Is a read lock on a ReentrantReadWriteLock sufficient for concurrent reading of a RandomAccessFile

Question

I'm writing something to handle concurrent read/write requests to a database file.

ReentrantReadWriteLock looks like a good match. If all threads access a shared RandomAccessFile object, do I need to worry about the file pointer with concurrent readers? Consider this example:

import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.RandomAccessFile;
import java.util.concurrent.locks.ReentrantReadWriteLock;

public class Database {

    private static final int RECORD_SIZE = 50;
    private static Database instance = null;

    private ReentrantReadWriteLock lock;
    private RandomAccessFile database;

    private Database() {
        lock = new ReentrantReadWriteLock();

        try {
            database = new RandomAccessFile("foo.db", "rwd");
        } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    };

    public static synchronized Database getInstance() {
        if(instance == null) {
            instance = new Database();
        }
        return instance;
    }

    public byte[] getRecord(int n) {
        byte[] data = new byte[RECORD_SIZE];
        try {
            // Begin critical section
            lock.readLock().lock();
            database.seek(RECORD_SIZE*n);
            database.readFully(data);
            lock.readLock().unlock();
            // End critical section
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        return data;
    }

}

In the getRecord() method, is the following interleaving possible with multiple concurrent readers?

Thread 1 -> getRecord(0)
Thread 2 -> getRecord(1)
Thread 1 -> acquires shared lock
Thread 2 -> acquires shared lock
Thread 1 -> seeks to record 0
Thread 2 -> seeks to record 1
Thread 1 -> reads record at file pointer (1)
Thread 2 -> reads record at file pointer (1)

If there are indeed potential concurrency issues using ReentrantReadWriteLock and RandomAccessFile, what would an alternative be?

Answer 1

This is a sample program that lock file and unlock file.

try { // Get a file channel for the file 

    File file = new File("filename");

    FileChannel channel = new RandomAccessFile(file, "rw").getChannel(); // Use the file channel to create a lock on the file.

    // This method blocks until it can retrieve the lock. 

    FileLock lock = channel.lock(); // Try acquiring the lock without blocking. This method returns // null or throws an exception if the file is already locked. 

    try { 

        lock = channel.tryLock();

    } catch (OverlappingFileLockException e){}


    lock.release(); // Close the file 

    channel.close();
} 

catch (Exception e) { }