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Hazelcast IAtomicLong is the distributed implementation of java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicLong. It offers most of AtomicLong’s operations such as get, set, getAndSet, compareAndSet and incrementAndGet. Since IAtomicLong is a distributed implementation, these operations involve remote calls and thus their performances differ from AtomicLong.

The original implementation of IAtomicLong has been deprecated. To read about the previous implementation, see the IAtomicLong section of the Hazelcast IMDG 3.11 Reference Manual. The CP Subsystem introduces IAtomicLong provided by the CP Subsystem.

The following example code creates an instance, increments it by a million and prints the count.

        HazelcastInstance hazelcastInstance = Hazelcast.newHazelcastInstance();
        IAtomicLong counter = hazelcastInstance.getCPSubsystem().getAtomicLong( "counter" );
        for ( int k = 0; k < 1000 * 1000; k++ ) {
            if ( k % 500000 == 0 ) {
                System.out.println( "At: " + k );
        System.out.printf( "Count is %s\n", counter.get() );

When you start other instances with the code above, you will see the count as member count times a million.

Sending Functions to IAtomicLong

You can send functions to an IAtomicLong. IFunction is a Hazelcast owned, single method interface. The following example IFunction implementation adds two to the original value.

    private static class Add2Function implements IFunction<Long, Long> {
        public Long apply( Long input ) {
            return input + 2;

Executing Functions on IAtomicLong

You can use the following methods to execute functions on IAtomicLong:

  • apply: Applies the function to the value in IAtomicLong without changing the actual value and returning the result.

  • alter: Alters the value stored in the IAtomicLong by applying the function. It does not send back a result.

  • alterAndGet: Alters the value stored in the IAtomicLong by applying the function, storing the result in the IAtomicLong and returning the result.

  • getAndAlter: Alters the value stored in the IAtomicLong by applying the function and returning the original value.

The following example includes these methods.

        HazelcastInstance hazelcastInstance = Hazelcast.newHazelcastInstance();
        IAtomicLong atomicLong = hazelcastInstance.getCPSubsystem().getAtomicLong( "counter" );

        atomicLong.set( 1 );
        long result = atomicLong.apply( new Add2Function() );
        System.out.println( "apply.result: " + result);
        System.out.println( "apply.value: " + atomicLong.get() );

        atomicLong.set( 1 );
        atomicLong.alter( new Add2Function() );
        System.out.println( "alter.value: " + atomicLong.get() );

        atomicLong.set( 1 );
        result = atomicLong.alterAndGet( new Add2Function() );
        System.out.println( "alterAndGet.result: " + result );
        System.out.println( "alterAndGet.value: " + atomicLong.get() );

        atomicLong.set( 1 );
        result = atomicLong.getAndAlter( new Add2Function() );
        System.out.println( "getAndAlter.result: " + result );
        System.out.println( "getAndAlter.value: " + atomicLong.get() );

The output of the above class when run is as follows:

apply.result: 3
apply.value: 1
alter.value: 3
alterAndGet.result: 3
alterAndGet.value: 3
getAndAlter.result: 1
getAndAlter.value: 3

Reasons to Use Functions with IAtomicLong

The reason for using a function instead of a simple code line like atomicLong.set(atomicLong.get() + 2)); is that the IAtomicLong read and write operations are not atomic. Since IAtomicLong is a distributed implementation, those operations can be remote ones, which may lead to race problems. By using functions, the data is not pulled into the code, but the code is sent to the data. This makes it more scalable.