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GridGain Clients

GridGain 9 clients connect to the cluster via a standard socket connection. Unlike in GridGain 8.x, there is no separate Thin and Thick clients in GridGain 9. All clients are 'thin'.

Clients do not become a part of the cluster topology, never hold any data, and are not used as a destination for compute calculations.

Client Connector Configuration

Client connection parameters are controlled by the client connector configuration. By default, GridGain accepts client connections on port 10800. You can change the configuration for the node by using the CLI tool at any time.

Here is how the client connector configuration looks like:

"clientConnector": {
  "port": 10800,
  "idleTimeout":3000,
  "sendServerExceptionStackTraceToClient":true,
  "ssl": {
    enabled: true,
    clientAuth: "require",
    keyStore: {
      path: "KEYSTORE_PATH",
      password: "SSL_STORE_PASS"
    },
    trustStore: {
      path: "TRUSTSTORE_PATH",
      password: "SSL_STORE_PASS"
    }
  }
}

The table below covers the configuration for client connector:

Property Default Description

connectTimeout

5000

Connection attempt timeout, in milliseconds.

idleTimeout

0

How long the client can be idle before the connection is dropped,in milliseconds. By default, there is no limit.

metricsEnabled

false

Defines if client metrics are collected.

port

10800

The port the client connector will be listening to.

sendServerExceptionStackTraceToClient

false

By default, only the exception message and code are sent back to the client.

Set this property to true to include the full stack trace, which will appear as part of the client-side exception.

ssl.ciphers

The cipher used for SSL communication.

ssl.clientAuth

Type of client authentication used by clients. For more information, see SSL/TLS.

ssl.enabled

Defines if SSL is enabled.

ssl.keyStore.password

SSL keystore password.

ssl.keyStore.path

Path to the SSL keystore.

ssl.keyStore.type

PKCS12

The type of SSL keystore used.

ssl.trustStore.password

SSL keystore password.

ssl.trustStore.path

Path to the SSL keystore.

ssl.trustStore.type

PKCS12

The type of SSL keystore used.

Here is how you can change the parameters:

node config update clientConnector.port=10469

Limitations

There are limitations to user types that can be used for such a mapping. Some limitations are common, and others are platform-specific due to the programming language used.

  • Only flat field structure is supported, meaning no nesting user objects. This is because GridGain tables, and therefore tuples have flat structure themselves;

  • Fields should be mapped to GridGain types;

  • All fields in user type should either be mapped to Table column or explicitly excluded;

  • All columns from Table should be mapped to some field in the user type;

  • Java only: Users should implement Mapper classes for user types for more flexibility;

Partition Awareness

In GridGain 9, partition awareness is enabled automatically for all clients.

Data in the cluster is distributed between the nodes in a balanced manner for scalability and performance reasons. Each cluster node maintains a subset of the data, and the partition distribution map, which is used to determine the node that keeps the primary/backup copy of requested entries.

Partition awareness allows the client to send query requests directly to the node that owns the queried data.

Without partition awareness, an application that is connected to the cluster via a client would execute all queries and operations via a single server node that acts as a proxy for the incoming requests. These operations would then be re-routed to the node that stores the data that is being requested. This would result in a bottleneck that could prevent the application from scaling linearly.

Without Partition Awareness

Notice how queries must pass through the proxy server node, where they are routed to the correct node.

With partition awareness in place, the client can directly route queries and operations to the primary nodes that own the data required for the queries. This eliminates the bottleneck, allowing the application to scale more easily.

With Partition Awareness

Client Features

The following table outlines features supported by each client.

Feature Java .NET C++

Record Binary View

yes

yes

yes

Key-Value Binary View

yes

yes

yes

Record View

yes

yes

yes

Key-Value View

yes

yes

yes

SQL API

yes

yes

yes

Partition Awareness

yes

yes

No

Transactions

yes

yes

yes

Compute API

yes

yes

yes

Retry Policy

yes

yes

No

Heartbeats

yes

yes

No

Data Streamer

yes

yes

No

Continuous Query

yes

No

yes