Graph Transactions

A Graph that implements the TransactionalGraph interface is a graph that supports Blueprints-style transactions. A TransactionalGraph has the following methods:

public void setMaxBufferSize(int bufferSize);
public int getMaxBufferSize();
public int getCurrentBufferSize();
public void startTransaction();
public void stopTransaction(Conclusion conclusion);

Automatic Transactions

A TransactionalGraph supports a transactional buffer. When the buffer size is greater than 0, every X manipulations of the graph (e.g. set/remove property, add/remove vertex, add/remove edge) is automatically wrapped in a transaction and committed, where X is the transaction buffer size. In this way, the developer does not need to start and stop transactions as this is automatically handled by the implementation. Upon construction, every TransactionalGraph has a transaction buffer size of 1. When the transaction buffer size is 0, the developer is required to manually start and stop transactions when editing the graph.

Transaction Examples

To put a graph in manual transaction model, evaluate the following:

txGraph.setMaxBufferSize(0);

Upon doing so, any edit operation (or group of edit operations) must be wrapped in a transaction. This is done as follows.

txGraph.startTransaction();
// edit operations
tx.stopTransaction(TransactionalGraph.Conclusion.SUCCESS);

There are two types of conclusions: Conclusion.SUCCESS and Conclusion.FAILURE. When a transaction is successful, it is committed to the underlying store. When the transaction is a failure, then all the edit operations up to the start of the transaction are rolled back. Note: Blueprints-enabled graphs do not require transactions for read-based operations.

Finally, the relationship between automatic and manual transactions are explained with an example. When doing batch mutations using manual transactions, the code looks as follows:

int counter = 0;
txGraph.setMaxBufferSize(0);
txGraph.startTransaction();

while(doingStuff) {
  // do a graph manipulation
  counter++;
  if(counter % 1000 == 0) {
    System.out.print(".");
    txGraph.stopTransaction(Conclusion.SUCCESS);
    txGraph.startTransaction();
  }
}
txGraph.stopTransaction(Conclusion.SUCCESS);

This code, using automatic transaction handling can be simplified with a transaction buffer size of 1000.

txGraph.setMaxBufferSize(1000);
while(doingStuff) {
  // do a graph manipulation
  if((txGraph.getCurrentBufferSize()-1) % 1000 == 0)
    System.out.print(".");
}

Note on Automatic Transaction Semantics

If a buffer has not been reached, it is possible to commit or rollback the buffer prematurely using stopTransaction(). From there, everything prior to the last commit will be committed (Conclusion.SUCCESS) or rolled back (Conclusion.FAILURE). Once the the transaction has been stopped, the current buffer size is reset to 0 and writes can occur again.