Resource management (computing): Difference between revisions

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{{Short description|Techniques used by computers to manage components with limited availability}}

In [[computer programming]], '''resource management''' refers to techniques for managing [[System resource|resources]] (components with limited availability).

[[Computer program]]s may manage their own resources{{which|date=November 2016}} by using features exposed by [[programming language]]s ({{harvtxt|Elder|Jackson|Liblit|2008}} is a survey article contrasting different approaches), or may elect to manage them by a host – an [[operating system]] or [[virtual machine]] – or another program.

Host-based management is known as ''resource tracking,'' and consists of cleaning up resource leaks: terminating access to resources that have been acquired but not released after use. This is known as ''reclaiming'' resources, and is analogous to [[Garbage collection (computer science)|garbage collection]] for memory. On many systems, the operating system reclaims resources after the process makes the [[exit (system call)|exit]] [[system call]].

==Controlling access==

The actomission of refusing to releasereleasing a resource when a processprogram has finished using it is known as a [[resource leak]], and is an issue in sequential computing. Multiple processes wish to access a limited resource can be an issue in [[concurrent computing]], and is known as [[resource contention]].

Resource management seeks to control access in order to prevent both of these situations.

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{{main|resource leak}}

Formally, resource management (preventing resource leaks) consists of ensuring that a resource is released if and only if it is successfully acquired. This general problem can be abstracted as "''before,'' ''body,'' and ''after''" code, which normally are executed in this order, with the condition that the ''after'' code is called if and only if the ''before'' code successfully completes, regardless of whether the ''body'' code executes successfully or not. This is also known as ''execute around''{{sfn|Beck|1997|pp=37–39}} or a ''code sandwich,'' and occurs in various other contexts,{{sfn|Elder|Jackson|Liblit|2008|p=3}} such as a temporary change of program state, or [[Tracing (software)|tracing]] entry and exit into a [[subroutine]]. However, resource management is the most commonly cited application. In [[aspect-oriented programming]], such execute around logic is a form of ''[[Advice (programming)|advice]]''.

In the terminology of [[control flow analysis]], resource release must [[postdominate]] successful resource acquisition;{{sfn|Elder|Jackson|Liblit|2008|p=2}} failure to ensure this is a bug, and a code path that violates this condition causes a resource leak. Resource leaks are often minor problems, generally not crashing the program, but instead causing some slowdown to the program or the overall system.{{sfn|Elder|Jackson|Liblit|2008|p=3}} However, they may cause crashes – either the program itself or other programs – due to ''resource exhaustion:'' if the system runs out of resources, acquisition requests fail. This can present a [[security bug]] if an attack can cause resource exhaustion. Resource leaks may happen under regular program flow – such as simply forgetting to release a resource – or only in exceptional circumstances, such as when a resource is not released if there is an exception in another part of the program. Resource leaks are very frequently caused by [[Structured programming#Early exit|early exit]] from a subroutine, either by a <code>return</code> statement, or an exception raised either by the subroutine itself, or a deeper subroutine that it calls. While resource release due to return statements can be handled by carefully releasing within the subroutine before the return, exceptions cannot be handled without some additional language facility that guarantees that release code is executed.

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{{main|resource contention}}

In computer science, [https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/resource-contention resource contention] refers to a conflict that arises when multiple entities attempt to access a shared resource, like random access memory, disk storage, cache memory, internal buses, or external network devices.

{{expand section|date=November 2016}}

==Memory management==

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Memory can be treated as a resource, but [[memory management]] is usually considered separately, primarily because memory allocation and deallocation is significantly more frequent than acquisition and release of other resources, such as file handles. Memory managed by an ''external'' system has similarities to both (internal) memory management (since it is memory) and resource management (since it is managed by an external system). Examples include memory managed via native code and used from Java (via [[Java Native Interface]]); and objects in the [[Document Object Model]] (DOM), used from [[JavaScript]]. In both these cases, the [[Memory management|memory manager]] ([[Garbage collection (computer science)|garbage collector]]) of the [[runtime environment]] (virtual machine) is unable to manage the external memory (there is no shared memory management), and thus the external memory is treated as a resource, and managed analogously. However, cycles between systems (JavaScript referring to the DOM, referring back to JavaScript) can make management difficult or impossible.

==StackLexical management and heapexplicit management==

A key distinction in resource management within a program is between ''stacklexical management'' and ''heapexplicit management'' – whether a resource can be handled likeas having a lexical scope, such as a stack variable (lifetime is restricted to a single [[stacklexical frame]]scope, being acquired on entry to or within a particular scope, and released when execution exits that scope), or whether a resource must be handledexplicitly likeallocated aand heap variablereleased, such as a resource acquired within a function and then returned from it, which must then be released outside of the acquiring function. Stack Lexical management, iswhen applicable, allows a commonbetter useseparation case,of concerns and is significantlyless easier to handle than heap managementerror-prone.

==Basic techniques==

The basic approach to resource management is to acquire a resource, do something with it, then release it, yielding code of the form (illustrated with opening a file in [[Python (programming language)|Python]]):

<sourcesyntaxhighlight lang="python">

deff work_with_file= open(filename):

...

f = open(filename)

f.close()

...

</syntaxhighlight>

f.close()

</source>

This is correct if the intervening <code>...</code> code does not contain an early exit (<code>return</code>), the language does not have exceptions, and <code>open</code> is guaranteed to succeed. However, it causes a resource leak if there is a return or exception, and causes an incorrect release of unacquired resource if <code>open</code> can fail.

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The resource leak can be resolved in languages that support a <code>finally</code> construction (like Python) by placing the body in a <code>try</code> clause, and the release in a <code>finally</code> clause:

<sourcesyntaxhighlight lang="python">

deff work_with_file= open(filename):

try:

f = open(filename)

try:...

finally:

...

finally:f.close()

</syntaxhighlight>

f.close()

</source>

This ensures correct release even if there is a return within the body or an exception thrown. Further, note that the acquisition occurs ''before'' the <code>try</code> clause, ensuring that the <code>finally</code> clause is only executed if the <code>open</code> code succeeds (without throwing an exception), assuming that "no exception" means "success" (as is the case for <code>open</code> in Python). If resource acquisition can fail without throwing an exception, such as by returning a form of <code>null</code>, it must also be checked before release, such as:

<sourcesyntaxhighlight lang="python">

deff work_with_file= open(filename):

try:

f = open(filename)

try:...

finally:

...

finallyif f:

if f:.close()

</syntaxhighlight>

f.close()

</source>

While this ensures correct resource management, it fails to provide adjacency or encapsulation. In many languages there are mechanisms that provide encapsulation, such as the <code>with</code> statement in Python:

<sourcesyntaxhighlight lang="python">

defwith work_with_fileopen(filename) as f:

...

with open(filename) as f:

</syntaxhighlight>

...

</source>

The above techniques – unwind protection (<code>finally</code>) and some form of encapsulation – are the most common approach to resource management, found in various forms in [[C Sharp (programming language)|C#]], [[Common Lisp]], [[Java (programming language)|Java]], [[Python (programming language)|Python]], [[Ruby, and(programming language)|Ruby]], [[Scheme (programming language)|Scheme]], and [[Smalltalk]],{{sfn|Beck|1997|pp=37–39}} among others; they date to the late 1970s in the [[NIL (programming language)|NIL]] dialect of Lisp; see [[#{{section link|Exception handling|History|history]]}}. There are many variations in the implementation, and there are also significantly different [[#Approaches|approaches]].

== Approaches ==

=== Unwind protection ===

The most common approach to resource management across languages is to use unwind protection, which is called when execution exits a scope – by execution running off the end of the block, returning from within the block, or an exception being throwthrown. This works for stack-managed resources, and is implemented in many languages, including C#, Common Lisp, Java, Python, Ruby, and Scheme. The main problems with this approach is that the release code (most commonly in a <code>finally</code> clause) may be very distant from the acquisition code (it lacks ''adjacency''), and that the acquisition and release code must always be paired by the caller (it lacks ''encapsulation''). These can be remedied either functionally, by using closures/callbacks/coroutines (Common Lisp, Ruby, Scheme), or by using an object that handles both the acquisition and release, and adding a language construct to call these methods when control enters and exits a scope (C# <code>using</code>, Java <code>try</code>-with-resources, Python <code>with</code>); see below.

An alternative, more imperative approach, is to write asynchronous code in [[direct style]]: acquire a resource, and then in the next line have a ''deferred'' release, which is called when the scope is exited – synchronous acquisition followed by asynchronous release. This originated in C++ as the ScopeGuard class, by [[Andrei Alexandrescu]] and Petru Marginean in 2000,

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==== RAII ====

{{main article|Resource Acquisition Is Initialization}}

A natural approach is to make holding a resource be a [[class invariant]]: resources are acquired during object creation (specifically initialization), and released during object destruction (specifically finalization). This is known as [[Resource Acquisition Is Initialization]] (RAII), and ties resource management to [[object lifetime]], ensuring that live objects have all necessary resources. Other approaches do not make holding the resource a class invariant, and thus objects may not have necessary resources (because they've not been acquired yet, have already been released, or are being managed externally), resulting in errors such as trying to read from a closed file. This approach ties resource management to memory management (specifically object management), so if there are no memory leaks (no object leaks), there are no [[resource leak]]s. RAII works naturally for heap-managed resources, not only stack-managed resources, and is composable: resources held by objects in arbitrarily complicated relationships (a complicated [[object graph]]) are released transparently simply by object destruction (so long as this is done properly!).

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Both are commonly found. For example, in the [[Java Class Library]], <code>[https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/io/Reader.html#close-- Reader#close()]</code> closes the underlying stream, and these can be chained. For example, a <code>[https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/io/BufferedReader.html BufferedReader]</code> may contain a <code>[https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/io/InputStreamReader.html InputStreamReader]</code>, which in turn contains a <code>[https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/io/FileInputStream.html FileInputStream]</code>, and calling <code>close</code> on the <code>BufferedReader</code> in turn closes the <code>InputStreamReader</code>, which in turn closes the <code>FileInputStream</code>, which in turn releases the system file resource. Indeed, the object that directly uses the resource can even be anonymous, thanks to encapsulation:

<sourcesyntaxhighlight lang="Java">

try (BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream(fileName)))) {

// Use reader.

}

// reader is closed when the try-with-resources block is exited, which closes each of the contained objects in sequence.

</syntaxhighlight>

</source>

However, it is also possible to manage only the object that directly uses the resource, and not use resource management on wrapper objects:

<sourcesyntaxhighlight lang="Java">

try (FileInputStream stream = new FileInputStream(fileName)))) {

BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(stream));

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// stream is closed when the try-with-resources block is exited.

// reader is no longer usable after stream is closed, but so long as it does not escape the block, this is not a problem.

</syntaxhighlight>

</source>

By contrast, in Python, a [https://docs.python.org/23/library/csv.html#csv.reader csv.reader] does not own the <code>file</code> that it is reading, so there is no need (and it is not possible) to close the reader, and instead the <code>file</code> itself must be closed.<ref>[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3216954/python-no-csv-close Python: No csv.close()?]</ref>

<sourcesyntaxhighlight lang="Pythonpython">

with open(filename) as f:

r = csv.reader(f)

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# f is closed when the with-statement is exited, and can no longer be used.

# Nothing is done to r, but the underlying f is closed, so r cannot be used either.

</syntaxhighlight>

</source>

In [[.NET Framework|.NET]], convention is to only have direct user of resources be responsible: "You should implement IDisposable only if your type uses unmanaged resources directly."<ref name="idisposable">{{cite web |url=https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.idisposable(v=vs.110).aspx |title=IDisposable Interface |accessdate=2016-04-03}}</ref>

In case of a more complicated [[object graph]], such as multiple objects sharing a resource, or cycles between objects that hold resources, proper resource management can be quite complicated, and exactly the same issues arise as in object finalization (via destructors or finalizers); for example, the [[lapsed listener problem]] can occur and cause resource leaks if using the

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==References==

{{reflist}}

{{refbegin}}

* {{cite techreportbook

| first = Kent

| last = Beck

| authorlink = Kent Beck

| year = 1997

| title = Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns

| publisher = Prentice Hall

| isbn = 978-0134769042

}}

* {{cite tech report

|url = http://research.cs.wisc.edu/techreports/2008/TR1647.pdf

|first1 = Matt |last1 = Elder

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* [http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DeterministicResourceManagement Deterministic Resource Management], ''[[WikiWikiWeb]]''

[[Category:Articles with example Python (programming language) code]]

[[Category:Programming constructs]]