Identifying bean dependencies associated with a specific operation - java

I am working on a JAX-RPC webservice that is already built. This is a huge service which consists of around 25-30 operations. A large number of Spring config files (around 50) are also present. A number of test classes are developed which loads all the spring references associated with the service. This takes a long time to load all the spring config files and associated bean references before executing the specific test method. I am trying to see if I can load only the specific spring config files / bean references that pertain to the operation.
I was told that setting default lazy load parameter in spring config might not help as it works only if it is run within a container. Would it be possible to help in suggesting in options that I can follow to decrease the initial loading time?

I don't know, but may be this help you. You can use annotations in you test classes to specify the config files you need to include to the context. Also, you can add spring profiles and activate them from the test class.
#RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
#ActiveProfiles({ "dev-test"})
#ContextConfiguration({"/application-context-persistence.xml", "/another-context.xml"})
public class Test{
}

Related

Why Spring does not recognize #BatchSize annotation

Scenario:
I'm supporting an Enterprise application that runs in Wildfly10. The application (.war) uses J2EE technologies (EJBs, JPA, JAX-RS) and SpringBoot features (like, SpringMVC, SpringRest, SpringData, SpringRestData) ... Both stacks co-exists "happily" because they don't interact between them; however, they do share common classes, like utility or Entity Classes (the stacks map to the same database model). Why the application uses those stacks is out the scope of the question.
Currently, I'm trying to improve the performance of a #RestController that pulls some data from the database using a JPA Spring Repository. I found that we're suffering the N + 1 queries problem when calling the #RestController. In past projects (where there were only J2EE technologies), I have used the #BatchSize hibernate annotation to mitigate this problem with total success.
But, in this project, Spring seems to be skipping such annotation. How do I know that? Because I turned on the hibernate SQL logging (hibernate.show_sql) and I can see the N + 1 queries is still happening ...
Key Points:
Here are some insights about the application that you must know before providing (or trying to guess) any answer:
The application has many sub-modules encapsulated as libraries inside WAR file (/WEB-INF/lib) ... Some of these libraries are the jars that encapsulate the entity classes; others are the jars that encapsulate the REST Services (that could be JAX-RS services or Spring Controllers).
The Spring configuration is done in the classes defined in the WAR artifact: in there, we have a class (that extends from SpringBootServletInitializer) annotated with #SpringBootApplication and another class (that extends from RepositoryRestConfigurerAdapter) annotated with #Configuration. Spring customization is done is such class.
The application works with multiple datasources, which are defined in the Wildly server. Spring DATA JPA must address any query pointing to the right datasource. To accomplish this requirement, the application (Spring) was configured like this:
#Bean(destroyMethod="")
#ConfigurationProperties(prefix="app.datasource")
public DataSource dataSource() {
// the following class extends from AbstractRoutingDataSource
// and resolve datasources using JNDI names (the wildfly mode!)
return new DataSourceRouter();
}
#Bean("entityManagerFactory")
public LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean getEntityManagerFactoryBean() {
LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean lemfb;
lemfb = new LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean();
lemfb.setPersistenceUnitName("abcd-pu");
lemfb.setDataSource(dataSource());
return lemfb;
}
The last #Bean declaration favors the use of a persistence.xml file, which we do have in the route /WEB-INF/classes/META-INF/ (i.e. Spring does find this file!) ... In such file, we define our domain classes, so that Spring JPA can see such entities. Also, we can define special JPA properties like: hibernate.show_sql and hibernate.use_sql_comments without issues (this is how I detected the N + 1 queries problem in the first place) ...
What I have done so far?
I tried to add the #BatchSize annotation to the problematic collection. No luck!
I created a new JAX-RS Service whose purpose was to mimic the behavior of the #RestController. I confirmed that the #BatchSize annotation does work in the application's deployment, at least, in JAX-RS Services! (NOTE: the service uses it own persistence.xml) ...
Test details (Updated 2020/07/30): What I did here was to create a new JAX-RS Service and deployed it inside the WAR application, next to the #RestController that presents the problem (I mean, it is the same WAR and the same physical JVM). Both services pull from database the same entity (same class - same classloader), which has a lazy Collection annotated with #BatchSize! ... If I invoke both services, the JAX-RS honors the #BatchSize and pulls the collection using the expected strategy, the #RestController does not ... So, what it is happening here? The only thing different between the services is that each one has a different persistence.xml: the persistence.xml for the JAX-RS is picked by Wildfly directly, the other one is picked by Spring and delegated to Wildfly (I guess) ...
I tried to add the properties: hibernate.batch_fetch_style (=dynamic) and hibernate.default_batch_fetch_size (=10), to the persistence.xml read by Spring ... No luck. I debug the Spring startup process and I saw that such properties are passed to the Spring Engine, but Spring does not care about them. The weird thing here is that properties like: hibernate.show_sql, Spring does honor them ... For those who are asking: "What does these properties do?" Well, they are global equivalent to apply #BatchSize to any JPA lazy collection or proxy without declaring such annotation in any entity.
I setup a small SpringBoot Project using the same Spring version as enterprise application (which is 1.5.8.RELEASE, by the way) and both the annotation and properties approach worked as supposed to.
I've been stuck with this issue for two days, any help to fix this will be appreciated ... thanks!
There are 2-3 possible issues that I can think off.
For some reason, whatever you modify isnt picked up by wildfly - Wildfly classpath resolution is a separate Topic and some missing configuration can cause you a nightmare. This you can identify if you have access to debug the query, and in if you put a breakpoint in the constructor of your Entity class, you will get a chance to evaluate the entity configuration being used, somewhere in the execution conetxt.
BatchSize doesnt work on OneToOne, It only works on OneToMany relationships.
A typical way to define BatchSize is to do along with Lazy load as mentioned in the example here. If you are not using Lazy fetch, hibernate assumes that you are willing to make an eager load and makes another select query to fetch all the details.Please confirm you are using the same syntax as given in the example above.
New Addition:
Put Conditional Breakpoints in PropertyBinder#setLazy() function, and may be backtrace it and put relavent breakpoints in CollectionBinder and AnnotationBinder. then restart/redeploy the server and see what data you are getting for the relavent properties. That will give you fair idea where it is failing..
Why conditional breakpoint? Its because you will have thousands of properties and if you do not add condition to the breakpoint, you will take 1 hour to reach your actual breakpoint
What should be the condition - If its property binder, the condition shoud be like `this.name == . For other classes also you can use the same approach.
Sorry for too detailed description on conditional breakpoints, you might find it redundent.
Looks like the only way to debug your problem is to debug hibernate framework from server startup, then only we will be able to find out the rootcause

Use of Bean configuration XML File

I am a new user of Spring framework. I am facing some confusion in understanding the difference between core spring framework and spring boot. As far as I understand, Spring boot is a framework which performs the initial setup automatically (like Setting up Maven dependencies and downloading the jar files) and comes with an embedded Tomcat server which makes it ready to deploy in just one click., Whereas, Spring MVC requires manual setup. All the tutorials that I watched for core spring show bean configuration using bean factory which configures the beans using a .XML file. In Spring boot, this bean configuration file is absent. My question is, what is the use of this bean configuration file? I did not find any legitimate use of this file in making a REST service with spring. I didn't see any use of the Application Context, Bean Factory in creating web application. Can someone point out how can bean factory be used in Spring web apps? Is there any fundamental difference between core spring and spring boot other than the additional components?
The Spring application context is essentially the "pool" of beans (service objects, which include controllers, converters, data-access objects, and so on) and related information that define an application; I recommend the reference introduction. In theory, you can get complicated with the context setup and have hierarchical organization and such, but in most real-world cases you just have a single plain context.
Inside this context you need to install all of the beans that provide the logic for your application. There are several possible ways to do this, but the two main ways are by providing XML files with have directives like bean (define an individual bean) or component-scan (automatically search for classes with certain annotations, including #Controller) and by using Java classes annotated with #Configuration, which can use annotations and #Bean methods.
The XML style is generally older, and newer applications mostly use Java configuration, but both provide entries that are collected into the context, and you can use both simultaneously. However, in any application, you have to provide some way of getting the registration started, and you will typically have one "root" XML file or configuration class that then imports other XML files and/or configuration classes. In a legacy web.xml-based application, you specify this in your servlet configuration file.
Spring Boot is, as you said, essentially a collection of ready-to-go configuration classes along with a mechanism for automatically detecting configurations and activating them. Even this requires a configuration root, though! This is the #EnableAutoConfiguration instruction, frequently used through its composite #SpringBootApplication. The application context and configuration mechanisms work normally once Boot finds them and pulls them in. Spring knows where to get started because you give it an explicit instruction to build a context starting with that entry point, usually with SpringApplication.run(MyApplication.class, args).
The embedded-server configuration just happens to be a particular set of configuration that is really useful and comes with one of the Boot starter packages. There's nothing there that you couldn't do in a non-Boot application.

SpringBootApplication annotation start time overhead

I want to create a new Spring Boot web application.
My structure should be the following:
com.base.package
MyApplication
config
domain
repository
service
web
I can go two ways:
Annotate MyApplication with #SpringBootApplication and let it find controllers, JPA repositories etc.
Use #EnableWebMvc, #EnableJpaRepostories and so on along with #ComponentScan(basePackages=...) in order to point the base packeges for different component types explicitly.
I would happily go with the first approach but there is a concern that it will take more time to start the application then (if the app codebase grows significantly) because Spring would scan everything instead of particular packages.
But it anyway should read all these files to find the beans at least once.
So the question is:
Is the Spring (Boot) smart enough to scan all subpackeges for the beans only once or it would add an overhead to leave it with the default configuration?

Ease of rolling back from Spring Boot to regular Spring and viewing hybrid of Spring Context and configurations while using Spring Boot

I am assessing whether spring-boot and how I could migrate to using it.
One question I have is whether a project that uses spring boot can be converted easily back to a regular spring project which uses the traditional spring configuration files if that is required. This would be useful in my mind for a few reasons.
1) merging with legacy projects, because as I have read moving from legacy spring to spring-boot is somewhat tedious.
2) Obtaining a view of the spring application context file and webapp configuration files to understand what the actual configurations being used are.
Another question I have is regarding the lack of application-context file, is there a way to have some kind of hybrid where there is still an application-context file that can be seen? Part of my concern is that spring-boot auto configures components without us knowing and learning how they are configured and work together.
Spring Boot provides auto-configuration.
When #SpringBootApplication is encountered, it triggers a search of the CLASSPATH for a file called META-INF/spring.factories which is just a regular text file that enumerates a list of Java configuration classes. Java configuration was introduced in 2006 and then merged into Spring 3 in 2009. So it's been around for a long time. These Java configuration classes define beans in the same way that XML does. Each class is annotated with #Configuration and therein you find beans defined using methods (factory methods, or provider methods) whose return value is managed and exposed via Spring. Each such provider method is annotated with #Bean. This tells Spring to consider the method and its return value the definition of the bean.
Spring Boot tries to launch all the Java configurations it sees enumerated in that text file. It tries to launch RabbitAutoConfiguration.class, which in turn provides beans for connecting to RabbitMQ and so on. Of course, you don't want those beans in certain cases, so Spring Boot takes advantage of Spring framework 4's #Conditional mechanism to conditionally register those beans only if certain conditions are met: is a type on the CLASSPATH, is a property exposed through the environment, has there been another bean of the same type defined by the user, etc. Spring boot uses these to only create the RabbitMQ-specific beans if, for example, the dependencies that you would get from org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-amqp are on the CLASSPATH. It also considers that the user may have provided a different implementation of RabbitTemplate in some othe rbean definition (be it XML or Java configuration) so it uses that if it's there.
These java configuration classes are the same sort of Java configuration classes you would write without Spring Boot. BUT... WHY? 80% of the time, the auto-configuration that Spring Boot provides is going to be as good or better than the configuration you would write yourself. There are only so many ways to configure Spring MVC, Spring Data, Spring Batch, etc., and the wager you take using Spring Boot is that the leaders and engineers on those various projects can provide the most sensible 80%-case configuration that you probably don't care to write, anyway.
So, yes you could use Spring Boot with existing applications, but you'd have to move those existing applications to Spring 4 (which is easy to do if you're using the spring-boot-starter-* dependencies) to take advantage of #Conditional. Spring Boot prefers: NO configuration, Java configuration, XML configuration, in that order.
If you have an existing application, I'd do the following:
find out what dependencies you can remove from your Gradle/Maven build and just have taken care of for you with the various spring-boot-starter- dependencies.
add #SpringBootApplication to a root component class. Eg, if your package is a.b.c, put a class Application in a.Application and annotate that with #SpringBootApplication
You can run it as a Servlet 3 application or in an embedded servlet container. It might be easier to just run in a standard servlet container as you take baby steps. Go to http://start.spring.io and make sure to choose war in the packaging drop down. Copy the ServletInitializer class and the specification from the pom.xml to ensure that your application is a .war, not a .jar. Then, once everything works on Spring Boot, rm -rf the Initializer and then revert the Maven build to a simpler .jar using the Spring Boot plugin for extra win.
If your application has lots of existing configuration, import it using #Import(OldConfig.class) or #ImportResource("old-config.xml") on the a.Application configuration class. The auto-configuration will kick in but it will see, for example, that you may have already defined a DataSource so it'll plug that in in the right places. What I like to do now is just start the application up, see if everything's OK, then start removing code in my old Java or XML configuration. Don't remove your business code, but remove things related to turning on parts of Spring. Anything that looks like #Enable..* or ..:annotation-driven/>. Restart and verify things still work. The goal is to let Spring Boot do as much of the heavy lifting as possible. Viewing the source is very handy here so you can see what Spring Boot will try to do for you. Spring Boot will log information on what #Conditional conditions evaluated to true for you. Simply provide --Ddebug=true wen you start the application to see the output. You could also export DEBUG=true then restart your IDE to run it as long as the environment variable is ivsible in your shell.

Overwrite configuration for Spring project from outside

I'm developing a Spring application which shall be used by any kind of other application, no matter if that is a Spring project, a web application or even a simple single-class console application. The application who uses my project will just have to add the JAR file with my application.
So my project has a static factory class that gets and returns a bean from its Spring context which acts as an access object to access all public available functions of my project.
That part is already working.
But I need the developer of the application that uses my JAR to be able to overwrite certain configurations in my project without editing the config files in the JAR itself. At the moment those settings should be overwritable:
- the data source and hibernate bean configuration
- the jasypt (encryption) bean configuration
- the log4j settings
How do I make those settings overwriteable with configs from outside the jar?
Greetings
touchdown
Maybe a good solution would be a configuration that the user could override, for this take a look into:
http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/3.0.x/spring-framework-reference/html/beans.html#beans-java
Specially to #Configuration and #Bean
Maybe you could have a configuration class implemented and the user can override it. After extending the class and overwrite some methods that provides some beans the user shall inform it to your factory that will do nothing else than
new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(userConfigurationClass);
If you want to replace the complete configuration, than the easyest way would be to have a parametrized factory that takes an alternative configuration file as its argument.
If you need it a bit more fine grain (lets say up to 10 parts), than you can split your application xml in several smaller once, and use again a configurable factory that allows to exchange the smaller xml files.
So I got a solution that is working for me.
I put an general import for override context-XMLs at the bottom of my main application context:
<import resource="classpath*:project/package/config/override/or-*.xml" />
So all the user has to do is to create the package "project/package/config/override" in his classpath (e.g. resource folder) and place matching XML files in it with new bean definitions.

Categories