ICountDownLatch
Hazelcast ICountDownLatch is the distributed implementation of java.util.concurrent.CountDownLatch.
| The original implementation of `ICountDownLatch ` has been deprecated. To read about the previous implementation, see the ICountDownLatch section of the Hazelcast IMDG 3.11 Reference Manual. The CP Subsystem introduces `ICountDownLatch ` provided by the CP Subsystem. |
Gate-Keeping Concurrent Activities
ICountDownLatch is considered to be a gate keeper for concurrent activities.
It enables the threads to wait for other threads to complete their operations.
The following examples describe the mechanism of ICountDownLatch.
Assume that there is a leader process and there are follower processes that will wait until the leader completes. Here is the leader:
public class Leader {
public static void main( String[] args ) throws Exception {
HazelcastInstance hazelcastInstance = Hazelcast.newHazelcastInstance();
ICountDownLatch latch = hazelcastInstance.getCPSubsystem().getCountDownLatch( "countDownLatch" );
System.out.println( "Starting" );
latch.trySetCount( 1 );
Thread.sleep( 30000 );
latch.countDown();
System.out.println( "Leader finished" );
latch.destroy();
}
}Since only a single step is needed to be completed as a sample, the above code initializes the latch with 1. Then, the code sleeps for a while to simulate a process and starts the countdown. Finally, it clears up the latch. Let’s write a follower:
public class Follower {
public static void main( String[] args ) throws Exception {
HazelcastInstance hazelcastInstance = Hazelcast.newHazelcastInstance();
ICountDownLatch latch = hazelcastInstance.getCPSubsystem().getCountDownLatch( "countDownLatch" );
System.out.println( "Waiting" );
boolean success = latch.await( 10, TimeUnit.SECONDS );
System.out.println( "Complete: " + success );
}
}The follower class above first retrieves ICountDownLatch and then calls the await
method to enable the thread to listen for the latch. The method await has a timeout
value as a parameter. This is useful when the countDown method fails. To see ICountDownLatch
in action, start the leader first and then start one or more followers. You will see that the
followers wait until the leader completes.
Recovering From Failure
In a distributed environment, the counting down cluster member may go down. In this case, all listeners are notified immediately and automatically by Hazelcast. The state of the current process just before the failure should be verified and 'how to continue now' should be decided, e.g., restart all process operations, continue with the first failed process operation and throw an exception.
