
       if (typeof this.client === "undefined") return;
       var that = this;
       this.client.on('connect_failed', function(error) {
       });
 
       this.client.on('connect', function() {
          totalConnected++;
       });
 
       this.client.on('disconnect', function() {
          totalConnected--;
       });
 
       this.client.on('reconnect_failed', function() {
          //process.exit(1);
       });
 
       this.client.on('end', function() {
          //process.exit(1);
       });
    };
 
    ExecClient.prototype.setupReceiveListener = function() {
       if (typeof this.client === "undefined") return;
       var that = this;
       this.client.on('receive-execs', function(msg) {
          console.log('receive');
          var metric = metrics.update(msg.address, msg.request, msg.timestamp, JSON.stringify(msg).length);
        });
    };
 
    return {
       totalConnected : function() {
          return totalConnected;
       },
       newClient: function(id) {
          var client = new ExecClient(id);
          client.setupConnectListener();
          client.setupReceiveListener();
          return client;
       }
    };
 }
 
 

Subscription management

Following module defines APIs for managing subscriptions and as I mentioned when number of messages received by client reaches maxMessages, it unsubscribes from the server.

 var helper = require('helper');
 var emitVolatile = typeof process.env.EMIT_VOLATILE !== "undefined" && process.env.EMIT_VOLATILE === 'true';
 
 module.exports = function(numExecs) {
    var execSubscribers = {};
    var counter = 0; 
    var generatePayload = function(address) {
       var execs = [];
       var date = new Date();
       for (var i=0; i<numExecs; i++) {
          execs.push({sequence:i, activityDateStr:date.toString(), com: helper.random(5),price: helper.random(100), accountId:1772139, symbol:"QQQ", transaction:"STO", description:"QQQ Stock", qty: helper.random(200), key: "QQQ:::S", netAmount: helper.random(1000)});
       }
       var payload = {request: counter, rows:numExecs, timestamp : date.getTime(), address:address, execs: execs};
       return payload;
    }
 
    return {
       subscribe: function(socket) {
          execSubscribers[socket.key] = socket;
       },
       unsubscribe: function(socket) {
          delete execSubscribers[socket.key];
       },
       count: function() {
          return helper.size(execSubscribers);
       },
       pushUpdates: function() {
          var count = 0;
          for (var addr in execSubscribers) {
             count++;
             try {
                var socket = execSubscribers[addr];
                //
                if (emitVolatile) {
                   socket.volatile.emit('receive-execs', generatePayload(addr));
                } else {
                   socket.emit('receive-execs', generatePayload(addr));
                }
                //
                if (typeof socket.numMessages === "undefined") {
                   socket.numMessages = 1;
                } else {
                   ++socket.numMessages;
                   //delete execSubscribers[socket.key];
                }
             } catch (err) {
                console.log('failed to send execution report' + err);
                try {
                   socket.disconnect();
                } catch (ex) {
                   console.log('failed to close socket ' + ex);
                }
                delete execSubscribers[socket.key];
             }
          }
          return count;
       }
    };
 } 
 

Hardware Measurement

Following module defines API for measuring CPU time, load average, memory, etc:

 var fs = require('fs');
 var os = require('os');
 var helper = require('helper');
 
 var HardwareUsage = function() {
    this.startCpuTime = 0;
    this.startLoadAvg = os.loadavg();
    this.startMemory = process.memoryUsage();
    this.endCpuTime = 0;
    this.endLoadAvg = 0;
    this.endMemory = 0;
    this.started = new Date().getTime();
    var that = this;
    this.cpuUsage (function(totalCpu) {
       that.startCpuTime = totalCpu;
    });
 }
 
 HardwareUsage.prototype.cpuUsage = function(callback) {
    if (!fs.existsSync("/proc/" + process.pid + "/stat")) {
       callback();
       return;
    }
    var that = this;
 
    fs.readFile("/proc/" + process.pid + "/stat", function(err, data){
       var elems = data.toString().split(' ');
       var utime = parseInt(elems[13]);
       var stime = parseInt(elems[14]);
       var totalCpu = utime + stime;
       callback(totalCpu);
    });
 };
 
 
 HardwareUsage.prototype.percCpuChange = function() {
    return helper.percentChange(this.startCpuTime, this.endCpuTime);
 }
 
 HardwareUsage.prototype.percLoadChange = function() {
    return helper.percentChange(this.startLoadAvg[0], this.endLoadAvg[0]);
 }
 
 HardwareUsage.prototype.percMemoryChange = function() {
    return helper.percentChange(this.startMemory.heapTotal, this.endMemory.heapUsed);
 }
 
 
 HardwareUsage.prototype.toString = function() {
    return helper.round(this.endCpuTime) + ',' + helper.round(this.endLoadAvg[0]) + ',' + helper.round(this.startMemory.heapTotal/1024.0/1024.0) + ',' + helper.round(this.endMemory.heapUsed/1024.0/1024.0);
 };
 
 HardwareUsage.prototype.stop = function(callback) {
    var that = this;
    this.cpuUsage (function(totalCpu) {
       that.endCpuTime = totalCpu;
       that.endMemory = process.memoryUsage();
       that.endLoadAvg = os.loadavg();
       that.elapsed = new Date().getTime() - that.started;
       callback(that);
    });
 };
 
 var usage = new HardwareUsage();
 
 exports.heading = function() {
    return 'cpu time, load avg, total memory (M), used memory(M)';
 };
 exports.start = function() {
    usage = new HardwareUsage();
 };
 
 exports.stop = function(callback) {
    usage.stop(callback);
 };
 

Response time Measurement

Following module defines API for measuring response time:

 var helper = require('helper');
    
 module.exports = function(store, outlierSize) {
    var MetricResultSummary = function(metric) {
       this.averageResponseTime = helper.round(metric.totalTime / metric.totalRequests);
       this.averageHighResponseTime = helper.round(helper.sum(metric.topTenHigh)/ metric.topTenHigh.length);
       this.averageLowResponseTime = helper.round(helper.sum(metric.topTenLow)/ metric.topTenLow.length);
       this.averageSize = helper.round(metric.totalPayloadSize / metric.totalRequests);
       this.messagesReceived = metric.messagesReceived;
       this.count = 0;
    }
    MetricResultSummary.prototype.toString = function() {
       return this.count + ',' + this.averageResponseTime + ',' + this.averageHighResponseTime + ',' + this.averageLowResponseTime + ',' + this.averageSize + ',' + this.messagesReceived;
    };
 
    var Metric = function() {
       this.totalTime = 0;
       this.totalRequests = 0;
       this.topTenHigh = [];
       this.topTenLow = [];
       this.totalPayloadSize = 0;
       this.messagesReceived = 0;
    }
 
    Metric.prototype.addTo = function(target) {
       target.totalTime += this.totalTime;
       target.totalRequests += this.totalRequests;
       for (var i=0; i<this.topTenHigh.length; i++) {
          target.topTenHigh.push(this.topTenHigh[i]);
       }
       for (var i=0; i<this.topTenLow.length; i++) {
          target.topTenLow.push(this.topTenLow[i]);
       }
       target.totalPayloadSize += this.totalPayloadSize;
       target.messagesReceived += this.messagesReceived;
    };
 
    Metric.prototype.update = function(id, sendTime, payloadSize) {
       var elapsed = new Date().getTime() - sendTime;
       for (var i=0; i<outlierSize; i++) {
          if (typeof this.topTenHigh[i] === "undefined" || elapsed > this.topTenHigh[i]) {
             this.topTenHigh[i] = elapsed;
             break;
          }
       }
       //
       for (var i=0; i<outlierSize; i++) {
          if (typeof this.topTenLow[i] === "undefined" || elapsed < this.topTenLow[i]) {
             this.topTenLow[i] = elapsed;
             break;
          }
       }
       this.messagesReceived++;
       this.totalTime += elapsed;
       this.totalPayloadSize += payloadSize;
       this.totalRequests++;
    };
    //
    Metric.prototype.averageResponse = function() {
       return helper.round(this.totalTime / this.totalRequests);
    };
    Metric.prototype.summary = function() {
       return new MetricResultSummary(this);
    };
    Metric.prototype.toString = function() {
       return new MetricResultSummary(this).toString();
    };
 
    var get = function(key) {
          var metric = store[key];
          if (typeof metric === "undefined") {
             metric = new Metric();
             store[key] = metric;
          }
          return metric;
    };
    return {
       get: function(key) {
          return get(key);
       },
       update: function(key, id, sendTime, payloadSize) {
          var metric = get(key);
          metric.update(id, sendTime, payloadSize);
          return metric;
       },
       summaryFor: function(key) {
          var metric = get(key);
          return metric.summary();
       },
       heading: function() {
          return 'count, average response (ms), average outlier high response (ms), average outlier low response (ms), average message size, messages received';
       },
       summary: function() {
          var result = new Metric();
          var count = 0;
          for (var key in store) {
             var metric = store[key];
             metric.addTo(result);
             count++;
          }
          var summary = result.summary();
          summary.count = count;
          return summary;
       }
    };
 }
 
 

Request/Reply Server

The request/reply server also uses cluster module and listens for Websocket port on each process. Upon receiving order-request API, it sends a reply to the client. Here is the implementation of server:

 var OUTLIER_SIZE = process.env.OUTLIER_SIZE || 2;
 var MAX_THREADS = process.env.MAX_THREADS || 20;
 var helper = require('helper')
    
 var cluster = require('cluster');
 var hwUsage = require('hardware_usage');
 var metrics = require('metrics')({}, OUTLIER_SIZE);
 hwUsage.start();
 var socketsByAddr = {};
 var totalClients = 0;
 
 
 if (cluster.isMaster) {
    for (var i = 0; i < MAX_THREADS; i++) {
       cluster.fork();
    }  
    cluster.on('exit', function(worker, code, signal) {
       console.log('worker ' + worker.process.pid + ' died');
    });
 } else {
    //
    var io = require('socket.io').listen(8124);
    io.set('log level', 1); 
    io.set('transports', ['websocket']);
    io.set('force new connection', true);
    io.enable('browser client gzip');
    
    io.sockets.on('connection', function(socket) {
       totalClients++;
       socket.address = socket.handshake.address.address + ':' + socket.handshake.address.port;
       socketsByAddr[socket.address] = true;
       socket.on('order-request', function(request) {
          var response = {request: request.counter, timestamp : request.timestamp, address:request.address};
          metrics.update(request.address, request.request, request.timestamp, JSON.stringify(request).length);
          socket.emit('order-response', response);
       });
       
       // disconnected
       socket.on('disconnect', function() {
          totalClients--;
          delete socketsByAddr[socket.address];
       });
       
       socket.on('end', function() {
       });
    });
    });
 }
 
 
 setInterval(function() {
    hwUsage.stop(function(usage) {
      console.log('sockets, clients, ' + hwUsage.heading() + ',' + metrics.heading());
      console.log(helper.size(socketsByAddr) + ',' + totalClients + ',' + usage.toString() + ',' + metrics.summary().toString());
    });
 }, 15000);
 
 
 process.on('uncaughtException', function(err) {
   console.log("GLOBAL " + err + "\n" + err.stack);
 });
 
 

Request/Reply Client

The request/reply client is similar to pub/sub model except it initiates order-request API every 50-250 milli-seconds. It also creates new connections every 15 seconds and logs response time continuously.

 var OUTLIER_SIZE = process.env.OUTLIER_SIZE || 10;
 var INTERVAL_BETWEEN_NEW_CLIENTS_SECS = (process.env.INTERVAL_BETWEEN_NEW_CLIENTS_SECS || 15) * 1000;
 
 var hwUsage = require('hardware_usage');
 var metrics = require('metrics')({}, OUTLIER_SIZE);
 hwUsage.start();
 
 var order_client = require('order_client')(metrics, hwUsage);
 // create connections for this client
 var totalConnections = 0;
 var buildClients = function() {
    for (var i=0; i<100; i++) {
       var client = order_client.newClient();
    }
 };
 
 
 setInterval(buildClients, INTERVAL_BETWEEN_NEW_CLIENTS_SECS);
 
 setInterval(function() {
     order_client.log();
 }, INTERVAL_BETWEEN_NEW_CLIENTS_SECS);
 
 process.on('uncaughtException', function(err) {
   console.log("GLOBAL " + err + "\n" + err.stack);
   console.trace('stack trace');
   //process.exit(1);
 });
 

The actual client is defined as module, e.g.

 var io = require('socket.io-client');
 var helper = require('helper');
 var MAX_ROWS = process.env.MAX_ROWS || 10;
 
 var nextClientId = 0;
 var nextRequestId = 0;
 var totalConnected = 0;
 module.exports = function(metrics, hwUsage) {
    var OrderClient = function() {
       this.id = ++nextClientId;
       this.connected = false;
       this.client = io.connect('localhost', { port: 8124,
                               transports: ['websocket'],
                               'force new connection': true,
                               'sync on disconnect' : true,
                               'connect timeout': 500,
                               'reconnect': true,
                               'reconnection delay': 500,
                               'reopen delay': 500,
                               'max reconnection attempts': 5});
    };
 
    //
    OrderClient.prototype.setupConnectListener = function() {
       var that = this;
       this.client.on('connect_failed', function(error) {
          this.connected = false;
       });
    
       this.client.on('connect', function() {
          this.connected = true;
          totalConnected++;
       });
 
       this.client.on('disconnect', function() {
          this.connected = false;
          totalConnected--;
       });
    
       this.client.on('reconnect_failed', function() {
          this.connected = false;
       });
       
       this.client.on('end', function() {
          this.connected = false; 
       });
    };    
          
       
    OrderClient.prototype.sendRequest = function(max) {
       var execs = [];
       var date = new Date();
       for (var i=0; i<max; i++) {
          execs.push({sequence:i, activityDateStr:date.toString(), com: helper.random(5),price: helper.random(100), accountId:1772139, symbol:"QQQ", transaction:"STO", description:"QQQ Stock", qty: helper.random(200), key: "QQQ:::S", netAmount: helper.random(1000)});
       }
       var request = {request: ++nextRequestId, rows:max, timestamp : date.getTime(), address:this.id, execs: execs};
       this.client.emit('order-request', request);
    }; 
    OrderClient.prototype.setupResponseListener = function() {
       var that = this;
       this.client.on('order-response', function(response) {
          var metric = metrics.update(response.address, response.request, response.timestamp, JSON.stringify(response).length);
        });
    };
 
    return {
       log: function() {
          hwUsage.stop(function(usage) {
             console.log('clients,connected,' + hwUsage.heading() + ',' + metrics.heading());
             console.log(nextClientId + ',' + totalConnected + ',' + usage.toString() + ',' + metrics.summary().toString());
          });
       },
       newClient: function() {
          var client = new OrderClient();
          client.setupConnectListener();
          client.setupResponseListener();
          setInterval(function() {
             client.sendRequest(helper.random(MAX_ROWS));
          }, helper.random(250) + 50);
          return client;
       }
    };
 }
 
 

First blocker

I started testing on my Linux machine and saw RangeError: Maximum call stack size exceeded after server reached about 2000 connections. It turned out JSON library on socket.io went into recursion when it received messages while it's parsing existing message. I found a patch at Fix infinite recursion in Websocket parsers and manually applied it as I didn't see it on the latest version socket.io library 0.8.9. After applying it, I was able to make some progress.

Second blocker

After reaching about 10,000 connections I started seeing Cannot call method 'packet' of null coming from the socket.js. At the time, I was using default configuration for Websockets and apparently it was falling back to xhr-polling under heavy load (See open bug for it). I changed configuration to explicitly defined websocket protocol without any fallback, e.g.

 io.set('transports', ['websocket']);
 

I also made some changes to network settings on my Linux machine as recommended by Node.js w/1M concurrent connections!.

 net.core.rmem_max = 33554432
 net.core.wmem_max = 33554432
 net.ipv4.tcp_rmem = 4096 16384 33554432
 net.ipv4.tcp_wmem = 4096 16384 33554432
 net.ipv4.tcp_mem = 786432 1048576 26777216
 net.ipv4.tcp_max_tw_buckets = 360000
 net.core.netdev_max_backlog = 2500
 vm.min_free_kbytes = 65536
 vm.swappiness = 0
 net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65535
 

I then applied above changes using:

 sudo sysctl -w net.core.somaxconn=10000
 sudo sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog=10000 
 sudo sysctl -p
 

Third blocker

Above changes got me to about 17,000 connections but then I started seeing connection timeout on the client side and warn: client not handshaken client should reconnect on the server side. are two open bugs: first and second for it. I added reconnect parameters to client connection, e.g.

                               'reconnect': true,
                               'reconnection delay': 500,
                               'reopen delay': 500,
                               'max reconnection attempts': 5});
 

Fourth blocker

Under heavy load, I also saw "Error: not opened" coming from WebSocket library, e.g.

     at WebSocket.send (/alldata/home/sbhatti/prototype-nodejs/node_modules/socket.io-client/node_modules/ws/lib/WebSocket.js:175:16)
     at Transport.WS.send (/alldata/home/sbhatti/prototype-nodejs/node_modules/socket.io-client/lib/transports/websocket.js:107:22)
     at Transport.packet (/alldata/home/sbhatti/prototype-nodejs/node_modules/socket.io-client/lib/transport.js:178:10)
     at Transport.WS.payload (/alldata/home/sbhatti/prototype-nodejs/node_modules/socket.io-client/lib/transports/websocket.js:120:12)
     at Socket.flushBuffer (/alldata/home/sbhatti/prototype-nodejs/node_modules/socket.io-client/lib/socket.js:327:20)
     at Socket.setBuffer (/alldata/home/sbhatti/prototype-nodejs/node_modules/socket.io-client/lib/socket.js:314:14)
     at Socket.onConnect (/alldata/home/sbhatti/prototype-nodejs/node_modules/socket.io-client/lib/socket.js:409:14)
     at Transport.onConnect (/alldata/home/sbhatti/prototype-nodejs/node_modules/socket.io-client/lib/transport.js:139:17)
     at Transport.onPacket (/alldata/home/sbhatti/prototype-nodejs/node_modules/socket.io-client/lib/transport.js:91:12)
     at Transport.onData (/alldata/home/sbhatti/prototype-nodejs/node_modules/socket.io-client/lib/transport.js:69:16)
 

I chose to ignore it as Websocket is attempting to send data when connection is closed and client will just reconnect.

Summary

I am still evaluating Node.js and I have not decided if I would recommend Node.js for streaming solution. I will be comparing these results against some Java solutions such as Atomosphere and Vertx.io and will post those results in future.


September 17, 2012

Tips from Unusually Excellent: The Necessary Nine Skills Required for the Practice of Great Leadership

Filed under: Business — admin @ 2:17 pm

I recently read Unusually Excellent: The Necessary Nine Skills Required for the Practice of Great Leadership. Here are a few tips I enjoyed from the book:

Credibility

Earning the Right to Lead Through Character

This book shows that in order to gain credibility, you need to be authentic, trustworthy, and have character traits such as courage, integrity, and commitment:

  • Being Authentic
  • Look at Life: Seeing Who You Are
  • Owning Your Past: The Sting of Failure – Adversity demands more of us than normal times do.
  • One Day at a time – An Unexpectedly Bad Day
  • Share the Shame – You can share a couple of your past disappointments with your team mates to connect with them on a personal level
  • Face Time – Meet face to face to build personal relationships
  • The Perception Gap – Get feedback on how others see you
  • The Courage to Listen
  • Honest Feedback – great leaders don’t avoid conflict and give honest feedback but at the same time be authentic and professional.

Being Trustworthy

The book shows that great leaders build a track record of honesty, fairness, and integrity that creates a leadership “equity” within their constituency. Trustworthiness takes precedence over heavyweight attributes like creativity and intelligence.

  • Safely Successful – physical, emotional and professional safety is primarl need.
  • Be honest – match your actions with your words and match those words with the truth we see in the world (no spin).
  • Be vulnerable – showing your weakness or raw emotion
  • Be fair
  • A better place for all – The book recommends building trusted interpersonal relationships that have commitments to work and loyality. On the other hand fear inspires defensive behavior, which leaders can eliminate fear by being transparent, crystal clear, and integrity.
  • A Culture of Trust Is a Culture of Truth – One reason people within enterprises fear telling the truth to each other and to their bosses is that they know the organization cannot properly distinguish between the message and the messenger.
  • Bad News Doesn’t Swim Upstream
  • A Culture of Trust Is a Culture of Innovation – Trust is the basis of safety. Create trust, and you’ll create a safe place to take risks and in turn build culture of innovation. The organizations should not punish “good failure”
  • A Culture of Trust Is a Culture of Performance – you should never punish a good person for delivering bad news—or even, on occasion, bad work.
  • Take Your Pain Quickly and Acutely—and Move On

Being Compelling – Commitment to Winning

The book shows that great leaders evoke the emotion and energy of being involved in a crusade. No one will sacrifice for a project if the leader hasn’t made a full and clear—and public—commitment. Great leaders don’t want to be merely an employee instead they want to be part of a team, working together to create something important.

  • Choice and Obligation – The best, most talented followers are really volunteers, and because of those very attributes they are often in considerable demand elsewhere.
  • Attracting the Best and Brightest – Great leaders engage and listen to people.
  • Keeping Your Best on Board
  • Cheerleader
  • Tell Me the Truth – the best people actually find reality, even if it is bad news, compelling.
  • Keep Me Challenged – Talented people want and need challenging work.
  • No Hard Feelings – leaders must be able to stand in their followers’ shoes and see themselves from that viewpoint.

Competence: Leading on the Field with Skill

  • Leading People Talent to Teams – Hiring great people is arguably the highest-leverage activity that leaders undertake.
  • Seating Chart – talent is useless if the person is not a good match with that role and responsibility and a specific place in the structure of the organization.
  • People First – hire the very best people; only then should you focus on building the right plan for the organization.
  • Engagement – engage people by setting realistic goals with them and fairly rewarding them for meeting or exceeding those expectations.
  • Enrollment
  • Expectations
  • Energy – functional, emotional and career energy.
  • Empowerment – delegate power to other people
  • Retreat to Attack
  • How Has the Nature of Your Enterprise Changed? – As a leader, if you have not prepared your people for that change or you resist that change, you have failed in your responsibilities.
  • Where Is Your Authority or Positional Power Best Used in Leading People? – By carefully setting performance expectations with your key team members, you move the whole game up a notch.
  • What Is Your Plan to Deal with Your Weakest Link? – being aware of poorly performing subordinate and acting on it instead of avoiding it.
  • Will You Distinguish the Bad Performer from a Bad Plan? – think like a venture capitalist, with your project leaders as the entrepreneurs and the project itself a new venture. Have a post-mortem and inquire why project failed.

Leading Strategy – ideas to plans

Leaders need to distinct between leading people, strategy and execution.

  • Process to Plans – plan shows what needs to be done, where as trategy is bigger than plan and includes how things are done and fallback options.
  • The Process: Inclusive and Collaborative – The process must include the best people and the best ideas, from both within and outside the company, and must foster collaborative thinking and constructive, rigorous discussion.
  • Winnowing Out a Plan – solicit ideas from others when you don’t know the domain
  • The Plan: Realistic and Compelling – The book shows that leaders need to be engaged throughout the process to make sure the process moves along with appropriate energy and that the team remains realistic in terms of time, resources, and goals.
  • Stickiness – commitment in the face of adversity

Leading Execution – actions to results

Execution is about results. Leaders need to distinct between leading people, strategy and execution. Execution provides feedback that can be measured against plans.

  • Solve the Hard Problems First – don’t distract yourself with second-tier tasks
  • At the Edges – In order to build high-reliability organizations (e.g. SWAT), you need zero tolerance team execution, which require:
    • reliable communications
    • continuous training
    • standardize and synchronize
    • mission-goal clarity and loyality
    • empower the front line
    • redundancy
  • Leadership Leverage in Execution – The book suggests leading the process and setting the standards for the right goals. This includes leading the design process to create the appropriate metrics, ensuring a winner’s commitment and making sure that attitude permeates the culture.
  • Curb Your Enthusiasm: Focus, Commit, and Deliver – don’t overcommit and follow the rule of “first things first.”
  • It Isn’t Real If You Don’t Measure It – Measuring what matters is an extremely high-leverage opportunity. Use management by objectives (MBO), “as measured by” (AMB) or a key performance indicator (KPI) processes for measureing factors that correlate very highly with winning.
  • Let the Dashboard Drive – Measuring what matters to naturally direct attention, focus, and commitment to the right activities
  • It’s Just Like Pinball: If You Win, You Get to Play Again
    • Winner’s mindset
    • Failing elgantly – No lame excuses
  • Sloppiness – HRO never allow sloppiness because they know it equals death. The book shows that leaders may
    feel like part of being a nice guy, succumbing to that temptation promotes a culture of mediocrity.
  • Performance Feedback – look for data coming back from the field.

Consequence: Creating a Culture, Leaving a Legacy of Values

Trust is the most fragile of assets; at a certain point, different in every situation.

Legacy = Culture + Reputation

A Leader’s Communication

  • Open, Honest Dialogue – The book shows that the ability of leaders to communicate effectively is highest leverage activity in their set of responsibilities and should include:
    • What are we doing? (Vision and mission.)
    • Why are we doing it? (Purpose and goals.)
    • What’s the plan to win?
    • (What’s the strategy here?)
    • How are we doing? (Results and status—health of the business.)
    • What is my part in the game? (What do you expect from me?)
    • What’s in it for me? (Why is this a compelling place for me to be?)
    • How am I doing? (Give me feedback, acknowledgment, appreciation.)

Talking Trust

In order to build trust, leaders not only need to focus on contents but also emotional content of that message and the
connection—the leader’s empathy with the audience.

Checklists and Guideposts

Here are some key points from the book:

  • communication is a core responsibility of leading
  • most of the important things in organizations are the result of the right conversation
  • starving followers from basic information will result in high cost

Here are five C’s for What question leader needs to communicate:

  • A compelling cause
  • Credibility & Competence
  • Character
  • Commitment
  • Contribution

Here are five E’s for Why question leader needs to communicate:

  • Engagement
  • Enrollment
  • Energy
  • Empowerment
  • Endorsement

Here are six C’s for When question leader needs to communicate:

  • Context
  • Confidence
  • Challenge
  • Collaboration
  • Culture
  • Coaching

Here are seven C’s for How question leader needs to communicate:

  • Clarity
  • Consistency
  • Carefulness
  • Courage
  • Conviction
  • Compassion
  • Completion

The Solitary Touch

The book shows that there is really no such thing as a “casual” conversation.

Your 24 / 7 Job

The book shows leader has three basic tasks:

  • Align the interests, energy, and commitment of the team.
  • Reduce fear, confusion, and anxiety.
  • Instill confidence and trust, while rallying support and contributions.

A Leader’s Decision Making Values-Based Choices

The book shows that leader does not need to make most of the decisions, but need to help followers make make better decisions.

Decision Structure

  • What Exactly Are We Deciding?
  • What Flavor Is This Decision? – decisions can be classified as either simple or complex. You need sufficient data to make the decision, otherwise you have to use intuition. Decisions can also be characterized as easy or difficult.
  • When Does This Decision Need to Be Made?

    Total Cycle Time = Time to Decide + Time to Commit + Time to Execute
  • Who Should Make This Decision? – who is best equipped by skill, experience, proximity
  • Don’t Wait; Decide
  • Chasing Decisions – communicate with followers and empower them to make decisions

A Leader’s Impact The Transfer of Influence from Leader to Follower

Finally, the book shows how to build lasting legacy and reputation:

  • Leader Taking the High Ground
  • Whisper Campaign – use public forums to acknowledge accomplishments, sacrifices and courage. Also, appreciate them in private.
  • All You Leave Behind – using exit interviews to get feedback
  • Collective Memory
  • What to Do
  • Pay attention to change
  • Get More Curious, and Smarter, About Human
  • Nature – leaders tend to gravitate toward the objective and away from the subjective.
  • Give feedback
  • Celebrate success
  • Respect Life Outside of Work
  • Your Greatest Legacy
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