jBPM PROCESSINSTANCEINFO and WorkitemInfo tables in H2 db - java

I am new to jbpm and would like to know if the already configured H2 db stores the objects(DataItems) associated with the process and work item in it somewhere.
I can see there is a byte array present in both the tables and I am not sure what exactly that bytearray stores and how to unmarshall it.
Any sort of information would be really helpful.
Thanks.

The *Info objects do store all relevant data the engine needs in a binary format. This is not meant for query purposes however. If you want to get access to variable values, either use the audit logs or use pluggable variable persistence to store them separately (for example by making them a JPA entity they will be stored in a separate table).

Related

Bulk Inserting Data into PostgreSQL

I have SpringBoot project which will pull a large amount of data from one database, do some kind of transformation on it, and then insert it into a table in a PostgreSQL database. This process will continue for a few billion records so performance is key.
I've been researching trying to find the best way to do this, such as using an ORM or a JDBCTemplate for example. One thing I keep seeing constantly regarding bulk inserts into PostgreSQL is the COPY command. https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/populate.html
I'm confused because using COPY requires the data to be written into a file, and while I've seen people saying to use it I've yet to come across a case where someone mentions how to get the data into the file. Isn't writing to a file slow? If writing to a file is slow, then the performance gains that COPY does bring, does this make it be like there was no gain at all?
These kind of data migration and conversion is better to handle in Stored procedures. Assuming that the source data is already loaded to postgres ( if not use postgres db utility to load the raw data to some flat table). Then write series of stored procs to transform the data and insert into the destination table.
I have done some complex data migration and i used this approach. If you have to do lot of complex data conversion, write some python script ( which is usually faster than spring boot/data setup), insert the parially converted data, then do some stored procs to do the final conversion.
It is better to keep the business logic to convert/massage data close to the datasource ( in stored procs) instead of pulling data to app server and reinserting them.
Hope it helps.

Mixed list of new/updated objects: how to efficiently store them to the DB?

OK, so let's say I have a list that contains the following types of objects:
Objects that are already stored in the database (have the same PK),
and are the same as in the database, not modified
Objects that are already stored in the database (have the same PK), and are modified in regards to the stored ones, so they need to be updated
Objects that don't yet exist in the database, and are about to be saved
Such list of objects is being sent as a JSON to the web-service, and the web-service now has to communicate to the database, and decide what objects to store, update or ignore.
My question is how to do this effectively?
One idea is to iterate the list, and for every object's PK make a query to the database, and check if the object in the database is non-existent, the same, or modified. And then choose the action based on that information.
What bothers me with that approach is a whole lot of queries to the database, just to save some objects. What if only 1 of 100 should really be saved? It is so ineffective.
Is there any better way to do that?
You can send the whole list to DB (MYSQL) and do upsert :
INSERT ... ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE

Informix, MySQL and Oracle blob contains

We have an application that runs with any of IBM Informix, MySQL and Oracle, and we are using Java with Hibernate to connect to the database. We will store XML, CSV and other text-based files inside the database (clob column). The entities in Java are byte[] objects.
One feature request to the application is now to "grep" content inside the data. So I need to find all files with a specific content.
On regular char/varchar fields I can use like '%xyz%', but this is not working on byte[] / blobs.
The first approach was to load each entity, cast the byte[] into a string and use the contains method in Java. If the use enters any filter parameters on other (non-clob) columns, I will apply those filters before testing the clob in order to reduce the number of blobs I have to scan.
That worked quite well for 100 files (clobs) and as long as the application and database are on the same server. But I think it will get really slow if I have 1.000.000 files inside the database and the database is not always in the same network. So I think that is not a good idea.
My next thought was creating a database procedure. But I am not quite sure if this is possible for Informix, MySQL and Oracle. And I am not sure if this is possible.
The last but not favored method is to store the content of the data not inside a clob. Maybe I can use a different datatype for that?
Does anyone has a good idea how to realize that? I need a solution for all three DBMS. The application knows on what kind of DBMS it is connected to. So it would be okay, if I have three different solutions (one for each DBMS).
I am completely open to changing what kind of datatype I use (BLOB, CLOB ...) — I can modify that as I want.
Note: the clobs will range from about 5 KiB to about 500 KiB, with a maximum of 1 MiB.
Look into Apache Lucene or other text indexing library.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucene
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_text_search
If you go with a DB specific solution like Oracle Text Search you will have to implement a custom solution for each database. I know from experience that Oracle Text search takes significant time to learn and involves a lot of tweaking to get just right.
Also, if you use a DB solution you would receive different results in each DB even if the data sets were the same (each DB would have it's own methods of indexing and retrieving the data).
By going with a 3rd party solution like Lucene -- you only have to learn one solution and results will be consistent regardless of the Db.

Retrieve information for the same DTO from two different databases

I tried to make this as simple as possible with a short example.
We have two databases, one in MSSQLServer and other in Progress.
We have the user DTO as it follows that we shown in a UI table within a web application.
User
int, id
String, name
String, accountNumber
String, street
String, city
String, country
Now this DTO(Entity) is not stored only in one database, some information (fields) for the same user are stored in one database and some in the other database.
MSsql
Table user
int, id
String, name
String, accountNumber
Table userModel
int, id
String, street
String, city
String, country
As you can see the key is the only piece that link two tables in both databases, as I said before they are not in the same database and not using same database vendor.
We have a requirement for sorting the UI table for each column. Obviously we need to create user dto with the information coming from both databases.
Our proposal at this moment is if user want to apply sorting using street field, we run a query in the Progress database and obtain a page (using pagination) using this resultset and go directly to the MSSQLServer User table with those keys and run another query to extract the missing information and save it to our DTO and transfer it to the UI. With implies run a query in one database then other query based on the returned keys in the second database.
The order of the database could change depending in which column(field) the user wants to apply sorting.
Technically we will create a jparepository that acts as a facade and depending on the field make the process in the correct database.
My question is:
There is some kind of pattern that is commonly used in this scenarios, we are using spring, so probably spring have some out of the box features to support this requirement, will be great if this is possible using jparepositories (I have several doubts about it as we will use two different entitymanagers, one for each database).
Note: Move data from one database to another is not an option.
For this, you need to have separate DataSource/EntityManagerFactory/JpaRepository.
There is no out-of-the-box support for this architecture in the Spring framework, but you can easily hide the dual DataSource pair behind a Service layer. You can even configure JTA DataSources for ACID operations.
As you will always need to fetch data from both databases, why not populate local java User objects then sort these objects (using a comparator with the appropriate fields you want to sort on).
The advantage of sorting locally vs doing the sort in the database query is that you won't have to send requests to the database every time you change the sorting field.
So, to summarize:
1- Issue two sql queries for the two databases to get your users
2- Build your User objects using the retrieved values
3- Use Java comparators to sort the users on any field without having to issue new queries to the database.
My advice would be to find a way to link 2 databases together so that you can utilize database driver features without your code being affected.
Essentially if Progress database can be linked to SQL Server, you will be able to query both databases using a single SQL query with a join on id column and you will get a merged, sorted and paginated result set for your application to display.
I am not an expert in Progress database but it seems there is an ODBC driver for it so you might try to link it to SQL Server.

LinkedList with Serialization in Java

I'm getting introduced to serialization and ran into some problems when pairing it with LinkedList
Consider i have the following table:
CREATE TABLE JAVA_OBJECTS (
ID BIGINT NOT NULL UNIQUE AUTO_INCREMENT,
OBJ_NAME VARCHAR(50),
OBJ_VALUE BLOB
);
And i'm planning to store 3 object types - so the table may look like so -
ID OBJ_NAME OBJ_VALUE
============================
1 Class1 BLOB
2 Class2 BLOB
3 Class1 BLOB
4 Class3 BLOB
5 Class3 BLOB
And i'll use 3 different LinkedList's to manage these objects..
I've been able to implement LoadFromTable() and StoreIntoTable(Class1 obj1).
My question is - if i change an attribute for a Class2 object in LinkedList<Class2>, how do i effect the change in the DB for this individual item? Also take into account that the order of the elements in LinkedList may change..
Thanks : )
* EDIT
Yes, i understand that i'll have to delete/update a row in my DB table. But how do i keep track of WHICH row to update? I'm only storing the objects in the List, not their respective IDs in the table.
You'll have to store their IDs in the objects you are storing. However, I would suggest not trying to roll your own ORM system, and instead use something like Hibernate.
If you change an attribute in a an object or the order of items. You will have to delete that row and insert the updated list again.
How do i effect the change in the DB for this individual item?
I hope I get you right. The SQL update and delete statements allow you to add a WHERE clause in which you chose the ID of the row to update.
e.g.
UPDATE JAVA_OBJECTS SET OBJ_NAME ="new name" WHERE ID = 2
EDIT:
To prevent problems with your Ids you could wrap you object
class Wrapper {
int dbId;
Object obj;
}
And add them instead of the 'naked' object into your LinkedList
You can use AUTO_INCREMENT attribute for your table and then use the mysql_insert_id() function to retrieve the id assigned to the row added/updated by the last INSERT/UPDATE statement. Along with this maintain a map (eg a HashMap) from the java object to the Id. Using this map you can keep track of which row to delete/update.
Edit: See the answer to this question as well.
I think the real problem here is, that you mix and match different levels of abstraction. By storing serialized Java objects into a relational database as BLOBs you have to consider several drawbacks:
You loose interoperability. Applications written in other languages than Java are not able to read the data back. Even other Java applications have to have the class files of the serialized classes in their classpath.
Changing the class definitions of the stored classes will end up in maintenance nightmares.
You give up the advantages of a relational database. Serialization hides the actual data from the database. So the database is presented only with a black box. You are unable to execute any meaningfull query against the real data. All what you have is the ID and block of bytes.
You have to implement low level data handling by yourself. Actually the database is made to handle your data effectively, but because of serialization you hinder it doing its job. So you are on your own and you are running into that problem right now.
So in most cases you benifit from separation of concerns and using the right tool for a job.
Here are some suggestions:
Separate the internal data handling inside your application from persistent storage. Design your database schema in a way to enable the built-in database features to handle the data efficently. In case of a relational database like MySQL you can choose from different technologies like plain JDBC, object relational mappers like JPA or simple mappers like MyBatis. Separation here means to avoid to contaminate the database with implementation specific concerns.
If you have for example in your Java application a List of Person instances and each Person consists of a name and an age. Then you would represent that list in a relational database as a table consisting of a VARCHAR field for the name and a numeric field for the age and maybe a third field for a unique key. Then the database is able to do what it can do best: managing large amounts of data.
Inside your application you typically separate the persistent layer from the rest of your program containing the code to communicate with the database.
In some use cases a relational database may not be the appropiate tool. Maybe in a single user desktop application with a small set of data it may be the best to simply serialize your Person list into a plain file and read it back at the next start up.
But there exists other alternatives to persist your data. Maybe some kind of object oriented database is the right tool. In particular I have experiences with Fast Objects. As a simplification it is serialization on steroids. There is no need for a layer like JPA or JDBC between your application and your database. You are able to store the class instances directly into the database. But unlike the relational database with its BLOB field, the OODB knows your classes and the actual data and can benefit from that.
Another alternative may be JDBM or Berkeley DB.
So separation of concerns and choosing the right persistence strategy (and using it the right way) is a key concern for the success of your project. But doing it right is hard even for experienced developers.

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