By "most of the code" I mean most of the code I know :) AFAIK everything in XWiki platform and in most extensions is doing this and it includes of course everything you do trough the standard UI. On Fri, Feb 2, 2018 at 3:51 PM, Marc Sladek <[email protected]> wrote:
With "most of the code", do you also mean when new documents are being created and stored (the scenario where collisions happen)?
Imho there is nothing preventing collisions when doing: * new XWikiDocument(docRef) * modify instance * exists check and save
On 2 February 2018 at 15:28, Thomas Mortagne <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, Feb 2, 2018 at 3:07 PM, Marc Sladek <[email protected]> wrote:
Introducing this certainly doesn't hurt, but 'm not sure how useful it is.
I never said it was the solution to all collisions but it will cover most of the (very rare and never reported) overwrites at 0 cost.
Firstly, it can show collisions only after a document is already overwritten, thus the damage is already done.
Again keep in mind that most of the code does: * getDocument(DocumentReference) * modify the XWikiDocument instance * saveDocument()
so if getDocument() fail you are not going to overwrite anything.
Secondly, loadXWikiDoc has to be called for the document which doesn't exist anymore, I guess this doesn't happen so often since the system won't list it anymore.
Not sure which use case you are referring to here. Are you talking about document deleted the a document with a different reference but same hash is saved ?
On 2 February 2018 at 13:36, Thomas Mortagne <[email protected]> wrote:
For document what could help a lot already without any performance penalty is to compare the loaded document reference and the passed one in XWikiHibernateStore#loadXWikiDoc. That's because most of the code in XWiki apply the following logic: getDocument(), modify it, saveDocument().
On Fri, Feb 2, 2018 at 12:19 PM, Marc Sladek <[email protected]
wrote:
Hi Denis,
Thanks a lot for your answer. I know it's been a while, but I'd still like to follow up on it since it's quite the fundamental issue.
Therefore, by improving the hash algorithm, the size of the ids, and
the
quality of the hashed key, we have considered ourselves to be saved enough for a normal usage.
Still, with enough bad luck, documents and objects may be overwritten without a trace. This is not a stable implementation. And even worse, if on any XWiki installation hash collisions will happen in the future (or have already happened since 4.x), they probably won't be easily associated with this issue because it's nearly impossible to debug.
While I do now understand the motivation to stick with hashes, I'm still not sure why a collision detection would be difficult to introduce and why it's even "impossible for some API". Let me briefly outline an idea:
In XWikiHibernateStore#saveXWikiDoc on L615 <https://github.com/xwiki/xwiki-platform/blob/stable-9.11.x/ xwiki-platform-core/xwiki-platform-oldcore/src/main/java/ com/xpn/xwiki/store/XWikiHibernateStore.java#L615> an exists check on the doc id is already performed. If now xwikidoc.fullName is also selected in the HQL, a comparison to doc.getDocumentReference() can expose an imminent collision before data is overwritten. At least an XWikiException should be thrown in this case. A similar thing could be done before saving BaseObjects on L1203 <https://github.com/xwiki/xwiki-platform/blob/stable-9.11.x/ xwiki-platform-core/xwiki-platform-oldcore/src/main/java/ com/xpn/xwiki/store/XWikiHibernateStore.java#L1203> to avoid collisions on Object IDs.
I don't think a change like this would be difficult to implement, I could provide a PR of that sort. The performance penalty has to be tested for your systems though, since the full name isn't indexed afaik.
Regards
Marc Sladek synventis gmbh
On 30 November 2017 at 15:21, Denis Gervalle <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Marc,
Here are some answers:
1) MD5 was already a dependency of our oldcore and using SHA1 would have added a dependency without bringing much benefit. Since we only used 64 bits of the MD5 anyway, I doubt using SHA1 would have provided a better distribution.
2) Such a collision detection is difficult to be introduced in the existing code base, for some API it is even impossible. What you experience with the 32-bit ids had been my motivation to the changes in 4.x and I could say, based on my long XWiki experience, that even with the poor 32 bit ids, very few users had been affected. Therefore, by improving the hash algorithm, the size of the ids, and the quality of the hashed key, we have considered ourselves to be saved enough for a normal usage.
3) That’s the worst point. I cannot answer about the first decision, I wasn’t yet involve, but regarding the changes introduced in 4.0, a change had been considered. The ids are only there to satisfy Hibernate and its loading mechanism. If we had used a counter, we had to manage a conversion table between ids and entity references with all the additional complexity (consistency issues, caching, ...). This is so because we use entity reference to point directly to document (or even objects) everywhere in XWiki. This would have been a huge work to introduce that behaviour and at the same time keeping all the existing API unchanged. It would probably have introduced a performance penalty as well. This is why we resigned and go for an improved hash solution. IMO, if we had to make such a change, we are even better rewriting the storage service completely, and even stop using Hibernate, which, to be honest, does not bring much benefit to XWiki with its ORM aspects.
But if you really want the complete answers, you can look at those threads: http://xwiki.markmail.org/thread/fuprtrnupz2uy37f http://xwiki.markmail.org/thread/fsd25bvft74xwgcx
Regards,
-- Denis Gervalle SOFTEC sa - CEO
On 30 Nov 2017, 14:14 +0100, Marc Sladek <[email protected] , wrote: > Dear XWiki devs > > We are using the XWiki platform for our applications but sadly are still > stuck with 2.7.2. Lately we ran into issues on a large database and noticed > "disappearing" BaseObjects. We were able to link it to XWIKI-6990 > <http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-6990>, where hibernate IDs collided > (hash collisions) and overwrote other objects without any trace - neither > visible in the history nor in a log file. > > We analysed your implemented solution from 4.0+ in XWikiDocument > <https://github.com/xwiki/xwiki-platform/blob/stable-8.4.x/x wiki-platform-core/xwiki-platform-oldcore/src/main/java/com/ xpn/xwiki/doc/XWikiDocument.java#L841 > and BaseElement > <https://github.com/xwiki/xwiki-platform/blob/stable-8.4.x/x wiki-platform-core/xwiki-platform-oldcore/src/main/java/com/ xpn/xwiki/objects/BaseElement.java#L237 > and > noticed that you changed the 32bit String#hashCode to 64bit MD5, which > makes a collision less likely. I have a few questions regarding your > solution: > > 1) Is there any specific reason why you have chosen MD5 over SHA-1 or 2? > > 2) Collisions are still possible and would be extremely hard to notice > since they are completely silent. Have you considered to implement a > collision detection to at least log occurring collisions - or even better > reserve 1-2bits of the 64bit to be used as collision counter in the case of > it happening? > > 3) To question the concept of generating a hash for an ID in general: > Wouldn't a database defined "auto increment" be a much more robust solution > for the hibernate IDs? A collision would be impossible and > clustering/scalability is still possible with e.g. the InnoDB “interleaved” > autoincrement lock mode. Why have you chosen a hash based solution in the > first place? > > I'm sorry if these questions were already answered in the dev mailing list > or on issues, please link me to them since I couldn't find any concrete > answers. > > Thanks for your time and regards > > Marc Sladek > synventis gmbh
-- Thomas Mortagne
-- Thomas Mortagne
-- Thomas Mortagne