Friday, January 29, 2010

Append-Only Data Models

An append-only data model follows that when a data entity changes, each change is represented as an insert against the relevant table. There are no updates or deletes recorded against the data. The domain model and any adopted ORM strategy needs to reflect this behaviour difference. Soft-delete is a term used when records are marked inactive rather than permanently deleted from the database. This is an integral part of append-only models, but can be easily employed separately from append-only models.

Advantages of Append-OnlyAppend-only models offer several advantages to applications. The most significant is a built-in audit trail for reviewing all changes to records and a snapshot of a record at any point in time. This audit trail can be used for reporting, undo-chains, and review/approval behaviour.

Challenges of Append-OnlyAppend-only models automatically increase the amount of storage space needed to represent data historically. This proves to raise additional challenges when dealing with ORMs to ensure references correctly point to the latest version when applicable, and avoiding new associations with stale references.

Structuring Data for Append-OnlyThere are 3 conventional approaches for adopting an append-only data model. Each addresses the fact that for any given data entity there can be one or more record in the database to represent it over time.

Key + Version Number
The first option is to introduce a version number and form a concatenated key between the record ID and Version. New records receive the incremented version number. An optional table can be introduced to help indicate the most current version number for a data entity rather than performing index scans against the table.

Advantages
  1. ID is preserved between versions. (Suitable for meaningful IDs)
  2. FKs by ID are preserved. (Though not unique by themselves so caution is needed when querying.)
  3. Ancestor records are “pure”. (Unmodified when new descendants are created.)
  4. Old records can be archived/deleted easily.

Disadvantages
  1. Concatenated PK.
  2. Not intuitive to map relationships that are versioned.

Timestamps can be added in place of version numbers, or complimenting version numbers to provide functionality to assess a record’s state a particular point in time.

Ancestor Reference + Version Number
The second option is to use a version number in combination with a reference (FK) to the record’s ancestor. This approach utilizes a meaningless PK for the record so each new version has a unique ID plus a reference to the previous version. (The ancestor.) The version number is tracked as well as a reference to identify the most current version of the record.



At some point we may want to archive or discard older records. This can be a bit of a problem with the FK relationship between record and ancestor when the ancestor is removed from the production data.


Setting a revision’s ancestor reference to null is fine if the ancestor is deleted, however when archiving, special care will be needed to re-attach the reference when the revision itself is moved to the archive.

Advantages
  1. Unique IDs suitable for FK relationship. (No concatenation needed.)
  2. Ancestor records are “pure”. (Unmodified when new descendants are created.)
  3. Maps easier to ORM solutions, though care is needed to ensure stale references are avoided.

Disadvantages
  1. External FK relationships must be updated to the new version.
  2. May require index scans like above solution to keep references fresh.
  3. Old records cannot be easily removed due to FK relationships.

Descendant Reference
The third option is to use a reference (FK) to the record’s descendant. This is similar to the second approach however instead of the current object holding a reference to its elder, where each elder is modified to contain a reference to its descendant. The advantage in this model is that the version number is not required, as the current instance will always have a null descendant ID. This makes it simple to detect when a reference has been made stale.

It also facilitates deleting and archiving better than the ancestor model since records can be deleted without invalidating FKs. The archived records, not remaining production records, merely require a placeholder proxy for the cut off point descendant.



Advantages
  1. Unique IDs suitable for FK relationship. (No concatenation needed.)
  2. Simpler detection for current instance and stale references.
  3. Old records can easily be removed or archived.

Disadvantages
  1. External FK relationships must be updated to the new version.
  2. Ancestor records are not “pure”. Ancestor records must be updated with their descendant reference.

Snapshots
A snapshot refers to a model where a snapshot of the data is taken and recorded before each and every data modification. This is not append-only by definition because it serves only to provide a picture of historical data, but it is not geared towards making versioned data accessible to references. Snapshots can be recorded in the same table, or in separate history tables. Snapshots can also be configured to be performed automatically by the database. This can be beneficial in situations where data can be manipulated by more than one application or process.

What Version Do I Point To?
Regardless of the approach taken, it is important that the domain model for the application is designed with append-only behaviour in mind. The most significant challenge in adopting this model is that you need to be explicit when dealing with the relationships between data. Certain design and behaviour decisions are needed within the application. If a revision is made to an object that is referenced by other objects, should those references be automatically updated to the latest revision, or is it valid that they can remain referenced to the version that was current when the association was made?

For example, if we make a change to a Doctor entity to update contact details or other relevant information, it would probably be beneficial to ensure that any appointments associated to that Dr., past, present, or future, should be updated to the current revision of the Doctor’s record. Alternatively, if we were to adjust a billing rate applicable for a service, we’d likely want to ensure that past, and possibly present appointments refer to the previous version of the record, while new and future appointments reflect the updated rate. (Possibly prompting users to ask whether or not present and future appointments should be updated or not.)

This is an important consideration when designing domain and data models around this kind of behaviour. For instance, having a service such as an Interpreter in the system, we’d want to be sure that information such as contact details would be kept separate from figures such as billing charges. Some data we may want to ensure is always pointing to the current revision, while others may be more selective.

In the case of selective association, this is one scenario where option 1 outlined above becomes a clumsy choice. Any foreign key association where the revision can be selective requires both the ID and version number. In the case of an appointment to service provider billing information, the appointment will likely have a revision number, as well as the ID to the billing information and the version of the billing information.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Dependency Injection: One step back.

Ayende had some interesting feedback here from an blog from Uncle Bob about why developers shouldn't use IOC containers.

Most modern IOC containers can be configured to auto-inject dependencies via constructor injection. The benefit of using this approach is that it's essentially configure & forget. Provided that you don't mess up the configuration, the container should continue to detect and provide dependencies. There are two things that I don't really like about this though:

#1. From a test-ability perspective, you need to provide mocks or stubs for all dependencies when testing code.

#2. When things get a bit out of sync you're chasing Null Reference Exceptions, and I *loathe* NullReferenceException.

An alternative that I've been exploring is going back to using the IOC container as more of a service locator/provider via Property-based dependencies. This is kept nice and tidy using a partial class for the dependency definitions.

The benefit of this approach is that my unit tests only need to provide dependencies that are actually used for the functionality being tested. Dependencies can also be effectively "lazy-loaded" as necessary since they will be located and provided only the first time they are referenced. The second part to this is to be sure that the IOC container is covered by a facade. This keeps out the tight coupling to a single IOC provider, and allows you to be sure that test fixtures configure a stub container that throws exceptions to expose unexpected new dependencies.

I find this approach also blends into legacy code a lot easier than constructor injection. Existing legacy code can construct instances of re-factored classes as per normal. The only re-factoring you need to do is to strip out the "newing" and substitute it with the IOC provided properties.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

The cost of TDD / Test-soon-development.

A common argument against writing automated unit tests is that no one has time to write them. Ultimately this is not true, in that writing code with unit tests takes no longer than writing code without them.

Without unit tests devs still need to assert that their code works. This typically means writing the code, then launching the application and ensuring the code does what it’s supposed to do. This is then repeated as you continue to implement functionality. Unit testing is written using the time they would normally spend running the application to assert that the code works. The real difference appears when you start looking at continuous revision. As you revise code, are you always going back over the complete functionality to ensure your new code hasn’t broken any previously verified behaviour? Honestly, you should be, but think how much time that would take.

As you begin to invest pieces of time writing unit tests instead of manually firing up applications to one-time test, you are still asserting your code will do what you expect it to do, and you gain that regression assessment for free.

For the record, my acronym for testing style would be BDTSD. (Behaviour Driven Test Soon Development:)

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Starting small on the Blog scene.

Well, after reading what several others have to say in the software development circles I've decided to start a small blog about aspects of software development that matter to me. This will primarily be in the realm of software design, Agile software development, software usability, and testability.