Concurrency has always been a challenging area due to its complexity and unpredictability. Thanks to its Actor-Based Model, Akka provides a tool to tackle concurrency issues and easily create performant and scalable applications. In this talk we will describe what Akka is, what are the advantages of using it and how to use it -- or probably we should say how not to use it! We will also discuss Actors and their life cycle. Finally, we will provide examples of their four core operations: create, send, become and supervise actors.

1. An Introduction to
Akka and the Actor-Based Model
Daniela Sfregola
@DanielaSfregola
http://danielasfregola.com/
Scala Italy 2015
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2. Outline
Concurrency
Thread-Lock-Monitor Approach
Message-Passing Approach
Akka as Message-Passing Framework
Actors in Akka
Actor Life Cycle
Actors Hierarchy
Supervision Rules
Demo
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3. Motivation: Concurrency
Multiple Core CPUs
Distributed Systems
Low Cost Hardware
Parallelism
We need to deal with shared resource between processes!
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4. Thread-Lock-Monitor Approach
Thread-Lock-Monitor approach can be challenging:
Logic complicated for humans
Difficult to design and maintain
High unpredictability
Do we have an easier approach to tackle concurrency problems?
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5. Message-Passing Approach
The Message-Passing Approach:
Encapsulates all the shared information in messages
Messages are used to communicate between processes
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6. Akka as Message-Passing Framework
Akka - from akka.io
Build powerful concurrent & distributed applications more easily.
Simple Concurrency & Distribution
Resilient by Design
High Performance
Elastic & Decentralized
Extensible
It supports Scala, Java... .NET is coming soon!
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7. Actors in Akka
Lightweight concurrent entity
Event-driven
Mailbox of messages processed asynchronously
Can hold status/mutability
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8. Actor Life Cycle
Akka in action (2013) by R. Roestenburg, R. Bakker and R. Williams.
Shelter Island: Manning Publication
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9. Actors Hierarchy
from http://doc.akka.io/docs/akka/snapshot/general/supervision.html#supervision,
accessed on May 2015
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10. Supervision Rules
Your Father is your Supervisor
Every Actor has a Supervisor, but the Guardian Actor (/user)
Your Children follow your destiny
If unable to handle an exception, escalate it to your Supervisor
If the Guardian Actor is unable to handle an exception, the system
will shutdown
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11. Actor Core Operations
There are four core operations on Actors:
create
send
become
supervise
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12. Demo
Demo Time!
Gist available at
https://gist.github.com/DanielaSfregola/
6dc52bffa2ed566de9b2
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13. Conclusions
Akka as Message-Passing approach to concurrency
Main components: Actors
Best Practices:
Never Block
Communicate only via messages
Messages should be immutable
Messages should be complete and self-contained
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14. Conclusions
Akka as Message-Passing approach to concurrency
Main components: Actors
Best Practices:
Never Block
Communicate only via messages
Messages should be immutable
Messages should be complete and self-contained
Thank you!
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