DSF ID Loader

To be Reviewed By: October 8, 2021

Authors: Jens Deppe

Status: Draft | Discussion | Active | Dropped | Superseded

Superseded by: N/A

Related: N/A

Problem

To facilitate backwards compatibility, Geode has a concept known as Data Serializable Fixed ID (DSFID) which allows serializable objects to evolve over time using an API that allows newer versions of the classes to still be deserialized by older versions of Geode. This is a core capability of Geode that is primarily intended for internal classes but is also utilized by various modules, notably WAN, Lucene and Redis.

To use DSFIDs, a class needs to register itself so that it is known by the serialization framework. Many core classes register in DSFIDFactory . The modules, mentioned before, register during their service loader discovery and initialization phase. Under some situations, however, Geode will require knowledge of the DSFID very early on during member startup. If a member receives a message with an unknown DSFID it will throw a DSFIDNotFoundException. Without introducing module circular dependencies, there is no way for a module to register its required DSFIDs early enough to avoid this issue.

Anti-Goals

None identified.

Solution

The proposed solution includes introducing a new Service Provider Interface (SPI) - DSFIDLoader - to the geode-serialization  module. This SPI will be initialized as part of the static class initialization already existing in InternalDataSerializer .

public interface DSFIDLoader {
  void registerDSFIDs(DSFIDSerializer serializer);
}

In order to use this, a module will need to:

• Include a provider configuration resource file: resources/META-INF/services/org.apache.geode.internal.serialization.DSFIDLoader 
• This file will contain one or more fully qualified class names which implement the above interface

The result will be that DSFIDs will be registered and available when the core serialization framework is instantiated.

Changes and Additions to Public Interfaces

No changes to public interfaces.

Performance Impact

No anticipated performance impacts.

Backwards Compatibility and Upgrade Path

No backwards compatibility impact.

Prior Art

N/A

FAQ

None yet.

Errata

None yet.