Is there any tools to count firestore read & write operations?
Or how do you usually count each operations manually?
Thanks!
There's no tool for you to keep a count on the operations in your Firestore database, you would need to manually keep track of them. I would rather recommend you to perform an estimate as depicted here if what you are trying to do is get an estimate of the billing you'll receive in the month.
If you have an issue with the number of reads you are currently performing, I would recommend you to take a look at this article which may help you with that topic.
Related
We would like to be able to read state inside a command use case.
We could get the state from event store for the specific aggregate, but what about querying aggregates by field(not id) or performing more complicated queries, that are not fitted for the event store?
The approach we were thinking was to use our read model for those cases as well and not only for query use cases.
This might be inconsistent, so a solution could be to have the latest version of the aggregate stored in both write/read models, in order to be able to tell if the state is correct or stale.
Does this make sense and if yes, if we need to get state by Id should we use event store or the read model?
If you want the absolute latest state of an event-sourced aggregate, you're going to have to read the latest snapshot (assuming that you are snapshotting) and then replay events since that snapshot from the event store. You can be aggressive about snapshotting (conceivably even saving a snapshot after every command), but you're giving away some write performance to make the read faster.
Updating the read model directly is conceivably possible, though that level of coupling is something that should be considered very carefully. Note also that you will very likely need some sort of two-phase commit to ensure that the read model is only updated when the write model is updated and vice versa. I strongly suggest considering why you're using CQRS/ES in this project, because you are quite possibly undermining that reason by doing this sort of thing.
In general, if you need a query for processing a particular command, it's likely that query will generally be the same, i.e. you don't need free-form query support. In that case, you can often have a read model that's tuned for exactly that query and which only cares about events which could affect that query: often a fairly small subset of the events. The finer-grained the read model, the easier it is to keep in sync (if it ignores 99% of events, for instance, it can't really fall that far behind).
Needing to make complex queries as part of command processing could also be a sign that your aggregate boundaries aren't right and could do with a re-examination.
Does this make sense
Maybe. Let's start with
This might be inconsistent
Yup, they might be. So what?
We typically respond to a query by sending an unlocked copy of the answer. In other words, it's possible that the actual information in the write model will change after this response is dispatched but before the response arrives at its destination. The client will be looking at a copy of the answer taken from the past.
So we might reasonably ask how much better it is to get information no more than one minute old compared to information no more than five minutes old. If the difference in value is pennies, then you should probably deploy the five minute version. If the difference is millions of dollars, then you're in a good position to negotiate a real budget to solve the problem.
For processing a command in our own write model, that kind of inconsistency isn't usually acceptable or wise. But neither of the two common answers require keeping the read and write models synchronized. The most common answer is to just work with the write model alone. The less common answer is to grab a snapshot out of a cache, and then apply any additional events to it to bring it up to date. The latter approach is "just" a performance optimization (first rule: don't.)
The variation that trips everyone up is trying to process a command somewhere else, enforcing a consistency rule on our data here. Once again, you need a really clear picture of how valuable the consistency is to the business. If it's really important, that may be a signal that the information in question shouldn't be split into two different piles - you may be working with the wrong underlying data model.
Possibly useful references
Pat Helland Data on the Outside Versus Data on the Inside
Udi Dahan Race Conditions Don't Exist
I'm wondering if transactions (https://firebase.google.com/docs/firestore/manage-data/transactions) are viable tools to use in something like a ticketing system where users maybe be attempting to read/write to the same collection/document and whoever made the request first will be handled first and second will be handled second etc.
If not what would be a good structure for such a need with firestore?
Transactions just guarantee atomic consistent update among the documents involved in the transaction. It doesn't guarantee the order in which those transactions complete, as the transaction handler might get retried in the face of contention.
Since you tagged this question with google-cloud-functions (but didn't mention it in your question), it sounds like you might be considering writing a database trigger to handle incoming writes. Cloud Functions triggers also do not guarantee any ordering when under load.
Ordering of any kind at the scale on which Firestore and other Google Cloud products operate is a really difficult problem to solve (please read that link to get a sense of that). There is not a simple database structure that will impose an order where changes are made. I suggest you think carefully about your need for ordering, and come up with a different solution.
The best indication of order you can get is probably by adding a server timestamp to individual documents, but you will still have to figure out how to process them. The easiest thing might be to have a backend periodically query the collection, ordered by that timestamp, and process things in that order, in batch.
I am asking a question that I assume does not have a simple black and white question but the principal of which I'm asking is clear.
Sample situation:
Lets say I have a collection of 1 million books, and I consistently want to always pull the top 100 rated.
Let's assume that I need to perform an aggregate function every time I perform this query which makes it a little expensive.
It is reasonable, that instead of running the query for every request (100-1000 a second), I would create a dedicated collection that only stores the top 100 books that gets updated every minute or so, thus instead of running a difficult query a 100 times every second, I only run it once a minute, and instead pull from a small collection of books that only holds the 100 books and that requires no query (just get everything).
That is the principal I am questioning.
Should I create a dedicated collection for EVERY query that is often
used?
Should I do it only for complicated ones?
How do I gauge which is complicated enough and which is simple enough
to leave as is?
Is there any guidelines for best practice in those types of
situations?
Is there a point where if a query runs so often and the data doesn't
change very often that I should keep the data in the server's memory
for direct access? Even if it's a lot of data? How much is too much?
Lastly,
Is there a way in MongoDB to cache results?
If so, how can I tell it to fetch the cached result, and when to regenerate the cache?
Thank you all.
Before getting to collection specifics, one does have to differentiate between "real-time data" vis-a-vis data which does not require immediate and real-time presenting of information. The rules for "real-time" systems are obviously much different.
Now to your example starting from the end. The cache of query results. The answer is not only for MongoDB. Data architects often use Redis, or memcached (or other cache systems) to hold all types of information. This though, obviously, is a function of how much memory is available to your system and the DB. You do not want to cripple the DB by giving your cache too much of available memory, and you do not want your cache to be useless by giving it too little.
In the book case, of 100 top ones, since it is certainly not a real time endeavor, it would make sense to cache the query and feed that cache out to requests. You could update the cache based upon a cron job or based upon an update flag (which you create to inform your program that the 100 have been updated) and then the system will run an $aggregate in the background.
Now to the first few points:
Should I create a dedicated collection for EVERY query that is often used?
Yes and no. It depends on the amount of data which has to be searched to $aggregate your response. And again, it also depends upon your memory limitations and btw let me add the whole server setup in terms of speed, cores and memory. MHO - cache is much better, as it avoids reading from the data all the time.
Should I do it only for complicated ones?
How do I gauge which is complicated enough and which is simple enough to leave as is?
I dont think anyone can really black and white answer to that question for your system. Is a complicated query just an $aggregate? Or is it $unwind and then a whole slew of $group etc. options following? this is really up to the dataset and how much information must actually be read and sifted and manipulated. It will effect your IO and, yes, again, the memory.
Is there a point where if a query runs so often and the data doesn't change very often that I should keep the data in the server's memory for direct access? Even if it's a lot of data? How much is too much?
See answers above this is directly connected to your other questions.
Finally:
Is there any guidelines for best practice in those types of situations?
The best you can do here is to time the procedures in your code, monitor memory usage and limits, look at the IO, study actual reads and writes on the collections.
Hope this helps.
Use a cache to store objects. For example in Redis use Redis Lists
Redis Lists are simply lists of strings, sorted by insertion order
Then set expiry to either a timeout or a specific time
Now whenever you have a miss in Redis, run the query in MongoDB and re-populate your cache. Also since cache resids in memory therefore your fetches will be extremely fast as compared to dedicated collections in MongoDB.
In addition to that, you don't have to keep have a dedicated machine, just deploy it within your application machine.
Background/Intent:
So I'm going to create an event tracker from scratch and have a couple of ideas on how to do this but I'm unsure of the best way to proceed with the database side of things. One thing I am interested in doing is allowing these events to be completely dynamic, but at the same time to allow for reporting on relational event counters.
For example, all countries broken down by operating systems. The desired effect would be:
US # of events
iOS - # of events that occured in US
Android - # of events that occured in US
CA # of events
iOS - # of events that occured in CA
Android - # of events that occured in CA
etc.
My intent is to be able to accept these event names like so:
/?country=US&os=iOS&device=iPhone&color=blue&carrier=Sprint&city=orlando&state=FL&randomParam=123&randomParam2=456&randomParam3=789
Which means in order to do the relational counters for something like the above I would potentially be incrementing 100+ counters per request.
Assume there will be 10+ million of the above requests per day.
I want to keep things completely dynamic in terms of the event names being tracked and I also want to do it in such a manner that the lookups on the data remains super quick. As such I have been looking into using redis or mongodb for this.
Questions:
Is there a better way to do this then counters while keeping the fields dynamic?
Provided this was all in one document (structured like a tree), would using the $inc operator in mongodb to increment 100+ counters at the same time in one operation be viable and not slow? The upside here being I can retrieve all of the statistics for one 'campaign' quickly in a single query.
Would this be better suited to redis and to do a zincrby for all of the applicable counters for the event?
Thanks
Depending on how your key structure is laid out I would recommend pipelining the zincr commands. You have an easy "commit" trigger - the request. If you were to iterate over your parameters and zincr each key, then at the end of the request pass the execute command it will be very fast. I've implemented a system like you describe as both a cgi and a Django app. I set up a key structure along the lines of this:
YYYY-MM-DD:HH:MM -> sorted set
And was able to process Something like 150000-200000 increments per second on the redis side with a single process which should be plenty for your described scenario. This key structure allows me to grab data based on windows of time. I also added an expire to the keys to avoid writing a db cleanup process. I then had a cronjob that would do set operations to "roll-up" stats in to hourly, daily, and weekly using variants of the aforementioned key pattern. I bring these ideas up as they are ways you can take advantage of the built in capabilities of Redis to make the reporting side simpler. There are other ways of doing it but this pattern seems to work well.
As noted by eyossi the global lock can be a real problem with systems that do concurrent writes and reads. If you are writing this as a real time system the concurrency may well be an issue. If it is an "end if day" log parsing system then it would not likely trigger the contention unless you run multiple instances of the parser or reports at the time of input. With regards to keeping reads fast In Redis, I would consider setting up a read only redis instance slaved off of the main one. If you put it on the server running the report and point the reporting process at it it should be very quick to generate the reports.
Depending on your available memory, data set size, and whether you store any other type of data in the redis instance you might consider running a 32bit redis server to keep the memory usage down. A 32b instance should be able to keep a lot of this type of data in a small chunk of memory, but if running the normal 64 bit Redis isn't taking too much memory feel free to use it. As always test your own usage patterns to validate
In redis you could use multi to increment multiple keys at the same time.
I had some bad experience with MongoDB, i have found that it can be really tricky when you have a lot of writes to it...
you can look at this link for more info and don't forget to read the part that says "MongoDB uses 1 BFGL (big f***ing global lock)" (which maybe already improved in version 2.x - i didn't check it)
On the other hand, i had a good experience with Redis, i am using it for a lot of read / writes and it works great.
you can find more information about how i am using Redis (to get a feeling about the amount of concurrent reads / writes) here: http://engineering.picscout.com/2011/11/redis-as-messaging-framework.html
I would rather use pipelinethan multiif you don't need the atomic feature..
I'm thinking about the problem in question title: if I have to query for an aggregate in a distributed architecture where the distributed event store can eventually be waiting for last events to be distributed.. How can I know if the aggregate i'm reading via read model is not being replaced by the updated one in another server of the network?
I have an http server that receive events to save on the store. Store not exists actually but I want implement it soon.
Events regards huge aggregate that serialized in json format takes 4MB
Another sub-question is what storage do you recommend for the snapshot?
EDIT
I don't understand if the question is not written well or if I have selected wrong tags...
The ability to know when the "last" event in the distributed store is processed depends on two things:
Can you define "last"?
Does the distributed storage engine expose it to you?
The CAP theorem is a good reference to the sort of problems you are going to have with both of those in a distributed data store; in general, unless you give up availability you are not going to be able to have the properties needed to get what you want.
On the other hand, if you can define last in a meaningful way, you can still have what you want. For example: do your events expire after a while? If, for example, they expire after 12 hours, you know that you can always meaningfully define last as "the moment in time 12 hours ago", because any unprocessed event older than that is obsolete...
To answer your sub-question, I strongly recommend a storage engine that you do not write yourself, because distributed data storage is an awesomely hard problems that many very smart people, working for companies doing nothing but solving problems in this space, are doing for you.
Leverage their work instead.