(serve-java-tutorial)=

Serve a Java App

To use Java Ray Serve, you need the following dependency in your pom.xml.

xml

<dependency>
  <groupId>io.ray</groupId>
  <artifactId>ray-serve</artifactId>
  <version>${ray.version}</version>
  <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>

NOTE: After installing Ray with Python, the local environment includes the Java jar of Ray Serve. The provided scope ensures that you can compile the Java code using Ray Serve without version conflicts when you deploy on the cluster.

Example model

This example use case is a production workflow for a financial application. The application needs to compute the best strategy to interact with different banks for a single task.

{literalinclude}

:end-before: docs-strategy-end
:language: java
:start-after: docs-strategy-start

This example uses the Strategy class to calculate the indicators of a number of banks.

The calc method is the entry of the calculation. The input parameters are the time interval of calculation and the map of the banks and their indicators. The calc method contains a two-tier for loop, traversing each indicator list of each bank, and calling the calcBankIndicators method to calculate the indicators of the specified bank.

There is another layer of for loop in the calcBankIndicators method, which traverses each indicator, and then calls the calcIndicator method to calculate the specific indicator of the bank.
The calcIndicator method is a specific calculation logic based on the bank, the specified time interval and the indicator.

This code uses the Strategy class:

{literalinclude}

:end-before: docs-strategy-calc-end
:language: java
:start-after: docs-strategy-calc-start

When the scale of banks and indicators expands, the three-tier for loop slows down the calculation. Even if you use the thread pool to calculate each indicator in parallel, you may encounter a single machine performance bottleneck. Moreover, you can't use this Strategy object as a resident service.

Converting to a Ray Serve Deployment

Through Ray Serve, you can deploy the core computing logic of Strategy as a scalable distributed computing service.

First, extract the indicator calculation of each institution into a separate StrategyOnRayServe class:

{literalinclude}

:end-before: docs-strategy-end
:language: java
:start-after: docs-strategy-start

Next, start the Ray Serve runtime and deploy StrategyOnRayServe as a deployment.

{literalinclude}

:end-before: docs-deploy-end
:language: java
:start-after: docs-deploy-start

The Deployment.create makes a Deployment object named strategy. After executing Deployment.deploy, the Ray Serve instance deploys this strategy deployment with four replicas, and you can access it for distributed parallel computing.

Testing the Ray Serve Deployment

You can test the strategy deployment using RayServeHandle inside Ray:

{literalinclude}

:end-before: docs-calc-end
:language: java
:start-after: docs-calc-start

This code executes the calculation of each bank's indicator serially, and sends it to Ray for execution. You can make the calculation concurrent, which not only improves the calculation efficiency, but also solves the bottleneck of single machine.

{literalinclude}

:end-before: docs-parallel-calc-end
:language: java
:start-after: docs-parallel-calc-start

You can use StrategyCalcOnRayServe like the example in the main method:

{literalinclude}

:end-before: docs-main-end
:language: java
:start-after: docs-main-start

Calling Ray Serve Deployment with HTTP

Another way to test or call a deployment is through the HTTP request. However, two limitations exist for the Java deployments:

Only the call method of the user class can process the HTTP requests.
The call method can only have one input parameter, and the type of the input parameter and the returned value can only be String.

If you want to call the strategy deployment with HTTP, then you can rewrite the class like this code:

{literalinclude}

:end-before: docs-strategy-end
:language: java
:start-after: docs-strategy-start

After deploying this deployment, you can access it with the curl command:

shell

curl -d '{"time":1641038674, "bank":"test_bank", "indicator":"test_indicator"}' http://127.0.0.1:8000/strategy

You can also access it using HTTP Client in Java code:

{literalinclude}

:end-before: docs-http-end
:language: java
:start-after: docs-http-start

The example of strategy calculation using HTTP to access deployment is as follows:

{literalinclude}

:end-before: docs-calc-end
:language: java
:start-after: docs-calc-start

You can also rewrite this code to support concurrency:

{literalinclude}

:end-before: docs-parallel-calc-end
:language: java
:start-after: docs-parallel-calc-start

Finally, the complete usage of HttpStrategyCalcOnRayServe is like this code:

{literalinclude}

:end-before: docs-main-end
:language: java
:start-after: docs-main-start