GemFire .NET example

In this example we explore a simple GemFire C# client project. The client doesn't do much:

• Dictionary / Hash Map operations
• Bulk insert / update using the GemFire region interface
• Shows OQL Query.

Project Structure

I created this as a Visual Studio Project so build / configuration automation isn't going to be high. To reduce the overhead I created the prohect in my c:\dev\ directory with the following contents:

├───gemfire-basic-csharp-windows
│   ├───data  //This is where all of the data ends up for GemFire
│   ├───GemFireSampleApplication  // The Visual Studio Project File
│   └───scripts // Some basic MS-DOS scripts to control GemFire
└───pivotal-gemfire-native-9.1.1-build.2-Windows-64bit  // The GemFire C++ and C# libraries

I one follows that setup things should just work. I followed this pattern to hopefully make it easier for the many Visual Studio users out there. If I could have done something cooler let me know. I typically spend my days doing Java development, so go easy on me.

The Scripts

In the scripts folder there are a couple of commands:

• clear.bat - Removes all of the contents of the data directory.
• configure.bat - Creates the regions needed for the sample code.
• shutdownGemFire.bat - Shuts down all of the GemFire processes.
• startGemFire.bat - Starts up GemFire

Start GemFire

GemFire is in memory data grid solution written in Java so that means we need to install Java before we run GemFire. Just download and install the latest version of Java 8 : http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html

After installing Java create an environment varible called JAVA_HOME which points to the directory that you have installed Java. Example JAVA_HOME=C:\dev\Java\jdk1.8.0_xyz

Then go download the latest version of GemFire from Pivotal : https://network.pivotal.io/products/pivotal-gemfire Normally the download is zip file, so just unzip GemFire.

Once that is done to make our life easier lets add the Java and GemFire bin directories to the path.

Example Path:

set PATH=C:\dev\Java\jdk1.8.0_xyz\bin;C:\dev\pivotal-gemfire-9.x.y\bin;%PATH%

Change Directory to the scripts and run the startGemFire.bat and GemFire will be up and running. Double check and make sure Windows firewall didn't block Java from opening up the required ports.

The start GemFire script will launch 3 Java processes.

1. Locator - A locator is the process that allows clients and servers to find each other in a dynamic way.
2. Server - The script launches two of these processes. The server process is responsible for caching, persisting handling data.

If this is the first time we started GemFire or fresh launch after a clear.bat we need to add the regions that the project will be using. This is done with the configure.bat script.

GemFire comes with a management console called pulse. That is also started up by default if you would like to see it open: http://localhost:7070/pulse and login as admin:admin the default user name and password. Of course for production I would recommend changing that password.

Visual Studio

If we managed to set up the project the same way Visual Studio shouldn't have a problem with finding the GemFire C# libraries. I tried to make the referances relative to project directory. If we didn't match Visual Studio makes it easy to add libraries to a project. Just google Adding Resources to Visual Studio with the version of visual studio you are using and add in the GemFire libraries.

Then you are ready to run the application. Just make sure we are running with the x64 platform.

The output from the program is:

What is in the cache:

item - 0 : { "firstName" : "firstName bulk 0",  "lastName" : "lastName 0", "id" : 0 }
...
item - 999 : { "firstName" : "firstName bulk 999",  "lastName" : "lastName 999", "id" : 999 }

Number of Objects stored in GemFire (or keys value pairs):

Number of Object in GemFire 1000

Query for specific object:

result { "firstName" : "firstName bulk 100",  "lastName" : "lastName 100", "id" : 100 }
done