7586c5ccbd
This pull request introduces a new caching mechanism for client options in the Alternator and transport layers, refactors how client metadata is stored and accessed, and extends the `system.clients` virtual table to surface richer client information. The changes improve efficiency by deduplicating commonly used strings (like driver names/versions and client options), and ensure that client data is handled in a way that's safe for cross-shard access. Additionally, the test suite and virtual table schema are updated to reflect the new client options data. **Caching and client metadata refactoring:** * The largest and most repeatable items in the connection state before this PR were a `driver_name` and a `driver_version` which were stored as an `sstring` object which means that the corresponding memory consumption was 16 bytes per each such value at least (the smallest size of the `seastar`'s `sstring` object) **per-connection**. In reality the driver name is usually longer than 15 characters, e.g. "ScyllaDB Python Driver" is 23 characters and this is not the longest driver name there is. In such cases the actual memory usage of a corresponding `sstring` object jumps to 8 + 4 + 1 + (string length, 23 in our example) + 1. So, for "ScyllaDB Python Driver" it would be 37 bytes (in reality it would be a bit more due to natural alignment of other allocations since the `contents` size is not well aligned (13 bytes), but let's ignore this for now). * These bytes add up quickly as there are more connections and, sometimes we are talking about millions of connections per-shard. * Using a smart pointer (`lw_shared_ptr`) referencing a corresponding cached value will effectively reduce the per-connection memory usage to be 8 bytes (a size of a pointer on 64-bit CPU platform) for each such value. While storing a corresponding `sstring` value only once. * This will would reduce the "variable" (per-connection) memory usage by **at least 50%**. And in case of "ScyllaDB Python Driver" driver version - by 78%! * And all this for a price of a single `loading_shared_values` object **per-shard** (implements a hash table) and a minor overhead for each value **stored** in it. * Introduced a new cache type (`client_options_cache_type`) for deduplicating and sharing client option strings, and refactored `client_data`, `client_state`, and related classes to use `foreign_ptr<std::unique_ptr<client_data>>` and cached entry types for fields like driver name, driver version, and client options. (`client_data.hh`, `service/client_state.hh`, `alternator/server.hh`, `alternator/controller.hh`, `transport/controller.hh`, `transport/protocol_server.hh`) [[1]](diffhunk://#diff-664a3b19e905481bdf8eb3843fc4d34691067bb97ab11cfd6e652e74aac51d9fR33-R36) [[2]](diffhunk://#diff-664a3b19e905481bdf8eb3843fc4d34691067bb97ab11cfd6e652e74aac51d9fL40-R56) [[3]](diffhunk://#diff-daadce1a2de3667511e59558f3a8f077b5ee30a14bcc6a99d588db90d0fcd2bdL105-R107) [[4]](diffhunk://#diff-daadce1a2de3667511e59558f3a8f077b5ee30a14bcc6a99d588db90d0fcd2bdL154-R182) [[5]](diffhunk://#diff-5fce246edf5abffb2351bd02e2eb1e9850880f7a00607ccaa90c3eee7ef57c6bL91-R92) [[6]](diffhunk://#diff-5fce246edf5abffb2351bd02e2eb1e9850880f7a00607ccaa90c3eee7ef57c6bL110-R111) [[7]](diffhunk://#diff-31730ba8e7374f784a88dc27c1512291cf73b7f24e08768f7466a3c8cfcc7a1aL96-R96) [[8]](diffhunk://#diff-19a97c0247cc08155ee49b277e43859ca32d6ef8cbff0ed7368ec5fa19e0a11eL172-R172) [[9]](diffhunk://#diff-eea7e2db5d799a25e717a72ac8ce5842bd4adb72b694d38d8f47166d9cd926faL356-R356) [[10]](diffhunk://#diff-d0b4ec3a144bbc5dc993866cf0b940850a457ff6156064f7e2b4b10ad0a95fefL80-R80) [[11]](diffhunk://#diff-4293b94c444d9bd5ecd17ce7eda8c00685d35ecf6e07f844efc91a91bbe85be1L46-R48) * Updated the methods for setting and getting driver name, driver version, and client options in `client_state` to be asynchronous and use the new cache. (`service/client_state.hh`, `service/client_state.cc`) [[1]](diffhunk://#diff-daadce1a2de3667511e59558f3a8f077b5ee30a14bcc6a99d588db90d0fcd2bdL154-R182) [[2]](diffhunk://#diff-99634aae22e2573f38b4e2f050ed2ac4f8173ff27f0ae8b3609d1f0cc1aeb775R347-R362) **Virtual table and API enhancements:** * Extended the `system.clients` virtual table schema and implementation to include a new `client_options` column (a map of option key/value pairs), and updated the table population logic to use the new cached types and foreign pointers. (`db/virtual_tables.cc`) [[1]](diffhunk://#diff-05f7bff3edb39fb8759c90b445e860189f2f30e04717ed58bae42716082af3d1R752) [[2]](diffhunk://#diff-05f7bff3edb39fb8759c90b445e860189f2f30e04717ed58bae42716082af3d1L769-R770) [[3]](diffhunk://#diff-05f7bff3edb39fb8759c90b445e860189f2f30e04717ed58bae42716082af3d1L809-R816) [[4]](diffhunk://#diff-05f7bff3edb39fb8759c90b445e860189f2f30e04717ed58bae42716082af3d1L828-R879) **API and interface changes:** * Changed the signatures of `get_client_data` methods throughout the codebase to return vectors of `foreign_ptr<std::unique_ptr<client_data>>` instead of plain `client_data` objects, to ensure safe cross-shard access. (`alternator/controller.hh`, `alternator/controller.cc`, `alternator/server.hh`, `alternator/server.cc`, `transport/controller.hh`, `transport/protocol_server.hh`) [[1]](diffhunk://#diff-31730ba8e7374f784a88dc27c1512291cf73b7f24e08768f7466a3c8cfcc7a1aL96-R96) [[2]](diffhunk://#diff-19a97c0247cc08155ee49b277e43859ca32d6ef8cbff0ed7368ec5fa19e0a11eL172-R172) [[3]](diffhunk://#diff-5fce246edf5abffb2351bd02e2eb1e9850880f7a00607ccaa90c3eee7ef57c6bL110-R111) [[4]](diffhunk://#diff-a7e2cda866c03a75afcf3b087de1c1dcd2e7aa996214db67f9a11ed6451e596dL988-R995) [[5]](diffhunk://#diff-eea7e2db5d799a25e717a72ac8ce5842bd4adb72b694d38d8f47166d9cd926faL356-R356) [[6]](diffhunk://#diff-d0b4ec3a144bbc5dc993866cf0b940850a457ff6156064f7e2b4b10ad0a95fefL80-R80) [[7]](diffhunk://#diff-4293b94c444d9bd5ecd17ce7eda8c00685d35ecf6e07f844efc91a91bbe85be1L46-R48) **Testing and validation:** * Updated the Python test for the `system.clients` table to verify the new `client_options` column and its contents, ensuring that driver name and version are present in the options map. (`test/cqlpy/test_virtual_tables.py`) [[1]](diffhunk://#diff-6dd8bd4a6a82cd642252a29dc70726f89a46ceefb991c3e63fc67e283f323f03R79) [[2]](diffhunk://#diff-6dd8bd4a6a82cd642252a29dc70726f89a46ceefb991c3e63fc67e283f323f03R88-R90) Closes scylladb/scylladb#25746 * github.com:scylladb/scylladb: transport/server: declare a new "CLIENT_OPTIONS" option as supported service/client_state and alternator/server: use cached values for driver_name and driver_version fields system.clients: add a client_options column controller: update get_client_data to use foreign_ptr for client_data
Scylla
What is Scylla?
Scylla is the real-time big data database that is API-compatible with Apache Cassandra and Amazon DynamoDB. Scylla embraces a shared-nothing approach that increases throughput and storage capacity to realize order-of-magnitude performance improvements and reduce hardware costs.
For more information, please see the ScyllaDB web site.
Build Prerequisites
Scylla is fairly fussy about its build environment, requiring very recent versions of the C++23 compiler and of many libraries to build. The document HACKING.md includes detailed information on building and developing Scylla, but to get Scylla building quickly on (almost) any build machine, Scylla offers a frozen toolchain. This is a pre-configured Docker image which includes recent versions of all the required compilers, libraries and build tools. Using the frozen toolchain allows you to avoid changing anything in your build machine to meet Scylla's requirements - you just need to meet the frozen toolchain's prerequisites (mostly, Docker or Podman being available).
Building Scylla
Building Scylla with the frozen toolchain dbuild is as easy as:
$ git submodule update --init --force --recursive
$ ./tools/toolchain/dbuild ./configure.py
$ ./tools/toolchain/dbuild ninja build/release/scylla
For further information, please see:
- Developer documentation for more information on building Scylla.
- Build documentation on how to build Scylla binaries, tests, and packages.
- Docker image build documentation for information on how to build Docker images.
Running Scylla
To start Scylla server, run:
$ ./tools/toolchain/dbuild ./build/release/scylla --workdir tmp --smp 1 --developer-mode 1
This will start a Scylla node with one CPU core allocated to it and data files stored in the tmp directory.
The --developer-mode is needed to disable the various checks Scylla performs at startup to ensure the machine is configured for maximum performance (not relevant on development workstations).
Please note that you need to run Scylla with dbuild if you built it with the frozen toolchain.
For more run options, run:
$ ./tools/toolchain/dbuild ./build/release/scylla --help
Testing
See test.py manual.
Scylla APIs and compatibility
By default, Scylla is compatible with Apache Cassandra and its API - CQL. There is also support for the API of Amazon DynamoDB™, which needs to be enabled and configured in order to be used. For more information on how to enable the DynamoDB™ API in Scylla, and the current compatibility of this feature as well as Scylla-specific extensions, see Alternator and Getting started with Alternator.
Documentation
Documentation can be found here. Seastar documentation can be found here. User documentation can be found here.
Training
Training material and online courses can be found at Scylla University. The courses are free, self-paced and include hands-on examples. They cover a variety of topics including Scylla data modeling, administration, architecture, basic NoSQL concepts, using drivers for application development, Scylla setup, failover, compactions, multi-datacenters and how Scylla integrates with third-party applications.
Contributing to Scylla
If you want to report a bug or submit a pull request or a patch, please read the contribution guidelines.
If you are a developer working on Scylla, please read the developer guidelines.
Contact
- The community forum and Slack channel are for users to discuss configuration, management, and operations of ScyllaDB.
- The developers mailing list is for developers and people interested in following the development of ScyllaDB to discuss technical topics.