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This HOWTO describes how you make Fragmented Mnesia tables and how to use them.
Let's say I have to make a book library index application. There's a table I use to record all the available library books. The record structure is as below. Due to the high volume of data, I want this table to be fragmented in a single Erlang node. If you want to make this fragmented table distributed, you may refer to http://www.trapexit.org/Distributing_a_Mnesia_schema tutorial on making distributed table. All the rest of the work related to table framentation remains same.
I need this table to be disk_copies. Other modes also operate the same way.
-record(book_info, {isbn, name, author, keywords, category, description}).
Our example node foo@example has the default disc storage path set to the directory Mnesia.foo@example in the current directory.
erl -sname foo
The directory can be overridden by using -mnesia dir '"/path/of/your/preference"' ' when starting the node.
Let create a disk based schema by running,
mnesia:create_schema([node()]).
In this example all 20 fragments are in the same Erlang/Mnesia node. Also the fragments are disc_copies.
mnesia:create_table(book_info, [{frag_properties, [{node_pool, [node()]}, {n_fragments, 20}, {n_disc_copies, 1}]}, {index, [name, keywords, category]}, {attributes, record_info(fields, book_info)}]),
In order to be able to access a record in a fragmented table, Mnesia must determine to which fragment the actual record belongs. This is done by the mnesia_frag module, which implements the mnesia_access callback behaviour. Wrap standard Mnesia operation functions inside the function and pass to mnesia:activity/4 with callback module mnesia_frag.
Create a function which calls mnesia:write/3.
AddFun = fun() -> mnesia:write(book_info, Record, write) end
Now call that function inside mnesia:activity/4 as below.
ok = mnesia:activity(transaction, AddFun, [], mnesia_frag)
Notice that I have used the activity access context as "transaction". Transaction makes sure that the operation is all successfull or all fail (atomic). AccessContext I can use are,
{transaction, Retries} sync_transaction {sync_transaction, Retries} async_dirty sync_dirty ets
For example if you want to do above activity in dirty mode, you can write,
ok = mnesia:activity(async_dirty, AddFun, [], mnesia_frag) Refer to mnesia:activity/4 documentation for more info.
As an example let's select books by Author "steve" with 10 books limit. Remember 10 is not a hard limit. Create a function with mnesia:select/4 function.
MatchHead = #book_info{author = "steve", _ = '_'}, Guard = [], Result = ['$_'], MatchSpec = [{MatchHead, Guard, Result}], SelFun = fun() -> mnesia:select(book_info, MatchSpec, 10, read) end,
Now call that function inside mnesia:activity/4 as below.
Result = mnesia:activity(transaction, AddFun, [], mnesia_frag)
Result -> '$end_of_table' | {[Objects], Cont} | transaction abort
In a fragmented table, if it returns {[Objects], Cont} and the number of objects returned is less than the number of objects expected (10), you need to recursively run mnesia:select/1 with the return Cont (continuation) until you get the expected number of results or '$end_of_table'.
SelFun2 = fun() -> mnesia:select(Cont) end, Result2 = mnesia:activity(transaction, SelFun2, [], mnesia_frag)
Result2 -> '$end_of_table' | {[Objects], Cont} | transaction abort
To obtain the list of tables, use mnesia:table_info/2 with the option frag_names:
mnesia:activity(async_dirty, mnesia:table_info/2, [store, frag_names], mnesia_frag).
That's it! Now you know how to write a basic Mnesia fragmented tables program.