Our Blog

  ## We are connecting to two servers and running expensive 
  ## queries on both. We kick both off right away, then wait 
  ## for them both to finish. Our total wait time is thus
  ## max(server1,server2) rather than sum(server1,server2)

  use strict;
  use warnings;
  use DBI;
  use DBD::Pg qw{ :async };

  my $dsn1 = 'dbi:Pg:dbname=sales;host=example1.com';
  my $dsn2 = 'dbi:Pg:dbname=sales;host=example2.com';

  my $dbh1 = DBI->connect($dsn1, '', '', {AutoCommit=>0, RaiseError=>1});
  my $dbh2 = DBI->connect($dsn2, '', '', {AutoCommit=>0, RaiseError=>1});

  my $SQL = 'SELECT gather_yearly_sales_data()';
  print "Kicking off a long, expensive query on database one\n";
  ## Normally, a do() will not return until the query is complete
  ## However, the async flag causes it to return immediately
  $dbh1->do($SQL, {pg_async => PG_ASYNC});

  print "Kicking off a long, expensive query on database two\n";
  $dbh2->do($SQL, {pg_async => PG_ASYNC});

  ## Both queries are running in the 'background'
  ## We have to wait for both, so it doesn't matter which one we wait for here
  ## However, if it's been over 2 minutes, we'll cancel both and quit
  my $time = 0;
  while ( ! $dbh1->pg_ready() ) {
    sleep 1;
    if ($time++ > 120) {
      print "Taking too long, let's cancel the queries\n";
      $dbh1->pg_cancel();
      $dbh2->pg_cancel();
      $dbh1->rollback();
      $dbh2->rollback();
      die "No sales data was retrieved\n";
    }
  }

  ## We know that database 1 has finished, so we read in the results
  my $rows1 = $dbh1->pg_result();
  ## We then grab results from database 2
  ## This will block until done, which is okay
  my $rows2 = $dbh2->pg_result();

  ## We are running a series of queries against a database, but if
  ## the whole thing is taking over 30 seconds, we want to cancel
  ## the currently running query and move on to something else.

  use strict;
  use warnings;
  use DBI;
  use DBD::Pg qw{ :async };

  my $dsn = 'dbi:Pg:dbname=dq';

  my $dbh = DBI->connect($dsn, '', '', {AutoCommit=>0, RaiseError=>1});

  ## Setup all the POSIX alarm plumbing
  my $mask = POSIX::SigSet->new(SIGALRM);
  my $action = POSIX::SigAction->new(
    sub { die "TIMEOUT\n" },
    $mask,
  );
  my $oldaction = POSIX::SigAction->new();
  sigaction( SIGALRM, $action, $oldaction );

  ## Prepare the queries
  my $upd = $dbh->prepare('UPDATE foobar SET x=? WHERE y=?');
  my $inv = $dbh->prepare('SELECT refresh_inventory(?)');

  ## Yes, a double eval. Async is looking better all the time :)
  eval {
    eval {
          alarm 30;
          for my $y (12,24,48) {
              print "Adjusting widget #$y\n";
              $upd->execute(555,$y);
              print "Recalculating inventory\n";
              $inv->execute($y);
          }
        };
        alarm 0; ## Turn off our alarm
        die "$@\n" if $@; ## Bubble the error to the outer eval
    };
    if ($@) { ## Something went wrong
      if ($@ =~ /TIMEOUT/) {
        print "Queries are taking too long! Cancelling\n";
        ## We don't know which one is still running, and don't care
        ## It's safe to cancel a non-active statement handle
        $upd->cancel() or die qq{Failed to cancel the query!\n};
        $inv->cancel() or die qq{Failed to cancel the query!\n};
        $dbh->rollback();
        die "Who has time to wait 30 seconds anymore?";
      }
      ## Some other non-alarm error, so we simply:
      die $@;
    }

    print "Updates are complete\n";
    $dbh->commit();
    exit;