[erlang-questions] Help creating distributed server cache

[David Fox]

So you'd suggest going with #2 instead of #1? Could you tell me why?

Thanks for pointing out riak's memory backend. Had forgotten about that :)

-David

On 12/6/2012 15:53, Anthony Molinaro wrote:
> You might consider just using riak with the memory backend.  It already
> has a REST API
>
> http://docs.basho.com/riak/latest/tutorials/querying/Basic-Operations/
>
> and with the memory backend you can set a ttl
>
> http://docs.basho.com/riak/latest/tutorials/choosing-a-backend/Memory/
>
> There's no need to keep processes running or do much of anything
> other than install it on a few machines, configure it and go.
>
> -Anthony
>
> On Thu, Dec 06, 2012 at 03:43:22PM -0600, David Fox wrote:
>> I'm currently developing a gaming server which stores player
>> information that can be accessed from any of our games via a REST
>> API.
>>
>> So far I've thought of two ways to structure and cache player data:
>>
>> 1. When a client requests data on a player, spawn 1 player process.
>> This process handles: all subsequent requests from clients for this
>> player, retrieving the player data from the DB when created and
>> periodically updating the DB with any new data from clients. If the
>> player is not requested by another client within... say 30 minutes,
>> the player process will terminate.
>>
>> 2. Just keep previously requested data in a distributed LRU cache
>> (e.g., memcached, redis, mnesia)
>>
>> Out of the two, I prefer #1 since it would allow me to separate the
>> functionality of different "data types" (e.g., player data, game
>> data).
>>
>> There are just 2 problems with doing it this way that I'd like your
>> thoughts and help with:
>> I. I would have to implement some sort of "LRU process cache" so I
>> could terminate processes to free memory for new ones.
>> II. If a load balancer connects a client to node #1, but the process
>> for the requested player is on node #2, how can the player process
>> on node #2 send the data to the socket opened for the client on node
>> #1. Is it possible to somehow send an socket across nodes? The
>> reason I ask, is that I'd like to prevent sending big messages
>> across nodes.
>>
>> Thanks for the help!
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