[ZODB-Dev] RFC: database ids

[Jim Fulton]

On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 6:08 PM, Jim Fulton <jim at zope.com> wrote:
> When using a database server (ZEO, relstorage), you can make a
> configuration error that causes you to connect to the wrong database.
> This can be especially painful in a situation where you get
> disconnected from the server and "reconnect" to an incorrect server
> and end up with objects from separate databases in the same cache.
> This happened to us (ZC) once when we fat-fingered a ZRS database
> fail-over.
>
> ZEO currently defends against this by refusing to connect to a server
> if the server's last transaction ID is less than the last transaction
> ID the client has seen.  This has a couple of problems:
>
> - The test is too weak.
>
> - It makes fail-over to a slightly out of date secondary storage quite
>   painful.
>
> I propose to add a database identifier that clients can verify.
>
> - To minimize impact to storage implementations, the database
>   identifier will be stored under the ZODB_DATABASE_ID key of object 0
>   (root object).  The key will be added on database open if it is
>   absent. The value will be a configured value, or a UUID.

- If a database has a configured ID, it will error if the stored ID
doesn't match.

>
> - If a ZEO client is configured with a database identifier, then it
>   will refuse to connect to a database without a matching identifier.
>
> - If a ZEO client is *not* configured with a database identifier, it
>   will configure itself with the identifier of the first server it
>   connects to, saving the information in the ZEO cache.  This will at
>   least protect against "reconnect" to the wrong server.
>
> - A ZEO client can *optionally* be configured to discard cache if it
>   (re)connects to a server with a last transaction lower than the last
>   one the client has seen as long as the database ID matches.
>
> - ZRS secondaries will also check database ids when (re)connecting to
>   primaries.
>
> Comments?
>
> Jim
>
> --
> Jim Fulton
> http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimfulton



-- 
Jim Fulton
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimfulton