Infrastructure:
Databases & State

Parke Godfrey
14 September 2012
CSE-2041

Credits

These slides borrow from the following sources.

• Prof. Hamzeh Roumani, CSE2041 (fall 2010)

State
What is state?

• state
  The term state in CS and Math refers to when a system can react to the same input differently at different times. The system can be in different states at different times.

• stateless
  We say something is stateless if it always provides the same output for the same given input.

• stateful
  For a system to have “state” — to be stateful — means that it must store information / data persistently over time.

Computer Programs: Stateless or Stateful?

• Well... it does not make sense to ask if a program is stateful, but rather if a process — an instance of the program running — is stateful.

• Is a process — an invocation of a program — stateful?

  • During the lifetime of the process, most often, yes.

  • “State” is represented by the program's variables, and the values for these in the process.

• Is a program stateful across invocations?

  • Most often, no.

• Are operating systems stateful across invocations?

  • Yes, they are

  • The “state” is the file system.

HTTP

HTTP in itself is stateless.

Then again, what does it mean for a protocol to be called stateless or stateful?

The initial concept of WWW was for HTTP exchange to be stateless.

---

Why have HTTP be stateless?

• This is efficient.
• It is / was sufficient for what WWW is / was intended for.

“Web 1.0” (stateless)

• The term “Web 1.0” is often used to describe the static Web.

  Think HTTP/1.0.

• For Web 1.0, the Web was just a delivery service.

  The client asks for a “page” by URL; The server returns that page (if it has it).

• In the '90's, this is mostly what the Web was.

“Web 2.0” (stateful)

• The term “Web 2.0” is often used to describe the dynamic Web.

  Think HTTP/1.1.

• For Web 2.0, the Web is interactive.

  The client can interact with a Web “page” (a webapp) as a service.

• In the '00's, this is what the Web evolved into.

Stateless / Stateful Trade-off: Session

• For the interactive Web (“Web 2.0”), we need to support the notion of session.

• This session is different from a HTTP “session” (exchange)!

  • Must maintain state across subsequent HTTP exchanges.

  • How to define the scope of a session may be hard.

  • E.g., a shopping session at Amazon.

    This topic has a name: e-commerce.

• In some cases, we are interested in inter-session state too.

  • Often, this is done with accounts and log-ins. E.g., Facebook.

  • Directed advertising has been the big driver of this.

Storing Information

• How to do it?

  • tools

• What to store?

  • format, what information

• Where to store?

  • server-side, client-side, somewhere else

The Web Ecosystem

• We will learn there are a number of mechanisms, tools, and methods for

  • keeping information (state), and

  • managing sessions.

• Engineering goals:

  • simplicity
  • scalability
  • security

• For practicality, we may need to keep things as “stateless” as possible.

State
Use the Web Server Process's State?

Use a Map Collection:

Map<String, Student> sis = new TreeMap<String, Student>(); 

Student s = new Student(“123456789”, …); 
sis.put(“123456789”, s); 
… 

String id = input.nextLine(); 
if (sis.containsKey(id)) 
{ 
output.println(sis.get(id).getGpa()); 
} 

Database Systems
...to the rescue!

• These very data storage, maintenance, and retrieval issues exist for lots of large applications.

• Database systems have been around since the 1960's.

  • Relational database management systems (RDBMS's) since the 1980's.

  • E.g., Oracle, IBM DB2, Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase, MySQL, Derby, ...

• Key idea is data maintenance as a service.

Database Service
Data Independence

• abstraction:

  • Remove details relating to data storage and access from apps and put them in one place, the DBMS.

• interface:

  • Provide an interface to the DBMS so apps can use it as a service. The interface (SQL) is independent of how the data is organized in the database.

• encapsulation:

  • This reduces the complexity of all apps, removes redundancy, and allows us to enforce rules centrally rather than per application.

Databases
Transactions

A transaction is a change to, and / or a retrieval from, a database.

• Atomicity

• Consistency

• Isolation

• Durability

Atomicity
All or Nothing

All the (primitive) actions of a transaction should occur and commit, or none should.

transfer(account X, account Y, amount M) {
    X.balance =- M;
    Y.balance =+ M;
}

What if X.balance < M?

Consistency (Data Integrity)

Integrity rules can be added to a database.

E.g.,

• No balance can be negative.

• No two students can have the same ID.

• A student cannot register for a course without having passed the prerequisites for the course.

This means the database system must deny (rollback) any transaction that would result in inconsistent data in the database.

Isolation

• It must seem like transactions happen one after another, never mixed.

• Behind the scenes, they could be processed concurrently.

• E.g., transfer(parke, john, 50) [X-act A] & transfer(parke, samantha, 75) [X-act B].

• The following would result in a mistake.

  • A reads parke's balance, john's balance.
  • B reads parke's balance, samatha's balance.
  • B writes parke's balance (minus 75).
  • A writes parke's balance (minus 50).

Durability (Permanence)

Once a transaction updating the database commits, that new data (the update) is

• visible to all, and

• permanent (until, perhaps, another transaction changes it later).

Database Server “Protocol”

How to “talk” to a database server to

• define: create, alter, & drop databases (and their components).

• manipulate: insert, update, & delete data.

• query: query a database to retrieve information.

Such a “protocol” is complex, almost like a programming language! It is called a “query” language.

SQL is a standardized query language for relational database systems.

Can only “talk” to the database via SQL!

The Relational Model

• A database is a collection of related tables.

• A table is a set of named columns (the schema) and a number of rows (tuples) of information in that schema.

  • Few columns: one to a couple of hundred.

  • Many rows: perhaps billions!

• A cell is a given column of a given row in the table.

  • A cell's value must be a simple piece of data: e.g., an integer, a string.

DBMS Architectures

• One-Tier

  • All DBMS processing is done at the clients, data resides in a file server on the LAN. E.g., Microsoft Access.

• Two-Tier

  • DBMS processing and data on a database server that is accessed by clients via ODBC or JDBC.

• Three-Tier

  • DBMS tier, web tier, and a client tier. Clients connect to a webapp, which accesses the DBMS.