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Distributed Locks

Cacheonix provides a distributed mutual exclusions API that allows clustered applications to maintain consistency by serializing access to shared data. Multiple servers that modify shared resources concurrently may cause interference and data inconsistency. Distributed locks by Cacheonix provide safety of data access, application liveness and simplicity of programming.

Cacheonix write locks ensure safe access to the shared data. At most one thread on one server may enter the section of code protected by a distributed write lock. Cacheonix increases concurrency by offering read locks. Applications that are only reading the shared data may execute the section of the code protected by read locks simultaneously.

Cacheonix guarantees liveness of clustered applications by building on top of its reliable symmetric clustering protocol. Cacheonix seamlessly releases locks held by servers that fail or leave the cluster. Cacheonix prevents application stalling by detecting deadlocks and breaking the deadlocks automatically. Cacheonix supports nested locks.

Cacheonix makes programming with distributed locks as simple as in a single Java VM. Cacheonix upgrades read locks to write locks when necessary. The distributed locks API has the same interface as java.concurrent.locks:

        ReadWriteLock readWriteLock = cacheonix.getCluster().getReadWriteLock();
        Lock writeLock = readWriteLock.readLock();
        writeLock.lock();
        try {
           // Critical section protected by the write lock
           ...
        } finally {
           writeLock.unlock();
        }

Check Javadocs for distributed locks for more information or download evaluation version of Cacheonix to see Cacheonix in action.