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Asynchronous Database Access with Qt 4.x

Issue 158

From Issue #158
June 2007

Jun 01, 2007  By Dave Berton
 in
How to code around the default synchronous database access in Qt 4.

Listing 6. You must register any custom data types in order to share them.


// first, make the object system aware
qRegisterMetaType< QList<QSqlRecord> >("QList<QSqlRecord>");
// now set up the queued connection 
connect( m_worker, SIGNAL( results( const QList<QSqlRecord>& ) ),
         this, SIGNAL( queryFinished( const QList<QSqlRecord>& ) ) );

The sample application provided with this article implements the strategy outlined above, in which queries are executing in parallel with the rest of the application [the application is available for download from the Linux Journal FTP site, ftp.linuxjournal.com/pub/lj/listings/issue158/9602.tgz]. The UI is not disturbed while the queries are underway. A queued connection is created between the QueryThread interface and the encapsulated worker thread after the appropriate types are registered with the Qt metaobject system. This allows the separate threads to communicate safely with one another, with minimal overhead and code complexity. The sample application was tested with SQLite and PostgreSQL; however, it will work with any database connection supported by Qt that enforces the same connection-per-thread limitation.

Summary

The following points should be kept in mind when designing asynchronous database applications with Qt:

  • Create a database connection per thread. Use the name parameter of the thread-safe QSqlDatabase::addDatabase() method in order to distinguish various database connections.

  • Encapsulate the database connection within worker thread objects as much as possible. Never share a database connection with another thread. Never use a database connection from any thread other than the one that created it.

  • Manage communication between threads using the tools provided by Qt. In addition to QMutex, QSemaphore and QWaitCondition, Qt provides much more direct mechanisms: events and signals/slots. The implementation of signals/slots across thread boundaries relies on events; therefore, ensure that your threads start their own event loop using QThread::exec().

  • Register unknown types with the Qt metaobject system. Any unknown types cannot be marshaled properly without first invoking qRegisterMetaType(). This enables a queued connection to invoke a slot in a separate thread within that thread's context using new types.

  • Utilize queued connections to communicate between the application and the database threads. The queued connection provides all the advantages for dealing with asynchronous database connections, but maintains a simple and familiar interface using QObject::connect().

Dave Berton is a professional programmer working for Eventide, Inc. He welcomes your comments at dberton@eventide.com.

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copying overhead?

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 03/22/2010 - 11:08.

First off, great article Dave!

I have one remark though, and it concerns QByteArray QMetaObject::normalizedSignature ( const char * method ) and it's explanation:

“Qt uses normalized signatures to decide whether two given signals and slots are compatible. Normalization reduces whitespace to a minimum, moves 'const' to the front where appropriate, removes 'const' from value types and replaces const references with values.”

As far as I understand it, the signal will copy the whole result on each emit. Now, thats not a good idea for very large queries

So I wondered whether it would be better to create the result on the heap and to pass it's pointer with the signal? Would that introduce new complications?

Kind regards,
Davor

Thank you.

Andy Fillebrown's picture
Submitted by Andy Fillebrown (not verified) on Sat, 08/22/2009 - 21:59.

Thanks for the article. I was looking into calling slots in a thread-safe manner and suspected correctly that the way to do it is via the QThread event loop. I did not realize, though, that it is possible to abstract the slots to a worker thread the way you described in the article. Knowing this now has saved me a lot of time.

Thanks again,
~ andy.f

Great article!

Antonio Menezes's picture
Submitted by Antonio Menezes (not verified) on Fri, 11/21/2008 - 14:37.

Thank you for your article. You have answered this question in Qt, about how to get asynchronous databases connections and operations.

Regards,
Antonio.

What about QT's MVC framework?

Peter's picture
Submitted by Peter (not verified) on Thu, 07/05/2007 - 21:00.

Great article! I was very glad to find something that goes beyond the the basic Trolltech documentation.

Do you have any comments or advice regarding asynchronous DB access that takes advantage of QT's SQL model/view framework?

I have found that QTableView and QSqlQueryModel are wonderfully easy to work with except in the case when the GUI is blocked by while waiting for more complex queries to return their results.

I have played around with creating and executing a QSqlQuery inside a worker thread and then using a signal to pass the QSqlQuery object to the GUI thread when the worker thread finishes. However, this causes unpredictable crashes that I think are related to breaking the rule that connections must only be used in the threads that created them. (My QSqlQueryModel lives in the GUI thread, but the QSqlQuery that provides the model with data was created with a database connection that lives in the worker thread)

After reading your article I suspect that I should instead create a new model (subclass of QAbstractTableModel) that uses a QList for its data instead of a QSqlQuery.

Thanks for sharing any experience or comments!

Correct URL for sample application

dberton's picture
Submitted by dberton on Sun, 05/27/2007 - 10:14.

The correct URL for the sample application is ftp.linuxjournal.com/pub/lj/listings/issue158/9602.tgz

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