[ZODB-Dev] undo (and storage interface) brokenness

[Erik Dahl]

We use undo from time to time in a zeo setup.  When it works it can be  
a life saver! :)  If it goes away I guess it wouldn't be the end of  
the world though.

-EAD

Erik A. Dahl
Co-Founder and CTO, Zenoss Inc.
phone: 443-837-2597
http://www.zenoss.com





On Dec 23, 2009, at 3:26 PM, Jim Fulton wrote:

> I'm looking at undo today because it is complicating ZEO transaction  
> management.
>
> Undo is broken in a number of ways. Does anyone care?  Does anyone  
> use undo?
>
> Undo is broken in the following ways:
>
> - The TransactionalUndo resource manager invalidates objects too  
> early.
>
> - If undo is mixed with stores, store invalidations may not be  
> handled properly.
>  This is because, with undo, the two-phase commit calls are made on  
> a storage
>  multiple times.  This was OK a long long time ago, but not since
> tpc_vote started
>  returning important information.
>
>  Of course, mixing undo and stores is problematic in a number of
> ways, but there's
>  nothing to prevent it now.
>
> - Because undo returns affected oids immediately, it's impossible to
> delay getting the
>  storage lock until tpc_vote is called. This is a performance issue
> and is less serious
>  than the problems mentioned above.
>
> Undo can be fixed, but not in a way that preserves the existing API.
>
> I'm tempted to remove undo support, at least from ZEO.
>
> So, I repeat: is anyone actually using undo these days?
>
> BTW, this analysis reveals a flaw in the storage APIs that I'd like to
> fix.  You're allowed
> to call tpc_begin multiple times with the same transaction. Extra
> calls are ignored.
> Also, calling tpc_finish with a wrong transaction (a transaction other
> than the one
> the storage is dealing with or when a storage isn't committing) is
> ignored.  This feels
> like a bug magnet to me, but it's there, afaict, to support the  
> current broken
> undo implementation. Changing existing standard storages to be more
> restrictive (and fixing tests that specifically tested the permissive
> behavior) doesn't break anything but
> the current undo implementation.
>
> Jim
>
> -- 
> Jim Fulton
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