Drb and PStore behaviour

Ruby
1

I’m doing a remote database object so i can do:

result = database.find do |record|
record[:name] == “john”
end

in the server object i have something like:

class Foo
include DRb::DRbUndumped

 def find(&block)
         result = nil
         @store.transaction do
                 result = @store[:records].find_all do |record|

                          yield(record)
                 end
         end
         return result
 end

end

well, the problem is yielding that block. All the database is
“cloned/copied” (?) over the network when doing the find. I don’t want
to copy all that data, just return the found records.

I tried adding DRb::DRbUndumped to class PStore, but the same result.
The database size is about 3 MB.

Do you know how to solve this problem?

2

The problem is that you can’t pass a block from the client to the server
because block’s aren’t serializable.

Jamey

3

Oh, so the answer to my problem will be to rewrite using sockets and
marshaling for that.

(the same happened with xmlrpc).
thanks for the quick response.

4

Javier V. wrote:

def find(&block)

           ^^^^^^

You don’t need this, since you are using yield.

well, the problem is yielding that block. All the database is
“cloned/copied” (?) over the network when doing the find. I don’t want
to copy all that data, just return the found records.

Yielding to a DRb client is not itself a problem. The block stays on the
client side. In some cases that’s ok, but in this case, it generates too
much traffic because every record iterated over by find_all is
serialized to the client, so that the client can call the block on it.

I tried adding DRb::DRbUndumped to class PStore, but the same result.
The database size is about 3 MB.

I doubt the database object as a whole is being serialized, just each
record individually.

Maybe you want do define query objects and pass them as an argument to
find?

result = database.find(QueryEqual.new(:name, “john”))

Then only the query object and the results need to get serialized.

5

Joel VanderWerf wrote:

well, the problem is yielding that block. All the database is

result = database.find(QueryEqual.new(:name, “john”))

Then only the query object and the results need to get serialized.

Interesting point, i’ll try it.

And thanks for the correction.