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REVIEW.md
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# How to review clio
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Clio is a massive project, and thus I don't expect the code to be reviewed the
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way a normal PR would. So I put this guide together to help reviewers look at
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the relevant pieces of code without getting lost in the weeds.
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One thing reviewers should keep in mind is that most of clio is designed to be
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lightweight and simple. We try not to introduce any uneccessary complexity and
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keep the code as simple and straightforward as possible. Sometimes complexity is
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unavoidable, but simplicity is the goal.
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## Order of review
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The code is organized into 4 main components, each with their own folder. The
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code in each folder is as self contained as possible. A good way to approach
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the review would be to review one folder at a time.
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### backend
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The code in the backend folder is the heart of the project, and reviewers should
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start here. This is the most complex part of the code, as well as the most
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performance sensitive. clio does not keep any data in memory, so performance
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generally depends on the data model and the way we talk to the database.
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Reviewers should start with the README in this folder to get a high level idea
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of the data model and to review the data model itself. Then, reviewers should
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dive into the implementation. A good way to approach the implementation would
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be to go through the functions in BackendInterface, and review each of their
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implementations in PostgresBackend and CassandraBackend. Reviewers can also
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look at how these functions are being used. This will take you into other parts
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of the code, which you can review as well.
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### server
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The code in the server folder implements the web server for handling RPC requests.
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This code was mostly copied and pasted from boost beast example code, so I would
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really appreciate review here.
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### rpc
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The rpc folder contains all of the handlers and any helper functions they need.
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This code is not too complicated, so reviewers don't need to dwell long here.
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### etl
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The etl folder contains all of the code for extracting data from rippled. This
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code is complex and important, but most of this code was just copied from rippled
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reporting mode, and thus has already been reviewed and is being used in prod.
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## Design decisions that should be reviewed
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### Data model
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Reviewers should review the general data model. The data model itself is described
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at a high level in the README in the backend folder. The table schemas and queries
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for Cassandra are defined in the `open()` function of `CassandraBackend`. The table
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schemas for Postgres are defined in Pg.cpp.
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Particular attention should be paid to the keys table, and the problem that solves
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(successor/upper bound). I originally was going to have a special table for book_offers,
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but then I decided that we could use the keys table itself for that and save space.
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This makes book_offers somewhat slow compared to rippled, though still very usable.
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### Large rows
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I did some tricks with Cassandra to deal with very large rows in the keys and account_tx
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tables. For each of these, the partition key (the first component of the primary
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key) is a compound key. This is meant to break large rows into smaller rows. This
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is done to avoid hotspots. Data is sharded in Cassandra, and if some rows get very
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large, some nodes can have a lot more data than others.
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For account_tx, this has performance implications when iterating very far back
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in time. Refer to the `fetchAccountTransactions()` function in `CassandraBackend`.
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It is unclear if this needs to be done for other tables.
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### Threading
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I used asio for multithreading. There are a lot of different io_contexts lying
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around the code. This needs to be cleaned up a bit. Most of these are really
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just ways to submit an async job to a single thread. I don't think it makes
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sense to have one io_context for the whole application, but some of the threading
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is a bit opaque and could be cleaned up.
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### Boost Json
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I used boost json for serializing data to json.
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### No cache
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As of now, there is no cache. I am not sure if a cache is even worth it. A
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transaction cache would not be hard, but a cache for ledger data will be hard.
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While a cache would improve performance, it would increase memory usage. clio
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is designed to be lightweight.
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## Things I'm less than happy about
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#### BackendIndexer
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This is a particularly hairy piece of code that handles writing to the keys table.
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I am not too happy with this code. Parts of it need to execute in real time as
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part of ETL, and other parts are allowed to run in the background. There is also
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code that detects if a previous background job failed to complete before the
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server shutdown, and thus tries to rerun that job. The code feels tacked on, and
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I would like it to be more cleanly integrated with the rest of the code.
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#### Shifting
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There is some bit shifting going on with the keys table and the account_tx table.
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The keys table is written to every 2^20 ledgers. Maybe it would be better to just
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write every 1 million ledgers.
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#### performance of book_offers
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book_offers is a bit slow. It could be sped up in a variety of ways. One is to
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keep a separate book_offers table. However, this is not straightforward and will
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use more space. Another is to keep a cache of book_offers for the most recent ledger
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(or few ledgers). I am not sure if this is worth it
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#### account_tx in Cassandra
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After the fix to deal with large rows, account_tx can be slow at times when using
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Cassandra. Specifically, if there are large gaps in time where the account was
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not affected by any transactions, the code will be reading empty records. I would
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like to sidestep this issue if possible.
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#### Implementation of fetchLedgerPage
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`fetchLedgerPage()` is rather complex. Part of this seems unavoidable, since this
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code is dealing with the keys table.
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