VOSS 3.1

Optimisation tip for DictionarySet queries

The VOSS collection, DictionarySet, and therefore also its subclass VirtualDictionarySet, follows the normal Smalltalk practice of returning a new collection when asked for a subset of its elements, just as when using Collection>>select:.

However, when sending a DictionarySet one of the most commonly used query messages, #for:equals: (as in Journeys for: #month equals: ‘August’) the required elements will already be in an explicit virtual set in one of its component VirtualMultiValuedAutoDictionaries. For consistency, however, those elements are all added into a constructed answer set, and this takes time. For this reason, an optimisation is provided as the alternative method DictionarySet>>for:equalsNoCopy: which returns the actual virtual set from the database.
  
It’s safe to do this only if the application does not change that returned set, as that would be a subversive change to just that one of the DictionarSet’s component AutoDictionaries, which the DictionarySet keeps synchronised when adding or removing elements; however that can be avoided with care, and anyway cannot happen in a read-only transaction.

From a concurrency point of view, it’s also as well to remember that this returned virtual set will be locked each time a message is sent to it in a read-only transaction having #isolationDegree=2 (short read-locks), whereas when using #for:equals: the returned set is not virtual, it’s a real set of virtual objects, and only its elements will be locked when sent messages, which may make some difference to concurrency. If the transaction’s #isolationDegree=3 all locks are held until the transaction rollsback or commits, so it wouldn’t make any difference anyway.

jc

Join the forum discussion on this post

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.