Optimistic Concurrency

In some systems, it is important to check whether someone else has changed your data while you aren't looking.

For example:

1. Beer = SELECT Beer WHERE ID = 1
2. Beer = Beer.Remaining * 0.5
3. Someone else drinks the whole beer while you aren't looking.
4. UPDATE Beer SET Remaining=0.5 WHERE ID = 1

This would result in infinite quantities of beer (awesome!), but not realistic, so you have to check. It usually goes something like this:

1. BEGIN TRANSACTION
   1. Beer = SELECT Beer WHERE ID = 1
   2. Beer = Beer.Remaining * 0.5
   3. Someone else drinks the whole beer while you aren't looking.
   4. UPDATE Beer SET Remaining=0.5 WHERE ID = 1 AND Beer.Remaining = @oldvalue
   5. IF @@ROWCOUNT <> 0 ROLLBACK AND RAISERROR 'CONCURRENCY CHECK'

If you want to do concurrency checking with Insight.Database, it's not that hard.

First, make your SQL raise an error when you detect a concurrency exception. By default, Insight.Database will look for the string 'CONCURRENCY CHECK' in your exception.

IF @@ROWCOUNT <> 0 BEGIN ROLLBACK; RAISERROR 'CONCURRENCY CHECK', 16, 1; END

Then, wrap your connection in an OptimisticConnection:

var c = new OptimisticConnection(new SqlConnection(connectionString));

When the connection gets an exception, it checks for the text 'CONCURRENCY CHECK' and throws an OptimisticConcurrencyException. You can catch it:

try
{
	c.Execute("UpdateBeer", beer);
}
catch(OptimisticConcurrencyException ox)
{
	// someone drank your beer
}

Insight.Database.Schema

If you are using Insight.Database.Schema and Autoprocs, you can enable Optimistic checks with the Optimistic flag:

-- AUTOPROC All,Optimistic tablename

Your Own Exceptions

If you want to raise the exceptions a different way, you can also derive your own class from OptimisticConnection and override IsConcurrencyException.

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