[uberconf 2023] Structured Concurrency in Java

Speaker: Venkat Subramaniam

@venkat_s

For more, see the table of contents


Warning

  • Incubator phase feature
  • Anything can change.
  • Will be a year or more before release
  • use –enable-preview flag
  • Java prints out warning using incubator feature whenever run program

Executor Service

  • Since Java 5
  • Executors.newFixedThreadPool(x)
  • executorService.submit() -> logic()) – returns future. Call future.get() when done
  • executorService.shutdown()
  • executorService.awaitTermination(10, TImeout.SECONDS)

Structured Concurrency

  • Allow control of what happens on parallel
  • Parent handles/processes failures from children
  • Currently import jdk.incubator.concurrent – will move
  • StructuredTaskScopeShutdownOnFailure – invoke all
  • StructuredTaskScopeShutdownOnSuccess – invoke any
  • try (var scope = new StructuredTaskScope()) – want autoclose – or scope = StructuredTaskScopeShutdownOnSuccess() or scope = StructuredTaskScopeShutdownOnSuccess<String>()
  • scope.fork(() -> logic()) – makes child tasks, still returns a Future
  • scope.join() – don’t use – better to use a timeout so not unbounded waiting on children
  • scope.joinUntil(Instant.now().plusSeconds(50)) – better, uses timeout. waits for all children up to timeout Nice using Java date math
  • future.resultNow() – get result immediately. (vs get() which waits if not available)
  • scope.throwIfFailed(ex- > handle()) – deal with first failure

Scoped Values

  • ThreadLocal not useful in Spring because thread executing code not the same one that created the value
  • Scoped value, not scoped variable. Immutable
  • Hide the value instead of changing it
  • New value available in inner value. When get back out of that scope, see original value.
  • Doesn’t matter which thread runs the code because matters where you are in code.
  • Useful when calling a lambda which does a callback via third party code
  • Created ScopedValue field in the class that needs the data.
  • ScopedValue.newInstance() – placeholder, doesn’t have value yet
  • state.isBound() – whether has been set to a value
  • ScopedValue.where(state, “test”).run(lamba) – binds the value
  • state.get() – get value if bound. Blows up if not bound

My take

As an incubator feature, I knew nothing about this. It was great to learn about it from a Venkat talk. Different then the usual which is something I do know about and am learning deeper. I also enjoyed the airport code jokes: IAH (Houston – i am here), IAD (Dulles – i am delayed), and ORD (Chicago – ordeal). I’m always impressed Venkat can live code in front of so many people. I’d never seen incubator code in use. Nice it gets a temporary package name; can’t use it by accident. Venkat used IntelliJ to create a module. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him use IntelliJ :). Great audience questions on structured task scope. The scoped value thing made my head swim for a bit, but I get it now.

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