Java many connections to API server with threads

Question

I have created a custom web API for submitting data to a MYSQL server for my Java application. Within my Java application I need to add/update 200 rows, and I already have it making these requests one at a time.

1. This can be pretty time consuming, so can I create threads for all of these different connections?
2. Should I limit the number of maximum connections made at a time? Maybe like 10 at a time?
3. Will this cause any issues with mysql possibly adding rows at exactly the same time? (No 2 rows would ever be needed to be changed at a single point in time)

Answer 1

Inserting records in multiple connections will potentially speed up the 200 inserts, but you can only know for sure by testing and measuring after introducing multiple threads. I will also suggest trying JDBC batch and sending all 200 inserts to the database in one go (if that is possible in your implementation), as that might provide a performance boost by saving round trips to the database.

To create a connection pool, look at HikariCP which is a JDBC connection pool implementation. It will allow you to specify the min/max concurrent connections along with other settings. Your worker threads then can request connections from the pool and perform the inserts.

Inserting multiple records concurrently could have issues at mySQL level if it acquires a table lock for each insert. In that case you would not get a speed improvement with multiple threads and might need some tuning at the database level to work around it. Here's a good article that should help: High rate insertion with mySQL