Atomicity

Motivation

Many race conditions can be prevented by proper encapsulation avoiding check-then-write and read-then-modify-then-write in non-atomically.

Background

Concurrency Tutorial

Synchronized Methods

Intrinsic Locks

ConcurrentMap

compute

Code To Investigate

Warning:Although the code below is technically thread-safe, it offers check-then-act usage which leads to atomicity races.

class:	CheckThenActCourse.java	DEMO:
methods:	isSpaceRemaining add drop
package:	atomicity.course.studio
source folder:	src//java

public class CheckThenActCourse {
	private final Collection<Student> students;
	private final int limit;

	public CheckThenActCourse(int limit, Supplier<Collection<Student>> collectionSupplier) {
		this.students = collectionSupplier.get();
		this.limit = limit;
	}

	public int getLimit() {
		return this.limit;
	}

	public boolean isSpaceRemaining() {
		synchronized (this.students) {
			return this.students.size() < this.limit;
		}
	}

	public void add(Student student) {
		synchronized (this.students) {
			this.students.add(student);
		}
	}

	public boolean drop(Student student) {
		synchronized (this.students) {
			return this.students.remove(student);
		}
	}
}

Code To Implement

We will build a thread-safe Course class with methods which do not lead clients towards atomicity races.

class:	Course.java
methods:	addIfSpace drop
package:	atomicity.course.studio
source folder:	student/src/main/java

method: public boolean addIfSpace(Student student) (sequential implementation only)

Adds the student if there is space under the limit specified to the constructor and returns whether or not the add actually occurred.

NOTE: Must be thread safe.

method: public boolean drop(Student student) (sequential implementation only)

Removes the student from the course if the student was enrolled (the remove method returns just the status you need).

NOTE: Must be thread safe.

Code To Fix

Warning:Do NOT use synchronized here. ConcurrentMaps are already thread safe.

For this part of the studio we are presented with broken code. Despite using a thread-safe concurrent map:

private final ConcurrentMap<String, Integer> map;

it suffers from an atomicity race:

private int transfer(String listingSymbol, int deltaShareCount) {
	Integer oldValue = this.map.get(listingSymbol);
	Integer newValue;
	if (oldValue != null) {
		newValue = oldValue + deltaShareCount;
	} else {
		newValue = deltaShareCount;
	}
	this.map.put(listingSymbol, newValue);
	return newValue;
}

Recalling the song:

get then put is not atomic
call compute
call compute
use ConcurrentHashMap
use ConcurrentHashMap
or say shoot!
or say shoot!

fix the code to remove the atomicity race.

class:	StockPortfolio.java
methods:	transfer
package:	atomicity.stockportfolio.studio
source folder:	student/src/main/java

method: private int transfer(String listingSymbol, int deltaShareCount) (thread-safe required)

NOTE: do not be concerned about ConcurrentMap vs ConcurrentHashMap. The supplier's get method will return an instance of a thread-safe map. (It will, in fact, be an instance of ConcurrentHashMap.)

Testing Your Solution

Correctness

class:	AtomicityTestSuite.java
package:	atomicity
source folder:	testing/src/test/java