Re: [sqlalchemy] Guidance regarding nested session usage

[Mike Bayer]

On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 4:26 PM, Mike Bayer  wrote:
> made.  Which is above, **if you are not using begin() and commit(),
> the way we just said you should, then you should turn off
> autocommit=True**.

arg arg ARG ARG

"if you are **not** using begin() and commit(), and are instead just
calling flush() which fully commits, then you should **disable**
expire_on_commit=True, to avoid excessive re-loads of data."






That section needs another rewrite but then again
> the entire concept of "subtransactions" also needs to be discouraged
> as these are all obsolete patterns.
>
>
>> (3) I feel that, even with the context manager, the transaction boundaries
>> are still blurry because the developer does not know what will actually get
>> committed in the database. For example, if a previous part of the code
>> changed something, then called an action that commits the session, the
>> previous change will get committed as well.
>
> So this whole part sounds wrong.   If you want your database function
> to occur in the context of a larger transaction, then by definition,
> there may be other pending data present.  Whether that data is pending
> in the session of your Python application, or pending in the MVCC
> buffer of your database, doesn't matter from a transaction-level point
> of view.  It might matter for performance or debugging reasons, but in
> that case, you'd want to just emit flush() at the top of the block, so
> that those pending changes are on the server side of the transaction
> rather than the client side, but all of it is still pending as far as
> being permanent to disk and visible to the rest of the world.
>
> if you have a function that wants to persist data out to the database
> and it does not want to persist data that is already pending in the
> ongoing tranasction, it should use a separate transaction. This is
> a common use case and it is what you do if you are for example putting
> rows into a job queue type of table, or sending out messages that are
> going to show up in some log or console output somewhere.
>
>
>> I've searched around and found
>> this: https://github.com/mitsuhiko/flask-sqlalchemy/pull/447 which basically
>> issues a rollback on entering the context manager to ensure that only what
>> is within the context manager will get committed. What do you think of it?
>
> I'm much more a proponent of writing one's own patterns that suit
> their application rather than making the prepackaged ones in something
> like Flask fit.  I think if it implicitly rolls back, that's a
> terrible idea because if you truly expect that nothing important is
> present in the session, it should be asserting that and raising if
> something is found (look in session.new, session.dirty,
> session.deleted).
>
>
>
>
> I
>> can immediately see a problem where if I query for an object before passing
>> it to an action, then use the context manager, all the work done on querying
>> is lost since the object state is expired on rollback.
>>
>> I'd appreciate any advice/input.
>>
>> Best,
>> Alex
>>
>> --
>> SQLAlchemy -
>> The Python SQL Toolkit and Object Relational Mapper
>>
>> http://www.sqlalchemy.org/
>>
>> To post example code, please provide an MCVE: Minimal, Complete, and
>> Verifiable Example. See http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve for a full
>> description.
>> ---
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
>> "sqlalchemy" group.
>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
>> email to sqlalchemy+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
>> To post to this group, send email to sqlalchemy@googlegroups.com.
>> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/sqlalchemy.
>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

-- 
SQLAlchemy - 
The Python SQL Toolkit and Object Relational Mapper

http://www.sqlalchemy.org/

To post example code, please provide an MCVE: Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable 
Example.  See  http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve for a full description.
--- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"sqlalchemy" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to sqlalchemy+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to sqlalchemy@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/sqlalchemy.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: [sqlalchemy] Guidance regarding nested session usage

[Mike Bayer]

On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 12:14 PM,   wrote:
> Hey,
>
> I'd like some help regarding nested session usage please.
>
> I'm working on an application that has an API layer but also has a lot of
> cron jobs (via Celery) and scripts. I'm trying to design the app in a way
> that my "business" logic is contained and re-usable by any of these
> interfaces.
>
> The SQLAlchemy session scope is request/task-wide (i.e requests and tasks
> remove the scoped session at the end) but I am doing explicit commits
> instead of committing on request end because I sometimes have to deal with
> complicated logic like creating/submitting transactions to payment
> processors etc.
>
> To start off, I use a context manager, much like the docs, which commits or
> rollbacks as necessary. I then have a layer of actions, which are considered
> "top-level" functions that can do a simple operation e.g update something or
> a collection of operations i.e create and submit a transaction. These
> actions use the context manager above to persist stuff and I've opted to
> keep all session "usage" in these actions alone and nowhere else in the
> code. Pretty soon, the need to use some of the simpler actions inside other,
> bigger actions arose which, after reading the docs, led me to turn
> autocommit=True and use session.begin(subtransactions=True). Note that I
> don't want to use savepoints, I just want to be able to use my actions
> inside other actions. The docs recommend that expire_on_commit is set to
> False with autocommit, which I've done but that led to a couple of
> situations where I was operating on out-of-date data hence I want to turn
> expire_on_commit to True again.
>
> My questions:
>
> (1) Does my application layout make sense from a SQLAlchemy perspective?

it's getting close to where I will have to make some major additions
to the docs as well as probably add some new patterns up.The story
of "autocommit" mode as well as "subtransactions" are based on a
SQLAlchemy that was designed both when "always-transactions" was not
an assumption (it is now) as well as during Python 2.3, when not only
context managers hadn't been invented yet, we didn't even have
decorators.   The problem that "subtransactions" were meant to solve
are much better solved using normal Python today, that is, context
managers.If you use the context manager pattern, use it with a
scoped_session and then have your context manager check if there's
already a session present (e.g. that your context managers are
nested), and then simply do nothing in the block if this is the case.




> (2) What is the problem with expire_on_commit=True and autocommit=True?

so here I need to go look at the docs and try to understand why this
isn't clear(goes and looks) OK here's what it says:

> If used, it should always be combined with the usage of Session.begin() and 
> Session.commit(), to **ensure a transaction demarcation.**

> Executing queries **outside of a demarcated transaction is a legacy mode of 
> usage**, and can in some cases lead to concurrent connection checkouts.

> "***In the absence of a demarcated transaction***, the Session cannot make 
> appropriate decisions as to when autoflush should occur nor when 
> auto-expiration should occur, so these features should be disabled with 
> autoflush=False, expire_on_commit=False."

that is referring to the original, original, super old, never-use-it
version of autocommit, where you aren't calling begin(), which looked
like this (we are talking SQLAlchemy 0.2):

sess = create_session()

sess.add(object)
sess.flush()   # <--- commits a transaction

result = sess.query(SomeClass).all()

sess.add(some_other_object)
sess.flush()  # <-- -same

above, it would be very inconvenient if all the objects in memory were
cleared out every time you called flush.

Here's the problem with documentation.  If you go through the effort
to make them very specific and very accurate, you end up with too many
words, and the reader will often not understand the basic point being
made.  Which is above, **if you are not using begin() and commit(),
the way we just said you should, then you should turn off
autocommit=True**.   That section needs another rewrite but then again
the entire concept of "subtransactions" also needs to be discouraged
as these are all obsolete patterns.


> (3) I feel that, even with the context manager, the transaction boundaries
> are still blurry because the developer does not know what will actually get
> committed in the database. For example, if a previous part of the code
> changed something, then called an action that commits the session, the
> previous change will get committed as well.

So this whole part sounds wrong.   If you want your database function
to occur in the context of a larger transaction, then by definition,
there may be other pending data present.  Whether that data is pending
in the session of your Python application, or pending in the MVCC
buffer of your 

[sqlalchemy] Guidance regarding nested session usage

[alex]

Hey,

I'd like some help regarding nested session usage please.

I'm working on an application that has an API layer but also has a lot of 
cron jobs (via Celery) and scripts. I'm trying to design the app in a way 
that my "business" logic is contained and re-usable by any of these 
interfaces. 

The SQLAlchemy session scope is request/task-wide (i.e requests and tasks 
remove the scoped session at the end) but I am doing explicit commits 
instead of committing on request end because I sometimes have to deal with 
complicated logic like creating/submitting transactions to payment 
processors etc. 

To start off, I use a context manager, much like the docs, which commits or 
rollbacks as necessary. I then have a layer of actions, which are 
considered "top-level" functions that can do a simple operation e.g update 
something or a collection of operations i.e create and submit a 
transaction. These actions use the context manager above to persist stuff 
and I've opted to keep all session "usage" in these actions alone and 
nowhere else in the code. Pretty soon, the need to use some of the simpler 
actions inside other, bigger actions arose which, after reading the docs, 
led me to turn autocommit=True and use session.begin(subtransactions=True). 
Note that I don't want to use savepoints, I just want to be able to use my 
actions inside other actions. The docs recommend that expire_on_commit is 
set to False with autocommit, which I've done but that led to a couple of 
situations where I was operating on out-of-date data hence I want to turn 
expire_on_commit to True again. 

My questions:

(1) Does my application layout make sense from a SQLAlchemy perspective? 
(2) What is the problem with expire_on_commit=True and autocommit=True?
(3) I feel that, even with the context manager, the transaction boundaries 
are still blurry because the developer does not know what will actually get 
committed in the database. For example, if a previous part of the code 
changed something, then called an action that commits the session, the 
previous change will get committed as well. I've searched around and found 
this: https://github.com/mitsuhiko/flask-sqlalchemy/pull/447 which 
basically issues a rollback on entering the context manager to ensure that 
only what is within the context manager will get committed. What do you 
think of it? I can immediately see a problem where if I query for an object 
before passing it to an action, then use the context manager, all the work 
done on querying is lost since the object state is expired on rollback. 

I'd appreciate any advice/input.

Best,
Alex

-- 
SQLAlchemy - 
The Python SQL Toolkit and Object Relational Mapper

http://www.sqlalchemy.org/

To post example code, please provide an MCVE: Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable 
Example.  See  http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve for a full description.
--- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"sqlalchemy" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to sqlalchemy+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to sqlalchemy@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/sqlalchemy.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.