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I am attempting to implement a row version strategy for tables in our OpenEdge database.

The simple solution i have come up with would be to add an integer iRowVersion field to each table and have the write trigger validate and increment the field as follows:

TRIGGER PROCEDURE FOR WRITE OF Customer OLD BUFFER oldCustomer.

IF Customer.iRowVersion < oldCustomer.iRowVersion THEN
  RETURN ERROR "RowVersion Out Of Date".

ASSIGN Customer.iRowVersion = Customer.iRowVersion + 1.

This will prevent any concurrent changes being overwritten, however i am unsure the increment by one per row is the best. SQL ROWVERSION is incremented accross the entire database, and to emulate that approach would use a sequence instead:

ASSIGN Customer.iRowVersion = NEXT-VALUE(rowVersionSequence).

In our large database where many records will be changing, this has the potential to increase the sequence very quickly. Having a sequence per table would curtail this but seems over the top and the +1 approach keeps it simple.

To clarify the question - would it be better to increment a row version number based on the rows last version, or should the SQL like approach be taken - making every row version unique to the database.

Additionally if going down the SQL style route, would the create trigger need to assign an initial row version? (otherwise all new unmodified records initialise at 0).

jhrabi
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Andrew Stalker
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  • Nothing wrong with using a sequence for this - if you use an INT64 for the version field it's doubtful you'll ever overflow the field as well. – Tim Kuehn Aug 29 '17 at 11:46
  • Is there a question somewhere in here? – Tom Bascom Aug 29 '17 at 17:20
  • updated @TomBascom – Andrew Stalker Aug 30 '17 at 08:18
  • What you're implementing is called optimistic locking - which ProDataSets can do quite nicely w/out having to resort to triggers and a version field. – Tim Kuehn Aug 30 '17 at 11:59
  • I see that here: https://documentation.progress.com/output/ua/OpenEdge_latest/index.html#page/dvnet%2Fupdating-a-dataset.html%23 however I don't see that working with 3rd party clients connecting through a stateless AppServer. If two clients connected and wanted to apply their changes, they both would be considered changed and one would overwrite the other no? – Andrew Stalker Aug 30 '17 at 14:56

1 Answers1

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To version control records in the OpenEdge database I now have a solution that should work well, and is fairly simple.

Each table that needs to have a row version will have a RowVersion field, of type Integer.

We have a program that generates write triggers when we create new tables, so updating this to add some new code has been simple. The write trigger now checks the record to see if the table has a RowVersion field, and if so it then increments the version by 1. Checking to make sure the row version matches before updating is the responsibility of the programmer in the code / script they are running.

There were several reasons for this method, but it keeps things simple:

  1. Integers are simple and easy to read when running queries and debugging the database. Given our application uses, it is unlikely we would ever overflow an integer either.

  2. A sequence is not needed to keep rowversions unique. They don't need to be. Each record just increments its own row version.

  3. Although ProDataSets can do optimistic locking, there is no guarantee that the records in use will always be read / written using these, and therefore a field gives us the flexibility to write different code depending on the use.

  4. Usually row versions should be checked before updating, if there was data issues, then fix scripts might need to be run to overwrite data regardless. For this we leave the checking to be done in a calling procedure (and not the trigger) for a write operation to a record.

Andrew Stalker
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