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Moved to Icebox

A substantial portion of a New Client Server Protocol was implemented as described below.  The project was tabled indefinitely soon afterward and dormant for quite a while.  After discussing the matter on the dev email list we decided to delete the experimental implementation from the "develop" branch.  This was done in release 1.15 in Github SHA ae6b3ac1550bdaed75159fbbe360b6733e7e84ee.

See GEODE-8997

Introduction

Apache Geode is a data management platform that provides real-time, consistent access to data-intensive applications throughout widely distributed cloud architectures. While it currently has high-speed client interfaces for Java, C++ and .NET there is both a need to create lighter-weight clients and a

Table of Contents

 

Introduction

Geode is a reliable distributed data management tool. There is a demand to access Geode from various other programming languages. But Unfortunately, the existing client-server protocol is too complex to understand, and it’s not even documented. That establishes the need for a new client-server protocol.is undocumented.  It evolved over time and is overly complex to meet either of these needs.

This proposal details the requirements, API and structure for a new client/server protocol. It does not specify the exact serialization mechanism, but the intent is for the protocol that is described to be complete in terms of the interface and message ordering. The intent is to make it pluggable so that we can experiment with different serialization formats based on varying performance and ease-of-use needs. In particular, we expect to use a widely-available IDL to serialize the protocol at first and make it accessible from many languages, and possibly implement a custom serialization later for clients needing very high performance. Choosing the IDL is an open goal.

The intent is to allow client functionality to be implemented in phases, moving from a "basic client" to a more advanced "smart client".  It endeavors to provide a protocol that is also more amenable to more modern APIs such as those using asynchronous or reactive patterns.

Serialization of application keys, values, callback arguments, function parameters and so forth is a separate matter and are not necessarily tied to the serialization protocol used for client/server messaging.  The initial protocol will support primitive types such as scalars, strings, and byte arrays.  It will also support JSON documents as values and convert between these and Geode PDX-serialized objects in the servers.

Goals

The high-level goals for the protocol are defined here.


Protocol Requirements

In the evaluation or definition of any protocol, it expected that the evaluated protocol/framework meets the following requirements:

  • Versioning: The protocol has to provide version information, in order to distinguish different protocol versions from one another.

  • Correlation Id: This number is a unique identifier that allows the system to correlate requests and responses.

  • Object Type: The serialization type of the data objects stored inside the messages

Protocol Terms

  Any binary protocol will require following things

 
  • Version: This indicates the API version.

  • Request Type: This indicates API needs to invoke.

  • Correlation Id: This helps to relate request-response.

  • Object Type: What is the type of serialized object.
    • Response Type: It indicates whether

    resposne
    • a response is partial or complete.

    Error Handling
    • ErrorCodes: It indicates the problem with API invocation.

  • Streaming support: To support the large response or continuous response.

  • Request Format: Api request and response.

  • Byte Order(Big Endian)

  • Request: It indicates client's message

  • Response: It indicates server's message.

  • Message: Bytes which contains defined format.

  • Connect 

    The new protocol will be integrated with current Geode server. The new client driver can connect with Geode server by sending byte “110”.

    Request Type

    Following table contains the request type and its corresponding id. RequestTypeId would recognize the API, which client want to invoke on the server. The request format will contain the 2-bytes(int16) for request type id. It will be marked as requestTypeId in request format.

    RequestTypeRequestTypeId
    MetaDataConfigRequestType1
    AuthenticationRequestType 2
    PutRequestType 3
    GetRequestType 4
    PutAllRequestType 5
    GetAllRequestType 6
    FunctionRequestType 7
    CreateRequestType 8
    InvalidateRequestType 9
    DestroyRequestType 10
    KeySetRequestType 11
    ValuesRequestType 12
    EntrySetRequestType 13
    ContainsValueForKeyRequestType 14
    ContainsKeyRequestType 15
    ContainsValueRequestType 16
    RemoveAllRequestType 17
    SizeRequestType 18
    PutIfAbsentRequestType 19
    RemoveIfValueIsSameRequestType 20
    ReplaceIfValueIsSameRequestType 21
    ReplaceIfValueExistType 22

    ...

    The purpose of correlation id to match the request and its corresponding response. The request format will contain the 4-bytes(int32) for correlation Id. It will be marked as correlationId in request format. 

    Object Type

    We will support all the object types which Geode understands. This would include all the java primitive types, an array of primitive types, collections, java serialization, data serializable, pdx serialization and custom user data serializers. For the purpose of the request format, we would distinguish key type and value type.

    ObjectKeyType

    Geode supports only few object types as the region Key. The region key will be marked as KeyObject in the request format.

    ObjectValueType

    All the supported Geode types can be defined as the region value. In the request format the region value will be marked as ValueObject. Value object will be preceded by ValueHeader. This will represent the size of the serialized bytes of ValueObject. It will consume 5-byte in request format. And it will be marked as ValueHeader in the request format.

    ResponseType

    ReponseType will indicate that whether the response is partial or complete. A client can process a partial response.  Response with FullResponse type id will indicate the completion of that request. 

    The response format will contain the 2-bytes(int16) for response type. It will be marked as FullResponse or PartialResponse in the response format.

    ResponseTypeResponseTypeId
    FullResponse1
    PartialResponse2

     

    Error Codes

    Error codes indicate the issue with the invocation of API at the server. We have following error code for various issues at the server. The response format will contain the 2-bytes(int16) for error codes. It will be marked as ErrorCode in the response format.

     

    Exception TypeErrorCode
    AUTHENICATION_REQUIRED_EXCEPTION 1
    AUTHORIZATION_FAILED_EXCEPTION 2
    AUTHETICATIONFAILED_EXCEPTION 3
    BUCKET_MOVED_EXCEPTION 4
    SERIALIZATION_EXCEPTION 5
    INTERRUPTED_EXCEPTION 6
    ILLEGAL_ARGUMNET_EXCEPTION 7
    ILLEGAL_STATE_EXCEPTION 8
    TIMEOUT_EXCEPTION 9
    CACHE_WRITER_EXCEPTION 10
    REGION_EXIST_EXCEPTION 11
    REGION_NOT_EXIST_EXCEPTION 12
    LEASE_EXPIRED_EXCEPTION 13
    CACHE_LOADER_EXCEPTION 14
    REGION_DESTROYED_EXCEPTION 15
    ENTRY_DESTROYED_EXCEPTION 16
    ENTRY_NOT_FOUND_EXCEPTION 17
    FUNCTION_NOT_FOUND_EXCEPTION 18
    FUNCTION_ATTRIBUTE_MISMATCH_EXCEPTION 19
    FUNCTION_EXECUTION_EXCEPTION 20
    CONCURRENT_MODIFICATION_EXCEPTION 21
    UNKNOWN_EXCEPTION 22
    CLASS_CAST_EXCEPTION 23
    GEODE_IO_EXCEPTION 24
    NULL_POINTER_EXCEPTION 25
    ENTRY_EXIST_EXCEPTION 26
    DISK_ACCESS_EXCEPTION 27
    QUERY_EXCEPTION 28
    CACHE_CLOSED_EXCEPTION 29
    MESSAGE_FORMAT_EXCEPTION 30
    CACHE_LISTENER_EXCEPTION 31
    CQ_EXCEPTION 32
    CQ_CLOSED_EXCEPTION 33
    CQ_QUERY_EXCEPTION 34
    CQ_EXIST_EXCEPTION 35
    CQ_INVALID_EXCEPTION 36
    INVALID_DELTA_EXCEPTION 37
    TRANSACTION_EXCEPTION 38
    TRANSACTION_DATA_NODE_DEPARTED_EXCEPTION 39
    TRANSACTION_REBALANCED_EXCEPTION 40
    COMMIT_CONFLICT_EXCEPTION 41
    PUTALL_PARTIAL_RESULT_EXCEPTION 42

     

    Message(Framing) 

    A message is series of bytes which contains request or response. If the message is large, then we need to divide the message into small messages. Then message can be sent in following way.

    Message --> MessageHeader [Request | Response]
    MessageHeader --> Size PartialMessage CorrelationId
    Size --> int32 (Size of request or response)
    PartialMessage --> boolean (isMessageCompleted)
    CorrelationId -->int32( to co-relate request and response)

     

     

    Request Format

    Request --> RequestType Version hasMetaData [MetaData]
    RequestType --> RequestTypeId
    version --> int16 (api version)
    hasMetaData --> boolean (if there is any meta data associated with this request)
    MetaData --> optional

     

     

     

    • Chunk Response: The ability to send a large response in multiple smaller, more manageable chunks.

    • Continuous Response: Client can register(Observer pattern) for events and then server notify the client if those events occur.

    • Request: The request message to be sent

    • Response: The response message received in relation to a request message

    • Request Format: Format of request API and its parameters, which client wants to invoke.

    • Response Format: Format for API return value, which client invoked.

    • Message: The generic construct that represents a message that is to be sent which contains a Message Header and Request/Response.

    • Serialized Byte Order: Big Endian

    RPC and Message serialization Frameworks

     During the investigation into frameworks to help "lower the barrier of entry," it became evident that there are two types of external frameworks:

    1. Message Serialization Frameworks - These frameworks allow for the definition of a message in a generic IDL, the generation of language specific classes from the IDL, and the encoding/decoding of those message to be sent over a transport
    2. RPC Frameworks - There frameworks provide greater coverage in the node-to-node communication: the transport layer (HTTP, TCP, UDP), the message definition in IDL with corresponding serialization mechanism and the definition of methods in the IDL, as well as the generation of corresponding service stubs.

    The differences between the two approaches are:
    1. Message serialization frameworks define the encoding/decoding of defined messages but not the transport or connectivity.
    2. RPC frameworks concern themselves with connectivity and transport, remote method invocations and the encoding/decoding of defined messages.

    Because this protocol needs to be tunable for very high performance, for some lack of functionality and because RPC frameworks hide their network and threading internals, it was decided that option 2 was not viable. See a comparison at RPC framework evaluation.

    From an higher-level architectural perspective we can identify 2 layers:

    1. A Transport Layer (TCP, UDP, HTTP, etc..)
    2. Message encoding/decoding Layer

    This proposal will define the message structure and protocol to be agnostic of transport used.

    Message Structure Definition

    All details relating to the Message structure definition can be found on the page Message Structure and Definition.

    Proposed Implementation Phases

    Introducing a new protocol into GEODE has the potential to be highly disruptive. In order to minimize the disruption and maximize the feedback cycles, we suggest implementing the changes in a phased approach. To view the milestones for each phase please see the page Phases and Milestones.

    Example messages

    To better visualize the protocol messages a few sample messages have been provided on the page Protocol Message Examples