[infinispan-dev] Infinispan client/server architecture based on gRPC

Tue May 29 14:49:40 EDT 2018

Vittorio, a few remarks regarding your statement "...The alternative to 
this is to develop a protostream equivalent for each supported language 
and it doesn't seem really feasible to me."

No way! That's a big misunderstanding. We do not need to re-implement 
the protostream library in C/C++/C# or any new supported language.
Protostream is just for Java and it is compatible with Google's protobuf 
lib we already use in the other clients. We can continue using Google's 
protobuf lib for these clients, with or without gRPC.
Protostream does not handle protobuf services as gRPC does, but we can 
add support for that with little effort.

The real problem here is if we want to replace our hot rod invocation 
protocol with gRPC to save on the effort of implementing and maintaining 
hot rod in all those clients. I wonder why the obvious question is being 
avoided in this thread.

Adrian

On 05/29/2018 03:45 PM, Vittorio Rigamonti wrote:
> Thanks Adrian,
>
> of course there's a marshalling work under the cover and that is 
> reflected into the generated code (specially the accessor methods 
> generated from the oneof clause).
>
> My opinion is that on the client side this could be accepted, as long 
> as the API are well defined and documented: application developer can 
> build an adhoc decorator on the top if needed. The alternative to this 
> is to develop a protostream equivalent for each supported language and 
> it doesn't seem really feasible to me.
>
> On the server side (java only) the situation is different: protobuf is 
> optimized for streaming not for storing so probably a Protostream 
> layer is needed.
>
> On Mon, May 28, 2018 at 4:47 PM, Adrian Nistor <anistor at redhat.com 
> <mailto:anistor at redhat.com>> wrote:
>
>     Hi Vittorio,
>     thanks for exploring gRPC. It seems like a very elegant solution
>     for exposing services. I'll have a look at your PoC soon.
>
>     I feel there are some remarks that need to be made regarding gRPC.
>     gRPC is just some nice cheesy topping on top of protobuf. Google's
>     implementation of protobuf, to be more precise.
>     It does not need handwritten marshallers, but the 'No need for
>     marshaller' does not accurately describe it. Marshallers are
>     needed and are generated under the cover by the library and so are
>     the data objects and you are unfortunately forced to use them.
>     That's both the good news and the bad news:) The whole thing looks
>     very promising and friendly for many uses cases, especially for
>     demos and PoCs :))). Nobody wants to write those marshallers. But
>     it starts to become a nuisance if you want to use your own data
>     objects.
>     There is also the ugliness and excessive memory footprint of the
>     generated code, which is the reason Infinispan did not adopt the
>     protobuf-java library although it did adopt protobuf as an
>     encoding format.
>     The Protostream library was created as an alternative
>     implementation to solve the aforementioned problems with the
>     generated code. It solves this by letting the user provide their
>     own data objects. And for the marshallers it gives you two
>     options: a) write the marshaller yourself (hated), b) annotated
>     your data objects and the marshaller gets generated (loved).
>     Protostream does not currently support service definitions right
>     now but this is something I started to investigate recently after
>     Galder asked me if I think it's doable. I think I'll only find out
>     after I do it:)
>
>     Adrian
>
>
>     On 05/28/2018 04:15 PM, Vittorio Rigamonti wrote:
>>     Hi Infinispan developers,
>>
>>     I'm working on a solution for developers who need to access
>>     Infinispan services  through different programming languages.
>>
>>     The focus is not on developing a full featured client, but rather
>>     discover the value and the limits of this approach.
>>
>>     - is it possible to automatically generate useful clients in
>>     different languages?
>>     - can that clients interoperate on the same cache with the same
>>     data types?
>>
>>     I came out with a small prototype that I would like to submit to
>>     you and on which I would like to gather your impressions.
>>
>>      You can found the project here [1]: is a gRPC-based
>>     client/server architecture for Infinispan based on and
>>     EmbeddedCache, with very few features exposed atm.
>>
>>     Currently the project is nothing more than a poc with the
>>     following interesting features:
>>
>>     - client can be generated in all the grpc supported language:
>>     java, go, c++ examples are provided;
>>     - the interface is full typed. No need for marshaller and clients
>>     build in different language can cooperate on the same cache;
>>
>>     The second item is my preferred one beacuse it frees the
>>     developer from data marshalling.
>>
>>     What do you think about?
>>     Sounds interesting?
>>     Can you see any flaw?
>>
>>     There's also a list of issues for the future [2], basically I
>>     would like to investigate these questions:
>>     How far this architecture can go?
>>     Topology, events, queries... how many of the Infinispan features
>>     can be fit in a grpc architecture?
>>
>>     Thank you
>>     Vittorio
>>
>>     [1] https://github.com/rigazilla/ispn-grpc
>>     <https://github.com/rigazilla/ispn-grpc>
>>     [2] https://github.com/rigazilla/ispn-grpc/issues
>>     <https://github.com/rigazilla/ispn-grpc/issues>
>>
>>     -- 
>>
>>     Vittorio Rigamonti
>>
>>     Senior Software Engineer
>>
>>     Red Hat
>>
>>     <https://www.redhat.com>
>>
>>     Milan, Italy
>>
>>     vrigamon at redhat.com <mailto:vrigamon at redhat.com>
>>
>>     irc: rigazilla
>>
>>     <https://red.ht/sig>
>>
>>
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>
>
>
>
>
> -- 
>
> Vittorio Rigamonti
>
> Senior Software Engineer
>
> Red Hat
>
> <https://www.redhat.com>
>
> Milan, Italy
>
> vrigamon at redhat.com <mailto:vrigamon at redhat.com>
>
> irc: rigazilla
>
> <https://red.ht/sig>

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