1. A Multithreading C# Data Synchronization Program and Its Realization Course: ECE 1747H Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student / Presenter: Bin Li Dec. 12, 2006 @ University of Toronto

2. Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student: Bin Li Dec.12, 2006 @ University of Toronto 2 Agenda  Background Problem & Solution Parallel Implementation Performance Measuring Other Approaches Future Work Q & A

3. Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student: Bin Li Dec.12, 2006 @ University of Toronto 3 Background (Company & Project) “Retail Value Canada Inc.” Markham-based Specialty Retailer 384 stores in Canada & USA, 30K types of items Head Office-side information maintained in Windows Store-side information maintained in Unix Data synchronization is needed Data type: product code, status, cost, price, promo, deal, subsidy, vendor, warehouse, etc. (by item, by store) Current application: iSync (developed in 2000 in Visual C# 1.0)

4. Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student: Bin Li Dec.12, 2006 @ University of Toronto 4 Background (System Architecture)

5. Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student: Bin Li Dec.12, 2006 @ University of Toronto 5 Agenda Background Background  Problem & Solution Parallel Implementation Performance Measuring Other Approaches Future Work Q & A

6. Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student: Bin Li Dec.12, 2006 @ University of Toronto 6 Problem & Solution Scheduled Data Synchronization (iSync process) starts at 10 pm, and ends at 12 am iSync extracts and transforms data from Windows into ASCII file (.dat), and sends it to Unix Mass data modification takes iSync quite a long time (4-5 hours) to run, which is over 2-hour schedule limit The latest change (i.e. prices) in head office cannot reach stores before the opening hour of the next business day

7. Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student: Bin Li Dec.12, 2006 @ University of Toronto 7 Problem & Solution (cont’d) The store-side information delay causes inaccurate sales information in retail stores Bottleneck: iSync (only 10% CPU usage on a 4- CPU database server)

8. Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student: Bin Li Dec.12, 2006 @ University of Toronto 8 Problem & Solution (cont’d) Sequential program iSync generates.dat file by each store, which is slow Parallel solution Implementing qSync to replace iSync (using Microsoft C# multithreading) Parallelly generating.dat file by store groups

9. Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student: Bin Li Dec.12, 2006 @ University of Toronto 9 Agenda Background Background Problem & Solution Problem & Solution  Parallel Implementation Performance Measuring Other Approaches Future Work Q & A

10. Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student: Bin Li Dec.12, 2006 @ University of Toronto 10 Parallel Implementation Development Environment Design/UML Tool: Microsoft Visio 2003 Development Tool: Microsoft Visual Studio.NET 2003 Programming Language: Visual C# 2.0 (multithreading similar to Linux PThreads) Parallelization Steps Store Data Segmentation Parallel Data Processing Result Data Consolidation

11. Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student: Bin Li Dec.12, 2006 @ University of Toronto 11 Parallel Implementation (cont’d)

12. Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student: Bin Li Dec.12, 2006 @ University of Toronto 12 User Interface (Screen 1)

13. Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student: Bin Li Dec.12, 2006 @ University of Toronto 13 User Interface (Screen 2)

14. Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student: Bin Li Dec.12, 2006 @ University of Toronto 14 Sample Code using System.Threading; private int getNbrOfInstance() {//... string sqlStmt = "select cast(RBSValue as int) from RulesBasedSystem " + "where RBSTxt = 'HISSPNbrOfInst' and RBSScopeKey = 'Retail Value'"; "where RBSTxt = 'HISSPNbrOfInst' and RBSScopeKey = 'Retail Value'";//...} HISSPCLPSyncComponent clpComponent = null; clpComponent = new HISSPCLPSyncComponent(); ThreadStart threadDelegate=null; Thread threadObj=null;

15. Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student: Bin Li Dec.12, 2006 @ University of Toronto 15 Sample Code (cont’d) for (int i=0; i<dtb.Rows.Count; i++) {//... threadDelegate = new ThreadStart(clpComponent.ExtCLPPrice); threadObj = new Thread(threadDelegate); threadObj.Name = Convert.ToString(i); threadList.Add(threadObj); //Start the thread threadObj.Start();} // Join the threads for (int i = 0; i<dtb.Rows.Count; i++) { threadObj = (Thread) threadList[i]; threadObj.Join();} while(j>0) //Approach #3 {lock(this){ consolidateCLPPrice(baseStoreId[j], itemBaseId[j], marketZoneId[j], itemPackId[j]); consolidateCLPPrice(baseStoreId[j], itemBaseId[j], marketZoneId[j], itemPackId[j]);}j--;}

16. Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student: Bin Li Dec.12, 2006 @ University of Toronto 16 Agenda Background Background Problem & Solution Problem & Solution Parallel Implementation Parallel Implementation  Performance Measuring Other Approaches Future Work Q & A

17. Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student: Bin Li Dec.12, 2006 @ University of Toronto 17 Performance Measuring Testing Environment Database Server Intel Xeon CPU 2.40 GHz, 4 CPUs, 3GB RAM Windows 2000 w/SP4, MS SQL Server 2000 Subset of real production data Web/Application Server Intel Pentium4, 2 CPU 3.40Ghz (HT), 2GB RAM Windows XP w/SP2, IIS 5.1 Performance Counters CPU % Usage Execution Time

18. Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student: Bin Li Dec.12, 2006 @ University of Toronto 18 Performance Comparison Number of Threads CPU Usage / Execution Time (sec) 1 (sequential) 10%2552 225%1545 575%527 1093%461 20100%370

19. Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student: Bin Li Dec.12, 2006 @ University of Toronto 19 Performance Comparison (cont’d) CPU % Usage Execution Time

20. Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student: Bin Li Dec.12, 2006 @ University of Toronto 20 Agenda Background Background Problem & Solution Problem & Solution Parallel Implementation Parallel Implementation Performance Measuring Performance Measuring  Other Approaches Future Work Q & A

21. Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student: Bin Li Dec.12, 2006 @ University of Toronto 21 Other Approaches (Approach #2) “Locking Temp Files”

22. Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student: Bin Li Dec.12, 2006 @ University of Toronto 22 Other Approaches (Approach #2 cont’d) “Locking Temp Files” All threads write to single.dat file Using lock for file appending Result: bad as sequential Explanation: same disk file cannot be shared simultaneously by different threads, needs to close/re-open (different from shared memory)

23. Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student: Bin Li Dec.12, 2006 @ University of Toronto 23 Other Approaches (Approach #3) “Locking Temp Tables”

24. Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student: Bin Li Dec.12, 2006 @ University of Toronto 24 Other Approaches (Approach #3 cont’d) “Locking Temp Tables” All threads share single temporary database table Using lock for table record inserting Result: much better than sequential, not as good as the Main Approach Explanation: database server has enough memory; lock brings slight delay

25. Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student: Bin Li Dec.12, 2006 @ University of Toronto 25 Agenda Background Background Problem & Solution Problem & Solution Parallel Implementation Parallel Implementation Performance Measuring Performance Measuring Other Approaches Other Approaches  Future Work Q & A

26. Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student: Bin Li Dec.12, 2006 @ University of Toronto 26 Further Work Database Parallelism Upgrading SQL Server 2000 to 2005 Migrating C# code of data synchronization to database stored procedures, optimizing SQL queries Changing temporary table(s) to permanent schema Using SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS 2005) to do parallel data load & transformation Accessing permanent table (which contains final data to be synchronized) to generate.dat file

27. Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student: Bin Li Dec.12, 2006 @ University of Toronto 27 Q & A Thanks!

28. Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student: Bin Li Dec.12, 2006 @ University of Toronto 28 Additional Slide for Q&A (C#) C# (pronounced “C Sharp”) Microsoft.NET Framework-compliant language Simple, modern, object oriented programming language derived from C and C++ Aims to combine the high productivity of Visual Basic and the raw power of C++. C# vs Java Similar but not same in language specifications Compilation: C# to Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL), and Java to Java bytecode Running: C# in Common Language Runtime (CLR), Java in Java Virtual Machine (JVM)

29. Parallel Programming Professor: Christiana Amza Student: Bin Li Dec.12, 2006 @ University of Toronto 29 Additional Slide for Q&A (Main Approach vs Approach #3)