Handle twenty five million prices in Spryker Commerce OS

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B2B business model usually challenges any software with higher requirements to amounts of data and business complexity.

Imagine you have thousands of products and customers with unique pricing terms and conditions. A product can have thousands of prices assigned—one per customer. This document shares the technical challenges of handling such a number of prices and the solutions to solve them.

Such a number of prices cannot be managed manually, but it is defined by business rules based on which the prices can be generated automatically. For example, you might agree on the special terms with your B2B partner, and they receive their own prices for the whole catalog. It might be considered as a discount, but usually, it is not a single simple rule but a set of rules and their priorities for each partner. These rules exist in an ERP system, which can export data through SOAP or CSV files.

In Spryker, each price is imported as a price dimension and has a unique key, which determines its relation to a customer—for example, specificPrice-DEFAULT-EUR-NET_MODE-FOO1-BAR2. To appear on the Storefront, the prices must appear in Redis price entries and abstract product search documents so that facet filters can be applied in search and categories.

Price import flow:

price import flow

Challenges

When enabling Spryker to handle such a number of prices, the following challenges occur:

  1. 25,000,000 prices are imported in two separate price dimensions.

  2. A product can have about 40,000 prices. This results in overpopulated product abstract search documents: each document aggregates prices of abstract products and all related concrete products. Each price is represented as an indexed field in the search document. Increasing the number of indexed fields slows ElasticSearch(ES) down. Just for comparison, the recommended limit is 1,000.

  3. Overloaded product abstract search documents cause issues with memory limit and slow down Publish and Synchronization. The average document size is bigger than 1 MB.

  4. When more than 100 product abstract search documents are processed at a time, the payload gets above 100 MB, and ES rejects queries. AWS native service does not allow changing this limit.

  5. Each price having unique key results in more different index properties in the whole index. Key structure: specificPrice-DEFAULT-EUR-NET_MODE-FOO1-BAR2. This key structure requires millions of actual facets, which slows down ES too much.

Problem

The following example represents a short version of the overpopulated document structure:

{
	"store": "ABC",
	"locale": "en_US",
	"type": "product_abstract",
	"is-active": true,
	"integer-facet": [{
			"facet-name": "specificPrice-DEFAULT-EUR-NET_MODE-FOO1-BAR2",
			"facet-value": [319203]
		}, {
			"facet-name": "specificPrice-DEFAULT-EUR-GROSS_MODE-FOO2-BAR1",
			"facet-value": [379852]
		}, {
			"facet-name": "specificPrice-DEFAULT-EUR-NET_MODE-FOO3-BAR3",
			"facet-value": [324272]
		}, {
			"facet-name": "specificPrice-DEFAULT-EUR-GROSS_MODE-FOO4-BAR4",
			"facet-value": [385884]
		},
		{
			"facet-name": "merchantPrice-DEFAULT-EUR-NET_MODE-30",
			"facet-value": [319200]
		}, {
			"facet-name": "merchantPrice-DEFAULT-EUR-GROSS_MODE-30",
			"facet-value": [379848]
		}
	],
	"integer-sort": {
		"merchantPrice-DEFAULT-EUR-NET_MODE-30": 319200,
		"merchantPrice-DEFAULT-EUR-GROSS_MODE-30": 379848,
		"specificPrice-DEFAULT-EUR-NET_MODE-FOO-BAR": 122,
		"specificPrice-DEFAULT-EUR-GROSS_MODE-FOO1-BAR1": 379852,
		"specificPrice-DEFAULT-EUR-NET_MODE-FOO2-BAR2": 324272,
		"specificPrice-DEFAULT-EUR-GROSS_MODE-FOO3-BAR3": 385884
	}
}

All the specificPrice-DEFAULT-EUR-NET_MODE-FOO-BAR properties in the document are converted into mapping properties in ES. The default limit of 1,000 properties is hit quickly and receives the following exception:

\/de_search\/page\/product_abstract:de:de_de:576 caused Limit of total fields [1000] in index [de_search] has been exceeded\nindex`

You could increase the limit, but it slows down the reindexing process.

The events with the data for ES are processed and acknowledged in RabbitMQ but not delivered to the search service, and you don’t get any related errors.

In AWS, the http.max_content_length ES limit defines the maximum payload size in an HTTP request. In this case, the payload is higher than the default limit of 100 MB without the infrastructural option to increase it. To learn about cloud service providers, technologies, and limits, see Amazon Elasticsearch Service Limits.

Evaluated solutions

The evaluated solutions are as follows:

  1. ES join field type. This ES functionality is similar to the classical joins in relational databases. This solution solves your problem faster and with less effort. To learn about the implementation of this solution, see ElasticSearch join data type: Implementation. Also, have a look at the other evaluated solutions as they may be more appropriate in your particular case.
    Documentation: Join field type
  2. Multi sharding with the _routing field. The idea is to avoid indexing problems by sharing big documents between shards. Breaking a huge index into smaller ones makes it easier for the search to index data. The solution is complex and does not solve the payload issues.
    Documentation: _routing field
  3. Use Postgres or combine ES and Postgres. Postgres provides search functionalities, and you can set up an additional database dedicated to running searches or helping ES with additional data. The script_scoring function in search lets you embed any data, though performance is decreased, as this script is evaluated for every document when a search is being performed. Compared to the first option, this solution is more complex.
    Documentation:

ElasticSearch Join field type: Implementation

To solve the ES indexing issue, we reduced the size of product abstract documents, which reduced dynamic mapping properties.

To implement the solution, follow these steps:

  1. To use the Join field type feature and declare a join relation in search.json, restrict the ES index to use a single type of document. The following example represents a mapping definition with a declared join relation:
{
	"settings": {
		"mapping.single_type": true,
	},

	"mappings": {
		"page": {
			"properties": {
				"joined_price": {
					"type": "join",
					"relations": {
						"product_price": ["specific_price"]
					}
				}
			}
		}
	}
}

  1. Make the product-price relation work:

    1. Extend product abstract documents with the required joined_price section:
    product_abstract:abc:en_us:876
{
    "store": "ABC",
    "locale": "en_US",
    "type": "product_abstract",
    "is-active": true,
    .....
    "joined_price": {
        "name": "product_price"
    }
}
    1. Introduce a new type of price document with the following parameters:
    • parent document ID
    • price
    • currency
    • unique identifier

    The example of the price document:

    price_product_concrete_group_specific:abc:50445:foo-bar:en_us
{
    "joined_price": {
        "name": "specific_price",
        "parent": "product_abstract:abc:en_us:50504"
    },
    "kg_ekg": "FOO-BAR",
    "currency": "EUR",
    "price": 101
}

These two documents can be viewed as two tables with a foreign key in terms of relational databases.

ElasticSearch join data type feature: Side effects

The side effects of this solution are the following:

  1. The Product Reviews feature is disabled because it requires multiple document types per index.
  2. Performance requires additional attention. You can read about performance issues related to the feature in Parent-join and performance.
  3. Because of ES limitations, you can’t build proper queries to run sorting by prices. Only facet filtering is possible.

How to speed up the publishing process

To implement a parent-child relationship between documents, we built a standard search module that follows Spryker architecture. The new price search module is subscribed to the publish and unpublish events of abstract products to manage related price documents in the search. The listener in the search module receives a product abstract ID and fetches all related prices to publish or unpublish them, depending on the incoming event. Because of a large number of prices, the publish process became slow. This causes the following issues.

Issues

The following issues related to a slow publish process have been added:

  1. Memory limit and performance issues. As a product abstract can stand for about forty thousand prices, a table with 25,000,000 rows is parsed every time to find them. The default message chunk size of an event queue is 500. With this size, about two million rows of data have to be published per one bulk.
  2. The following has to be done simultaneously:
    • Trigger product abstract events to update their structure in ES.
    • Trigger their child documents to be published.
  3. RabbitMQ connection issues. The connection is getting closed after fetching a bunch of messages because the PHP process takes too long to be executed. After processing the messages, PHP tries to acknowledge them using the old connection, which has been closed by RabbitMQ. Being single-threaded, the PHP library cannot asynchronously send any heartbeats when the thread is busy with something else. For more information, see Detecting Dead TCP Connections with Heartbeats and TCP Keepalives.

Evaluated solutions

The following solutions were evaluated:

  1. To handle bulk insert and update operations in the _search table, use Common Table Expression (CTE) queries. We chose this solution because we had implemented it previously. To learn how this solution is used to optimize the speed of data importers, see Data Importer Speed Optimization.
  2. To fill the search table on the insert update operations in the entity table, see the PostgreSQL trigger feature.
  3. Implement a reconnection logic that establishes a new connection after catching an exception.

Bulk insertion with raw SQL

Postgresql CTE allows managing bulk inserts and updates of huge data amounts, which speeds up the execution of PHP processes.

SQL query example 
WITH records AS
(
          SELECT    input.fkproduct,
                    input.fkkg,
                    input.fkekg,
                    input.pricekey,
                    input.fkerprecid,
                    input.data,
                    input.KEY,
                    id_pyz_price_product_concrete_group_specific_search AS idpyzpriceproductconcretegroupspecificsearch
          FROM      (
                           SELECT Unnest(? :: varchar []) AS fkkg,
                                  Unnest(? :: varchar []) AS fkekg,
                                  Json_array_elements(?)  AS data,
                                  unnest(?::integer[])    AS fkproduct,
                                  unnest(?::varchar[])    AS pricekey,
                                  unnest(?::varchar[])    AS fkerprecid,
                                  unnest(?::varchar[])    AS KEY ) input
          LEFT JOIN pyz_price_product_concrete_group_specific_search
          ON        pyz_price_product_concrete_group_specific_search.KEY = input.KEY ), updated AS
(
       UPDATE pyz_price_product_concrete_group_specific_search
       SET    fk_kg = records.fkkg,
              fk_ekg = records.fkekg,
              fk_product = records.fkproduct,
              data = records.data,
              price_key = records.pricekey,
              fk_erp_rec_id = records.fkerprecid,
              KEY = records.KEY,
              updated_at = now()
       FROM   records
       WHERE  records.KEY = pyz_price_product_concrete_group_specific_search.KEY returning id_pyz_price_product_concrete_group_specific_search ), inserted AS
(
            INSERT INTO pyz_price_product_concrete_group_specific_search
                        (
                                    id_pyz_price_product_concrete_group_specific_search,
                                    fk_kg,
                                    fk_ekg,
                                    fk_product,
                                    data,
                                    price_key,
                                    fk_erp_rec_id,
                                    KEY,
                                    created_at,
                                    updated_at
                        )
                        (
                               SELECT nextval('pyz_price_product_concrete_group_specific_search_pk_seq'),
                                      fkkg,
                                      fkekg,
                                      fkproduct,
                                      data,
                                      pricekey,
                                      fkerprecid,
                                      KEY,
                                      now(),
                                      now()
                               FROM   records
                               WHERE  idpyzpriceproductconcretegroupspecificsearch IS NULL ) returning id_pyz_price_product_concrete_group_specific_search )
SELECT updated.id_pyz_price_product_concrete_group_specific_search
FROM   updated
UNION ALL
SELECT inserted.id_pyz_price_product_concrete_group_specific_search
FROM   inserted;

Price events quick lane

Prices are published by pushing the corresponding message to the generic event queue. As this queue can hold more messages than just those related to prices, it makes sense to introduce a dedicated queue for publishing only price-related information.

You can configure it by tweaking the Event and EventBehavior modules. Allow the EventBehavior Propel behavior to accept additional parameters (except those related to columns). For example, allow it to accept the name of a custom queue, which is used later for pushing messages to the queue. In this case, price events are segregated from all other events and can be processed in parallel without being blocked by other heavier events. Also, this lets you configure different chunk sizes for the subscriber, resulting in a more optimized CPU usage and faster processing.

To implement this functionality:

  1. Extend EventEntityTransfer with a new field, like queueName.
  2. Override \Spryker\Zed\EventBehavior\Persistence\Propel\Behavior\EventBehavior and adjust it to accept an additional queueName parameter (except those related to columns) through the Propel schema files.

Ensure that \Pyz\Zed\EventBehavior\Persistence\Propel\Behavior\ResourceAwareEventBehavior::addParameter() is stored as a part of the data payload, which is saved to thespy_event_behavior table.

  1. Adjust \Pyz\Zed\EventBehavior\Business\Model\TriggerManager::triggerEvents() to extract the new piece of data from the payload obtained from the database and set it as the value of the newly created EventEntityTransfer::queueName property.

  2. Configure \Spryker\Zed\Event\Business\Queue\Producer\EventQueueProducer::enqueueListenerBulk() to check if queueName is set on the EventEntityTransfer. If it is set, this queue name is used to push event messages to. Otherwise, it falls back to the default event queue.

Now you have a separate event queue for prices. This approach applies to any type of event. Quick lane ensures that critical data is replicated faster.

Tweaking database

With millions of prices in a shop, we needed analytics tools to monitor data consistency in the database. The CSV files, which are the source of price data for analytics, are too big, so it’s hard to process them. That’s why we converted them into Postgres database tables.

The Postgres COPY command is the fastest and easiest way to do that. This command copies the data from a CSV file to a database table.

To convert data successfully, the order of the columns in the database table must reflect the order in the CSV files.

Example:

#Populate tables with data from csv files
if ! PGPASSWORD=$DB_PASSWORD psql -d $DB_NAME -h $DB_HOST -U $DB_LOGIN -p $DB_PORT -v "ON_ERROR_STOP=1" <<EOT
SET synchronous_commit TO OFF;
BEGIN;

TRUNCATE TABLE public.$DESTINATION_TABLE;
\copy public.$DESTINATION_TABLE from '$CSV_FILE' DELIMITER ';';

COMMIT;
EOT
then
    exit 1
fi

Disabling synchronous commit

We were running the analytics at night when there was no intensive activity in our shop. This lets us disable synchronous commit to reduce the processing time of the COPY operations.

The following line in the previous code snippet disables the synchronous commit: SET synchronous_commit TO OFF;

If you disable the synchronous commit, enable it back after you’ve finished importing the files.

Materialized views for analytics

Materialized view is a tool that aggregates data for analysis. Applying indexes to filterable columns in the views lets you run SELECT queries faster than in relational tables.

Exemplary procedure:

  1. Create an aggregated view of all the merchant prices that are already imported into a relational database with proper normalization.
CREATE materialized VIEW IF NOT EXISTS debug_merchant_relationship_prices_view AS
SELECT *
FROM spy_price_product_merchant_relationship;

create index IF NOT exists debug_merchant_relationship_prices_view_net_price ON debug_merchant_relationship_prices_view (net_price);
  1. Create another view based on the table that contains the pure data copied from the original CSV source file.
CREATE materialized VIEW IF NOT EXISTS debug_merchant_relationship_prices_csv_data_view AS
SELECT *
FROM csv_data_merchant_relationship_prices;

create index IF NOT exists csv_data_merchant_relationship_prices_net_price ON csv_data_merchant_relationship_prices (net_price);
  1. Compare the views to detect inconsistencies.

Conclusion

With the configuration and customizations described in this document, Spryker can hold and manage millions of prices in one instance. RabbitMQ, internal APIs, data import modules, and Glue API allow building a custom data import to do the following:

  • Fetch a lot of data from a third-party system.
  • Successfully import it into the database.
  • Denormalize and replicate it to be used by quick storages, such as Redis and ES.