On 2015-05-13, 9:56 AM, "OC" wrote:

Chuck,

On 12. 5. 2015, at 23:09, Chuck Hill 
<ch...@gevityinc.com<mailto:ch...@gevityinc.com>> wrote:

You really do come up with the absolute best problems!  :-)

Well it's great if one's best in something, is it not? ;)

True that!


My guess is that somehow the database failed to record the update to the 
sequence number.  Every time you ran it after that, it generated the used one 
and then failed. When you added logging, something that you added caused two to 
get generated with the first not used.  Then everything worked again.
Except... sequences should be generated outside of the ACID transition so I 
can't see how this could happen once, let alone multiple times.

If that indeed was the culprit, is there a way to prevent the same problem if 
it occurs again?

Assuming that you are using the FrontBase sequences, then no, I don't think so. 
 If you are using the EO_PK_TABLE approach then I am not sure.  Is replication 
involved?  I have had issues with that and the sequences before.

Chuck


Thanks,
OC

On 2015-05-12, 1:56 PM, "OC" wrote:
Hello there,
my application, among others, generates and stores audit records. The 
appropriate code is comparatively straightforward; it boils down to something 
like
===
... ec might contain unsaved objects at this moment ...
DBAudit audit=new DBAudit()
ec.insertObject(audit)
audit.takeValuesFromDictionary(... couple of plain attributes ...)
for (;;) { // see below the specific situation which causes a retry
   try {
     ec.saveChanges()
   } catch (exception) {
     // EC might contain an object which needs a sequentially numbered attribute
     // it should be reliable through all instances
     // there is a DB unique constraint to ensure that
     // the constraint exception is detected and served essentially this way:
     if (exceptionIsNotUniqueConstraint(exception)) throw exception
     SomeClass culprit=findTheObjectWhichCausedTheUniqueException(ec,exception)
     culprit.theSequentialNumber++
     // and try again...
   }
}
===
It might be somewhat convoluted way to solve that (though I am afraid I can't 
see any easier), but it worked for many months, about a zillion times without 
the exception, sometimes with the exception and retry, always without the 
slightest glitch.
Then it so happened that
- the EC indeed did contain an object with wrong (already occupied) sequential 
number
- a DBAudit with PK=1015164 was inserted
- first time saveChanges did throw and the transaction was rolled back; the 
second time (with incremented sequential number) it saved all right.
So far so good, this did happen before often and never led to problems.
This time though it did. The next time the above code was performed (no 
sequentials, just the audit), the newly created audit was assigned _again_ 
PK=1015164! Of course it failed. Well, we thought, perhaps there's some ugly 
mess inside the EO stack; let's restart the application!
After restart, the very first time the above code was called -- which is pretty 
soon -- it happened again: regardless there was properly saved row with 
PK=1015164 in the DB, EOF again assigned the same PK to the newly created EO. 
I've tried it about five times (at first I did not believe my eyes), it behaved 
consistently: restart, first time a DBAudit is created, it gets PK=1015164 and 
saving (naturally) fails.
Then I've prepared a version with extended logs; for start, I've simply added a 
log of audit.permanentGlobalID() just before saveChanges.
It worked without a glitch, assigning (and logging) PK=1015165, and (naturally) 
saving without a problem.
I have immediately stopped the app, returned to the original version -- the one 
which used to consistently fail -- and from that moment on, it worked all right 
too, assigning PK=1015166, and then PK=1015167, and so forth, as it should. 
Without a need to log audit.permanentGlobalID() first.
Well. Gremlins?
Might perhaps anyone have the slightest glitch of an idea what the b. h. might 
have been the culprit, and how to prevent the problem to occur again in the 
future?
Thanks a lot,
OC
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