How to synchronize?

[Renata fonseca]

I have a method that access some DATABASE and write the result to a file. Like this...

 
public class yyy{
  public void x(){
    #1... // execute a query on database...
 
    #2... // Write to file the result...
  }
}

yyy class will be INSTANTIATE by the servlet.
The point is IF some request execute the first line (#1), it MUST execute the second line (#2) IMMEDIATELY because I want to preserve the order of line that is writing to file. If some other threading (by another client request) execute between #1 and #2 of firt request, I'll have a file output like this:
-- somefile.txt (just an example) --
BD - Autoincrement column = 2
BD - Autoincrement column = 1
I tried to put synchronized keyword in the method, but it didn't work.
My test: I press the F5 key (refresh) of browser many times (quickly)... and when I see the file, some line is not in order.
Why didn't synchronized help me?

[Jim Yingst]

My guess - x() is a non-static method, so when you make it synchronized it will acquire a lock on the instance of the class it's in. However if different threads have different instances of this class, they are acquiring different locks, and synchronization does nothing to prevent the methods from running concurrently. Since there is only one file system which all threads are accessing, you probably want a single lock which all threads must use to access the file system. This means you need to synchronize on some sort of static object (so that all threads are synchronizing on the same object). A common choice here would be to use the Class object associated with the class you're writing. E.g.:

public class yyy{
  public void x(){
    synchronized (yyy.class) {
      // execute a query on database...
      // Write to file the result...
    }
  }
}

"yyy.class" is a Class literal representing the Class object associated with the class yyy. It's the same object that would've been used as a monitor if method x() had been declared as static synchronized. (This would also be a way to force all threads to use the same lock; I'm assuming that x() is nonstatic for a reason though.)
However, this also causes me to wonder if there's even any point to using multiple threads in this program. If the threads are also doing other things, and this business of querying the database and updating files is only a part of their job description, then OK, threads may be useful here. But if the threads don't have anything useful to do other than wait for other threads to finish using the file system, you might as well just use one thread to do that. Depends on your application I suppose...
[ January 31, 2003: Message edited by: Jim Yingst ]

[Mr. C Lamont Gilbert]

create a new class that does the file writing. within that class you can synchronize and only allow 1 thread to write at a time.
You need to be writing from 1 place only before you are able to control the writing in that manner.

[Paul Keohan]

Would using a 'singleton' pattern for getting a class be beneficial here?
Paul