HawtDB

Since Camel 2.3

HawtDB is a very lightweight and embedable key value database. It allows together with Camel to provide persistent support for various Camel features such as Aggregator.

Current features it provides:

  • HawtDBAggregationRepository

Deprecated

The HawtDB project is being deprecated and replaced by leveldb as the lightweight and embedable key value database. To make using leveldb easy there is a leveldbjni project for that.

There is a camel-leveldb component we recommend to use instead of this.

Maven users will need to add the following dependency to their pom.xml for this component:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.apache.camel</groupId>
  <artifactId>camel-hawtdb</artifactId>
  <version>x.x.x</version>
  <!-- use the same version as your Camel core version -->
</dependency>

Using HawtDBAggregationRepository

HawtDBAggregationRepository is an AggregationRepository which on the fly persists the aggregated messages. This ensures that you will not loose messages, as the default aggregator will use an in memory only AggregationRepository.

It has the following options:

Option Type Description

repositoryName

String

A mandatory repository name. Allows you to use a shared HawtDBFile for multiple repositories.

persistentFileName

String

Filename for the persistent storage. If no file exists on startup a new file is created.

bufferSize

int

The size of the memory segment buffer which is mapped to the file store. By default its 8mb. The value is in bytes.

sync

boolean

Whether or not the HawtDBFile should sync on write or not. Default is true. By sync on write ensures that its always waiting for all writes to be spooled to disk and thus will not loose updates. If you disable this option, then HawtDB will auto sync when it has batched up a number of writes.

pageSize

short

The size of memory pages. By default its 512 bytes. The value is in bytes.

hawtDBFile

HawtDBFile

Use an existing configured org.apache.camel.component.hawtdb.HawtDBFile instance.

returnOldExchange

boolean

Whether the get operation should return the old existing Exchange if any existed. By default this option is false to optimize as we do not need the old exchange when aggregating.

useRecovery

boolean

Whether or not recovery is enabled. This option is by default true. When enabled the Camel Aggregator automatic recover failed aggregated exchange and have them resubmitted.

recoveryInterval

long

If recovery is enabled then a background task is run every x’th time to scan for failed exchanges to recover and resubmit. By default this interval is 5000 millis.

maximumRedeliveries

int

Allows you to limit the maximum number of redelivery attempts for a recovered exchange. If enabled then the Exchange will be moved to the dead letter channel if all redelivery attempts failed. By default this option is disabled. If this option is used then the deadLetterUri option must also be provided.

deadLetterUri

String

An endpoint uri for a Dead Letter Channel where exhausted recovered Exchanges will be moved. If this option is used then the maximumRedeliveries option must also be provided.

optimisticLocking

false

Camel 2.12: To turn on optimistic locking, which often would be needed in clustered environments where multiple Camel applications shared the same HawtDB based aggregation repository.

The repositoryName option must be provided. Then either the persistentFileName or the hawtDBFile must be provided.

What is preserved when persisting

HawtDBAggregationRepository will only preserve any Serializable compatible data types. If a data type is not such a type its dropped and a WARN is logged. And it only persists the Message body and the Message headers. The Exchange properties are not persisted.

Recovery

The HawtDBAggregationRepository will by default recover any failed Exchange. It does this by having a background tasks that scans for failed Exchanges in the persistent store. You can use the checkInterval option to set how often this task runs. The recovery works as transactional which ensures that Camel will try to recover and redeliver the failed Exchange. Any Exchange which was found to be recovered will be restored from the persistent store and resubmitted and send out again.

The following headers is set when an Exchange is being recovered/redelivered:

Header Type Description

Exchange.REDELIVERED

Boolean

Is set to true to indicate the Exchange is being redelivered.

Exchange.REDELIVERY_COUNTER

Integer

The redelivery attempt, starting from 1.

Only when an Exchange has been successfully processed it will be marked as complete which happens when the confirm method is invoked on the AggregationRepository. This means if the same Exchange fails again it will be kept retried until it success.

You can use option maximumRedeliveries to limit the maximum number of redelivery attempts for a given recovered Exchange. You must also set the deadLetterUri option so Camel knows where to send the Exchange when the maximumRedeliveries was hit.

You can see some examples in the unit tests of camel-hawtdb

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