parallel execution of read and write may cause inconsistency

[qinzuoyan]

As in the following code:

MODULE_INIT_BEGIN(replication_type1)
    dsn_task_code_register("RPC_L2_CLIENT_READ", TASK_TYPE_RPC_REQUEST, TASK_PRIORITY_COMMON, THREAD_POOL_LOCAL_APP);
    dsn_task_code_register("RPC_L2_CLIENT_WRITE", TASK_TYPE_RPC_REQUEST, TASK_PRIORITY_LOW, THREAD_POOL_REPLICATION);
    dsn::register_layer2_framework< ::dsn::replication::replication_service_app>("replica", DSN_APP_MASK_FRAMEWORK);
MODULE_INIT_END

on_client_read() is executed in LOCAL_APP thread pool, which is not partitioned. on_client_write() is executed in REPLICATION thread pool, which is partitioned. So it is:

• all write requests for a gpid are executed serially in one special thread of REPLICATION thread pool.
• all read requests are executed in any thread of LOCAL_APP thread pool.
• write and read may be executed in parallel

In replica::on_client_read(), we need to read these variables:

• _config.status
• _prepare_list->last_committed_decree()
• _primary_states.last_prepare_decree_on_new_primary And the problem is:
• these variables may be accessed parallelly by write thread and read thread
• they are not protected by lock
• they are not set to volatile

Then there are risks of breaking strong consistency semantics of read operation. For example:

• at first, read thread find state is PRIMARY
• then, write thread change state to INACTIVE
• and, read thread go ahead to do read operation.

[imzhenyu]

This is as expected. One way to fix this is to use big locks, and another easy way is to reconfigure the read tasks to be executed in replication thread pool as well. It really depends on the semantic requirements though. In practice, since the reads and the writes requests are usually from different nodes, there is no point about reading the latest update or the stale update, as they are really depending on the msg scheduling on the network. If we do have such requirement, we will use some application-level approaches to guarantee that, i.e., read begins after getting the ack for the writes.