I think I've solved my problem by once again being more careful about holding 
elements in memory. By replacing global reads of my job doc with on-demand 
reads through xdmp:eval() I seem to have resolved my issue with changes to the 
job doc not being seen within the same separate transaction (e.g,, my read 
loop). I seem to be unable to let go of my procedural language brain damage....

Still, it seems like having a general, cross-application field or shared memory 
mechanism would be useful for this type of application where one app (e.g., my 
Web UI) spawns tasks that do the work and need a way to dynamically communicate 
within the scope of a single long-running transaction. At least that's the way 
I would go about building this type of application in a different environment.

Cheers,

E.
--
Eliot Kimber
http://contrext.com
 

On 12/7/17, 10:48 AM, "[email protected] on behalf of 
Eliot Kimber" <[email protected] on behalf of 
[email protected]> wrote:

    I don't think server fields are going to work because they are per 
application server and I have different application servers at work.
    
    There is an HTTP server that gets the pause/resume request and then spawned 
tasks running the TaskServer that need to read the field. 
    
    My experiments show that, per the docs, a field changed by one app is not 
seen by a different app. 
    
    Cheers,
    
    Eliot
    --
    Eliot Kimber
    http://contrext.com
     
    
    On 12/7/17, 10:13 AM, "[email protected] on behalf of 
Eliot Kimber" <[email protected] on behalf of 
[email protected]> wrote:
    
        I had not considered server fields--I'll check it out.
        
        Cheers,
        
        E.
        
        --
        Eliot Kimber
        http://contrext.com
         
        
        On 12/7/17, 10:11 AM, "[email protected] on 
behalf of Erik Hennum" <[email protected] on behalf of 
[email protected]> wrote:
        
            Hi, Eliot:
            
            Have you considered a server field -- where any code that changes 
the status also updates the server field and the iterator checks the server 
field?
            
            The server fields are local to the host, so there's no concern 
about a separate iterator running on a different host.
            
            If multiple iterators run on the same host, each would need to 
distinguish its status by an id, which the iterator could generate from a 
random id when it starts.
            
            
            Hoping that helps,
            
            
            Erik Hennum
            
            
            
            ________________________________________
            From: [email protected] 
<[email protected]> on behalf of Eliot Kimber 
<[email protected]>
            Sent: Thursday, December 7, 2017 7:48:44 AM
            To: MarkLogic Developer Discussion
            Subject: [MarkLogic Dev General] Best Approach to Manage "Flags" 
That Might Change Within a Single Transaction
            
            In the context of my remote processing management system, where my 
client server is sending many tasks to a set of remote servers through a set of 
spawned tasks running in parallel, I need to be able to pause the client so 
that it stops sending new tasks to the remote servers.
            
            So far I've been using a single document stored in ML as my 
mechanism for indicating that a job is in progress and capturing the job 
details (job ID, start time, servers in use, etc.). This works fine because it 
was only updated at the start and end of the job.
            
            But for the pause/resume use case I need to have a flag that 
indicates that the job is paused and have other processes (e.g., my 
task-submission code) immediately respond to a change. For example, if I'm 
looping over 100 tasks to load up a remote task queue and the job is paused, I 
want that loop to end immediately.
            
            So basically, in this loop, for every iteration, check the "is 
paused" status, which requires reading the job doc to see if a @paused 
attribute is present (the @paused attribute captures the time the pause was 
requested and serves as the "is paused" flag). However, because the loop is a 
single transaction, it will see the same version of the job doc for every 
iteration, even if it's changed.
            
            I tried using xdmp:eval() to read the job doc but that didn't seem 
to change the behavior.
            
            E.g., doing this in query console:
            
                    return (er:is-job-paused(), er:pause-job(), 
er:is-job-paused())
            
            Results in (false, false)
            
            So this isn't going to work.
            
            So my question: what's the best way to manage this kind of dynamic 
flag in ML?
            
            I could use file system files instead of docs in the database, 
which would avoid the ML transaction behavior but that seems a little hackier 
than I'd like.
            
            What I'd really like is some kind of "shared memory" mechanism 
where I can set and reset variables at will across different modules running in 
parallel but I haven't seen anything like that in my study of the ML API.
            
            Is there such a mechanism that I've missed?
            
            Or am I just thinking about the problem the wrong way?
            
            Thanks,
            
            Eliot
            
            --
            Eliot Kimber
            http://contrext.com
            
            
            
            
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