RFC: handle batch messages in parallel in batch module

[jeromevdl]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

At the moment, the batch module processes messages in sequence (code), which could be improved with a parallel processing for better performance.

Describe the solution you'd like

• The BatchMessageHandler could provide a processBatchInParallel method with the same signature as processBatch but with a different behaviour (parallel processing instead of serial)
• Instead of iterating through the list of messages, we could use a CompletableFuture. It would be something like this (probably not that easy but that's a start):

Executor executor = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(Runtime.getRuntime().availableProcessors() * 2);

List<CompletableFuture<Optional<SQSBatchResponse.BatchItemFailure>>> collect = event.getRecords().stream()
        .map(sqsMessage -> CompletableFuture.supplyAsync(
                () -> processTheMessageAndReturnOptionalOfBatchItemFailure(sqsMessage, context), executor)
        ).collect(Collectors.toList());

CompletableFuture<List<Optional<SQSBatchResponse.BatchItemFailure>>> listCompletableFuture = CompletableFuture
        .allOf(collect.toArray(new CompletableFuture[0]))
        .thenApply(unused -> collect
                .stream()
                .map(CompletableFuture::join)
                .collect(Collectors.toList())
        );

List<SQSBatchResponse.BatchItemFailure> batchItemFailures =
        listCompletableFuture.get().stream().filter(Optional::isPresent).map(Optional::get)
                .collect(Collectors.toList());

Describe alternatives you've considered streams provide a parallel method which is based on the number of vCPUs (Runtime.getRuntime().availableProcessors()). Using CompletableFuture, we can define the number of executors, potentially more than the number of vCPUs. We should probably perform some load tests on Lambda to check if that's actually better, because parallel is probably much easier to implement.

Additional context

[scottgerring]

Initial thoughts -

• Definitely a different interface parallel / sync as you say - the user needs to opt into this. It's easy to write Lambda code that assumes single threaded execution as that's the common case.
• I don't think we should create new thread pools to do this; that's quite heavyweight, and most stuff I would guess will be parking on IO and resuming, which isn't going to be sped up by throwing threads at it
• We'll need to revisit places we're using thread local to stash things - I think at least logging does this

It's a cool idea though! Especially where we are fanning out to do downstream IO it should make a substantial difference to runtime and be a nice cost optimization for users.

[jeromevdl]

I don't think we should create new thread pools to do this; that's quite heavyweight, and most stuff I would guess will be parking on IO and resuming, which isn't going to be sped up by throwing threads at it

I don't understand... If we use CompletableFuture, we need the executor coming from the thread pool. It's not visible from the user, it will be internal code in PT.

We'll need to revisit places we're using thread local to stash things - I think at least logging does this

Not logging, serialization module with JsonConfig and the object mapper, but you need to review that one 😉. We probably need to check idempotency too, as we can integrate both batch and idempotency, not sure how thread-safe is idempotency...

[itsmichaelwang]

I just wanted to Chime in add my support for this. We use Kotlin and having some kind of Async interface (which I believe exists in the Python library?) would be really cool to have, performance wise. Especially if it's a case where a Lambda pulls messages from a queue just to make a DDB call, or something like that.

[jeromevdl]

Hi @itsmichaelwang, thanks for your comment. I'm not super familiar with Kotlin, but if you could share the kind of signature you expect, it would help. We probably won't make public an async interface (with java Future), and will handle it internally, but happy to discuss this...

[scottgerring]

I don't understand... If we use CompletableFuture, we need the executor coming from the thread pool. It's not visible from the user, it will be internal code in PT.

You need a ThreadPool, but I don't think you shouldn't have to create a new one but rather use thread pools the runtime provides and manages. It looks like we should use ForkJoinPool.commonPool(); it'll be there already, we don't need to create more threads, we don't need to handle lifecycle, and it is explicitly for this sort of processing. I think we can even use something like the RecursiveTask and skip thinking about the futurey nature of it at all.

Not logging

MDC uses thread local - isn't this a problem?

Serialization, idemp

👍

[jeromevdl]

CompletableFuture.supplyAsync needs an executor. I'm not an expert with multithreading apis and happy if ForkJoinPool.commonPool() works, but if it gives us the same amount of thread as the parallel() method (in Streams), then let's just use the parallel method... Some reading: see this, this, this, this ==> We certainly need to test the different approaches and measure to see what provides the best value.

From the last article:

As you can see, CompletableFutures provide more control over the size of the thread pool and should be used if your tasks involve I/O. However, if you’re doing CPU-intensive operations, there’s no point in having more threads than processors, so go for a parallel stream, as it is easier to use.

We don't really know what users will do (CPU-intensive or not). Maybe parallel is already a good improvement or should we provide the option to users (a boolean set to true if CPU intensive 😛)

MDC uses thread local - isn't this a problem?

Yes, you're right, MDC uses ThreadLocal. The way we handle powertools fields today is based on MDC so it could be yes... We probably would need to pass the MDC context map to the threads in order to fill their own version of it...

We should first try to find the best way to implement parallelism (Stream.parallel(), CompletableFuture, ...), and then see the impacts on other modules, but we can already list them for sure:

• logging (MDC)
• idempotency
• serialization (JsonConfig)
• large messages ?
• other ?

[jeromevdl]

It's actually much simpler with parallel:

List<SQSBatchResponse.BatchItemFailure> batchItemFailures = event.getRecords()
        .parallelStream()
        .map(sqsMessage -> processTheMessageAndReturnOptionalOfBatchItemFailure(sqsMessage, context))
        .filter(Optional::isPresent)
        .map(Optional::get)
        .collect(Collectors.toList());

Note that in both case I don't handle the FIFO failWholeBatch... I guess we should not process in parallel messages in a FIFO queue ;)

[scottgerring]

Parallel streams! That looks exactly like what we want. I think this comment you made is why - we pick a level of abstraction where we're letting java handle the actual implementation of the parallelization:

We don't really know what users will do (CPU-intensive or not).

One question that nags a bit - do we want the user to be able to return a future in their process function? I haven't thought hard about this.

I guess we should not process in parallel messages in a FIFO queue ;) Good catch 👍

[kyuseoahn]

+1 for this feature request.

This would be amazing to have. I was trying to implement a parallizable implementation of the batch processor because the synchronous version is too slow for my needs but managing work such as removing successes from the SQS, removing retryable failures after pushing to the dlq, handing num retries before failure, etc that we all get for free via powertools is a lot of work and non-trivial.

Having async processing support officially would be amazing.

[scottgerring]

I think we should prioritize this for v2 @jeromevdl . What do you think?

[kyuseoahn]

When is v2 set for if this is in scope for v2?

[scottgerring]

When is v2 set for if this is in scope for v2?

Hey @kyuseoahn , we're targeting first half 2024 for this at the moment!