Scaling and Parallel Processing in Spring Batch 2

Many batch processing problems can be solved with single threaded, single process jobs, so it is always a good idea to properly check if that meets your needs before thinking about more complex implementations. Measure the performance of a realistic job and see if the simplest implementation meets your needs first: you can read and write a file of several hundred megabytes in well under a minute, even with standard hardware.

When you are ready to start implementing a job with some parallel processing, Spring Batch offers a range of options, which are described in this chapter, although some features are covered elsewhere. At a high level there are two modes of parallel processing: single process, multi-threaded; and multi-process. These break down into categories as well, as follows:

Next we review the single-process options first, and then the multi-process options.

1. Multi-threaded Step-

<step id="loading">
    <tasklet task-executor="taskExecutor">...</tasklet>
</step>

The simplest way to start parallel processing is to add a TaskExecutor to your Step configuration.
In this example the taskExecutor is a reference to another bean definition, implementing the TaskExecutor interface. TaskExecutor is a standard Spring interface, so consult the Spring User Guide for details of available implementations. The simplest multi-threaded TaskExecutor is a SimpleAsyncTaskExecutor.

The result of the above configuration will be that the Step executes by reading, processing and writing each chunk of items (each commit interval) in a separate thread of execution. Note that this means there is no fixed order for the items to be processed, and a chunk might contain items that are non-consecutive compared to the single-threaded case. In addition to any limits placed by the task executor (e.g. if it is backed by a thread pool), there is a throttle limit in the tasklet configuration which defaults to 4. You may need to increase this to ensure that a thread pool is fully utilised, e.g.

<step id="loading"> <tasklet task-executor="taskExecutor" throttle-limit="20">...</tasklet>
    </step>

Note also that there may be limits placed on concurrency by any pooled resources used in your step, such as a DataSource. Be sure to make the pool in those resources at least as large as the desired number of concurrent threads in the step.

2. Parallel Steps-

As long as the application logic that needs to be parallelized can be split into distinct responsibilities, and assigned to individual steps then it can be parallelized in a single process. Parallel Step execution is easy to configure and use, for example, to execute steps (step1,step2) in parallel with step3, you could configure a flow like this:

<job id="job1">
    <split id="split1" next="step4" task-executor="taskExecutor">
        <flow>
            <step id="step1" parent="s1" next="step2"/>
            <step id="step2" parent="s2"/&gt>
        </flow>
        <flow>
            <step id="step3" parent="s3"/>
        </flow>
    </split>
    <step id="step4" parent="s4"/>
</job>

<beans:bean id="taskExecutor" class="org.spr...SimpleAsyncTaskExecutor"/>

The configurable “task-executor” attribute is used to specify which TaskExecutor implementation should be used to execute the individual flows. The default is SyncTaskExecutor, but an asynchronous TaskExecutor is required to run the steps in parallel. Note that the job will ensure that every flow in the split completes before aggregating the exit statuses and transitioning.

3. Remote Chunking-

In Remote Chunking the Step processing is split across multiple processes, communicating with each other through some middleware. Here is a picture of the pattern in action:

The Master component is a single process, and the Slaves are multiple remote processes. Clearly this pattern works best if the Master is not a bottleneck, so the processing must be more expensive than the reading of items (this is often the case in practice).

The Master is just an implementation of a Spring Batch Step, with the ItemWriter replaced with a generic version that knows how to send chunks of items to the middleware as messages. The Slaves are standard listeners for whatever middleware is being used (e.g. with JMS they would be MesssageListeners), and their role is to process the chunks of items using a standard ItemWriter or ItemProcessor plus ItemWriter, through the ChunkProcessor interface. One of the advantages of using this pattern is that the reader, processor and writer components are off-the-shelf (the same as would be used for a local execution of the step). The items are divided up dynamically and work is shared through the middleware, so if the listeners are all eager consumers, then load balancing is automatic.

The middleware has to be durable, with guaranteed delivery and single consumer for each message. JMS is the obvious candidate, but other options exist in the grid computing and shared memory product space (e.g. Java Spaces).

Spring Batch has a sister project Spring Batch Admin, which provides(amongst other things) implementations of various patterns like this one using Spring Integration. These are implemented in a module called Spring Batch Integration.

4. Partitioning-

Spring Batch also provides an SPI for partitioning a Step execution and executing it remotely. In this case the remote participants are simply Step instances that could just as easily have been configured and used for local processing. Here is a picture of the pattern in action:

The Job is executing on the left hand side as a sequence of Steps, and one of the Steps is labelled as a Master. The Slaves in this picture are all identical instances of a Step, which could in fact take the place of the Master resulting in the same outcome for the Job. The Slaves are typically going to be remote services, but could also be local threads of execution. The messages sent by the Master to the Slaves in this pattern do not need to be durable, or have guaranteed delivery: Spring Batch meta-data in the JobRepository will ensure that each Slave is executed once and only once for each Job execution.

The SPI in Spring Batch consists of a special implementation of Step (the PartitionStep), and two strategy interfaces that need to be implemented for the specific environment. The strategy interfaces are PartitionHandler and StepExecutionSplitter, and their role is show in the sequence diagram below:

The Step on the right in this case is the “remote” Slave, so potentially there are many objects and or processes playing this role, and the PartitionStep is shown driving the execution. The PartitionStep configuration looks like this:

<step id="step1.master">
    <partition partitioner="partitioner" step="step1">
       <handler grid-size="10" task-executor="taskExecutor"/>
    </partition>
</step>