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Enhancing Concurrency with Read-Write Locks: Improving Data Consistency and Performance

A read-write lock is crucial in scenarios where multiple readers need to access a shared resource simultaneously, but only one writer should have exclusive access. This locking mechanism allows for improved concurrency by enabling multiple read operations to occur in parallel while ensuring data consistency and preventing race conditions during write operations.

Use Case: Stock Market Data Feed

In a stock trading platform, data consistency, high throughput, and low latency are essential for a seamless user experience. In this scenario:

• Read Operations: Users (traders, investors, analysts) frequently view real-time stock prices to make investment decisions. This generates a high volume of read requests as each user queries stock prices multiple times per second.
• Write Operations: The platform receives updates from the stock exchange (write operations), but these updates are typically less frequent than the read requests. However, each update is crucial and should immediately reflect on the platform to ensure data accuracy.

This leads to a critical concurrency issue:

• Challenge: We must allow multiple users to read the data simultaneously while also…