java concurrency: many writers, one reader

Question

I need to gather some statistics in my software and i am trying to make it fast and correct, which is not easy (for me!)

first my code so far with two classes, a StatsService and a StatsHarvester

public class StatsService
{
private Map<String, Long>   stats   = new HashMap<String, Long>(1000);

public void notify ( String key )
{
    Long value = 1l;
    synchronized (stats)
    {
        if (stats.containsKey(key))
        {
            value = stats.get(key) + 1;
        }
        stats.put(key, value);
    }
}

public Map<String, Long> getStats ( )
{
    Map<String, Long> copy;
    synchronized (stats)
    {
        copy = new HashMap<String, Long>(stats);
        stats.clear();
    }
    return copy;
}
}

this is my second class, a harvester which collects the stats from time to time and writes them to a database.

public class StatsHarvester implements Runnable
{
private StatsService    statsService;
private Thread          t;

public void init ( )
{
    t = new Thread(this);
    t.start();
}

public synchronized void run ( )
{
    while (true)
    {
        try
        {
            wait(5 * 60 * 1000); // 5 minutes
            collectAndSave();
        }
        catch (InterruptedException e)
        {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

private void collectAndSave ( )
{
    Map<String, Long> stats = statsService.getStats();
    // do something like:
    // saveRecords(stats);
}
}

At runtime it will have about 30 concurrent running threads each calling notify(key) about 100 times. Only one StatsHarvester is calling statsService.getStats()

So i have many writers and only one reader. it would be nice to have accurate stats but i don't care if some records are lost on high concurrency.

The reader should run every 5 Minutes or whatever is reasonable.

Writing should be as fast as possible. Reading should be fast but if it locks for about 300ms every 5 minutes, its fine.

I've read many docs (Java concurrency in practice, effective java and so on), but i have the strong feeling that i need your advice to get it right.

I hope i stated my problem clear and short enough to get valuable help.

---

EDIT

Thanks to all for your detailed and helpful answers. As i expected there is more than one way to do it.

I tested most of your proposals (those i understood) and uploaded a test project to google code for further reference (maven project)

http://code.google.com/p/javastats/

I have tested different implementations of my StatsService

• HashMapStatsService (HMSS)
• ConcurrentHashMapStatsService (CHMSS)
• LinkedQueueStatsService (LQSS)
• GoogleStatsService (GSS)
• ExecutorConcurrentHashMapStatsService (ECHMSS)
• ExecutorHashMapStatsService (EHMSS)

and i tested them with x number of Threads each calling notify y times, results are in ms

         10,100   10,1000  10,5000  50,100   50,1000  50,5000  100,100  100,1000 100,5000 
GSS       1        5        17       7        21       117      7        37       254       Summe: 466
ECHMSS    1        6        21       5        32       132      8        54       249       Summe: 508
HMSS      1        8        45       8        52       233      11       103      449       Summe: 910
EHMSS     1        5        24       7        31       113      8        67       235       Summe: 491
CHMSS     1        2        9        3        11       40       7        26       72        Summe: 171
LQSS      0        3        11       3        16       56       6        27       144       Summe: 266

At this moment i think i will use ConcurrentHashMap, as it offers good performance while it is quite easy to understand.

Thanks for all your input! Janning

Answer 1

As jack was eluding to you can use the java.util.concurrent library which includes a ConcurrentHashMap and AtomicLong. You can put the AtomicLong in if absent else, you can increment the value. Since AtomicLong is thread safe you will be able to increment the variable without worry about a concurrency issue.

public void notify(String key) {
    AtomicLong value = stats.get(key);
    if (value == null) {
        value = stats.putIfAbsent(key, new AtomicLong(1));
    }
    if (value != null) {
        value.incrementAndGet();
    }
}

This should be both fast and thread safe

Edit: Refactored sligthly so there is only at most two lookups.

Answer 2

Why don't you use java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap<K, V>? It handles everything internally avoiding useless locks on the map and saving you a lot of work: you won't have to care about synchronizations on get and put..

From the documentation:

A hash table supporting full concurrency of retrievals and adjustable expected concurrency for updates. This class obeys the same functional specification as Hashtable, and includes versions of methods corresponding to each method of Hashtable. However, even though all operations are thread-safe, retrieval operations do not entail locking, and there is not any support for locking the entire table in a way that prevents all access.

You can specify its concurrency level:

The allowed concurrency among update operations is guided by the optional concurrencyLevel constructor argument (default 16), which is used as a hint for internal sizing. The table is internally partitioned to try to permit the indicated number of concurrent updates without contention. Because placement in hash tables is essentially random, the actual concurrency will vary. Ideally, you should choose a value to accommodate as many threads as will ever concurrently modify the table. Using a significantly higher value than you need can waste space and time, and a significantly lower value can lead to thread contention. But overestimates and underestimates within an order of magnitude do not usually have much noticeable impact. A value of one is appropriate when it is known that only one thread will modify and all others will only read. Also, resizing this or any other kind of hash table is a relatively slow operation, so, when possible, it is a good idea to provide estimates of expected table sizes in constructors.

As suggested in comments read carefully the documentation of ConcurrentHashMap, especially when it states about atomic or not atomic operations.

To have the guarantee of atomicity you should consider which operations are atomic, from ConcurrentMap interface you will know that:

V putIfAbsent(K key, V value)
V replace(K key, V value)
boolean replace(K key,V oldValue, V newValue)
boolean remove(Object key, Object value)

can be used safely.