Unit 04

Transaction Processing Concepts

Ashwini Kumar Mathur [ Assistant Professor ]

 Outlines

1. Transaction
2. Acid Properties
3. Testing of Serializability
4. Serializability of Schedules
5. Conflict and view serializable schedule
6. Recoverability
7. Recovery from transaction failures
8. Log based Recovery
9. Checkpoints
10. Deadlock Handling
 Transaction Concept

▪ A transaction is a unit of program execution that accesses and possibly updates various data items.
▪ E.g., transaction to transfer $50 from account A to account B:
1. read(A)
2. A := A – 50
3. write(A)
4. read(B)
5. B := B + 50
6. write(B)
▪ Two main issues to deal with:
• Failures of various kinds, such as hardware failures and system crashes
• Concurrent execution of multiple transactions
 Examples of Transactions [ Fund Transfer ]

▪ Transaction to transfer $50 from account A to account B:

1. read(A)
2. A := A – 50
3. write(A)
4. read(B)
5. B := B + 50
6. write(B)
 Examples of Transactions [ Fund Transfer ]

▪ Transaction to transfer $50 from account A to account B:

1. read(A)
2. A := A – 50
3. write(A)
4. read(B)
5. B := B + 50
6. write(B)
▪ Atomicity requirement
• If the transaction fails after step 3 and before step 6, money will be “lost” leading to an inconsistent
database state
▪ Failure could be due to software or hardware
• The system should ensure that updates of a partially executed transaction are not reflected in the
database
▪ Durability requirement — once the user has been notified that the transaction has completed (i.e., the
transfer of the $50 has taken place), the updates to the database by the transaction must persist even if there
are software or hardware failures.
 Examples of Transactions [ Fund Transfer ] cont ..

▪ Consistency requirement in above example:

• The sum of A and B is unchanged by the execution of the transaction
▪ In general, consistency requirements include
• Explicitly specified integrity constraints such as primary keys and foreign keys
• Implicit integrity constraints
▪ e.g., sum of balances of all accounts, minus sum of loan amounts must equal value of cash-in-hand
• A transaction must see a consistent database.
• During transaction execution the database may be temporarily inconsistent.
• When the transaction completes successfully the database must be consistent
▪ Erroneous transaction logic can lead to inconsistency
 Examples of Transactions [ Fund Transfer ] cont ..

▪ Isolation requirement — if between steps 3 and 6, another transaction T2 is allowed to access the
partially updated database, it will see an inconsistent database (the sum A + B will be less than it
should be).

T1 T2
1. read(A)
2. A := A – 50
3. write(A)
read(A), read(B), print(A+B)
4. read(B)
5. B := B + 50
6. write(B
▪ Isolation can be ensured trivially by running transactions serially
• That is, one after the other.
▪ However, executing multiple transactions concurrently has significant benefits, as we will see later.
 Exercise Question for Student Practices [ 04 mins ]

Q1: Consider the following transaction T consisting of T1 and T2 : Transfer of 100 from account X to
account Y. Explain the scenario of inconsistent database state.
 ACID Properties ..

A transaction is a unit of program execution that accesses and possibly updates various data items.
To preserve the integrity of data the database system must ensure:

▪ Atomicity. Either all operations of the transaction are properly reflected in the database or none are.
▪ Consistency. Execution of a transaction in isolation preserves the consistency of the database.
▪ Isolation. Although multiple transactions may execute concurrently, each transaction must be unaware
of other concurrently executing transactions. Intermediate transaction results must be hidden from other
concurrently executed transactions.
• That is, for every pair of transactions Ti and Tj, it appears to Ti that either Tj, finished execution
before Ti started, or Tj started execution after Ti finished.
▪ Durability. After a transaction completes successfully, the changes it has made to the database persist,
even if there are system failures.
 Transaction State

▪ Active – the initial state; the transaction stays in this state while it is executing
▪ Partially committed – after the final statement has been executed.
▪ Failed -- after the discovery that normal execution can no longer proceed.
▪ Aborted – after the transaction has been rolled back and the database restored to its state prior to the
start of the transaction. Two options after it has been aborted:
• Restart the transaction
▪ Can be done only if no internal logical error
• Kill the transaction
▪ Committed – after successful completion.
Transaction State .. continue
 Concurrent Executions .. continue
Concurrent Executions

▪ Multiple transactions are allowed to run concurrently in the system. Advantages are:
• Increased processor and disk utilization, leading to better transaction throughput
▪ E.g., one transaction can be using the CPU while another is reading from or writing to the disk
• Reduced average response time for transactions: short transactions need not wait behind long
ones.
▪ Concurrency control schemes – mechanisms to achieve isolation
• That is, to control the interaction among the concurrent transactions in order to prevent them from
destroying the consistency of the database
▪ Will study in Chapter 15, after studying notion of correctness of concurrent executions.
 SchedulesSchedules
.. continue

▪ Schedule – a sequences of instructions that specify the chronological order in which instructions of
concurrent transactions are executed
• A schedule for a set of transactions must consist of all instructions of those transactions
• Must preserve the order in which the instructions appear in each individual transaction.
▪ A transaction that successfully completes its execution will have a commit instructions as the last
statement
• By default transaction assumed to execute commit instruction as its last step
▪ A transaction that fails to successfully complete its execution will have an abort instruction as the last
statement
 Schedule [ 01 ] ..

▪ Let T1 transfer $50 from A to B, and T2 transfer 10% of the balance from A to B.
▪ A serial schedule in which T1 is followed by T2 :
 Schedule [ 02 ] ..

▪ A serial schedule where T2 is followed by T1

 Schedule [ 03] ..

▪ Let T1 and T2 be the transactions defined previously. The following schedule is not a serial schedule,
but it is equivalent to Schedule 1

▪ In Schedules 1, 2 and 3, the sum A + B is preserved.

 Schedule [ 04 ] ..

▪ The following concurrent schedule does not preserve the value of (A + B ).

 Serializability ..

▪ Basic Assumption – Each transaction preserves database consistency.

▪ Thus, serial execution of a set of transactions preserves database consistency.
▪ A (possibly concurrent) schedule is serializable if it is equivalent to a serial schedule. Different forms of
schedule equivalence give rise to the notions of:
1. Conflict serializability
2. View serializability
 Simplified View of Transaction

▪ We ignore operations other than read and write instructions

▪ We assume that transactions may perform arbitrary computations on data in local buffers in between
reads and writes.
▪ Our simplified schedules consist of only read and write instructions.
 Conflicting Instructions

▪ Instructions li and lj of transactions Ti and Tj respectively, conflict if and only if there exists some item
Q accessed by both li and lj, and at least one of these instructions wrote Q.
1. li = read(Q), lj = read(Q). li and lj don’t conflict.
2. li = read(Q), lj = write(Q). They conflict.
3. li = write(Q), lj = read(Q). They conflict
4. li = write(Q), lj = write(Q). They conflict
▪ Intuitively, a conflict between li and lj forces a (logical) temporal order between them.
▪ If li and lj are consecutive in a schedule and they do not conflict, their results would remain the same
even if they had been interchanged in the schedule.
 Conflict Serializability

▪ If a schedule S can be transformed into a schedule S’ by a series of swaps of non-conflicting

instructions, we say that S and S’ are conflict equivalent.
▪ We say that a schedule S is conflict serializable if it is conflict equivalent to a serial schedule
 Conflict Serializability continue..

▪ Schedule 3 can be transformed into Schedule 6, a serial schedule where T2 follows T1, by series of swaps of
non-conflicting instructions. Therefore Schedule 3 is conflict serializable.

Schedule 3 Schedule 6
 Conflict Serializability continue..

▪ Example of a schedule that is not conflict serializable:

▪ We are unable to swap instructions in the above schedule to obtain either the serial schedule < T3, T4
>, or the serial schedule < T4, T3 >.
 View Serializability

▪ Let S and S’ be two schedules with the same set of transactions. S and S’ are view equivalent if the
following three conditions are met, for each data item Q,
1. If in schedule S, transaction Ti reads the initial value of Q, then in
schedule S’ also transaction Ti must read the initial value of Q.
2. If in schedule S transaction Ti executes read(Q), and that value was
produced by transaction Tj (if any), then in schedule S’ also
transaction Ti must read the value of Q that was produced by the
same write(Q) operation of transaction Tj .
3. The transaction (if any) that performs the final write(Q) operation in
schedule S must also perform the final write(Q) operation in schedule S’.
▪ As can be seen, view equivalence is also based purely on reads and writes alone.
 View Serializability continue..

▪ A schedule S is view serializable if it is view equivalent to a serial schedule.

▪ Every conflict serializable schedule is also view serializable.
▪ Below is a schedule which is view-serializable but not conflict serializable.

▪ What serial schedule is above equivalent to?

▪ Every view serializable schedule that is not conflict serializable has blind writes.
 Recoverable Schedule

Need to address the effect of transaction failures on concurrently

running transactions.
▪ Recoverable schedule — if a transaction Tj reads a data item previously written by a transaction Ti ,
then the commit operation of Ti appears before the commit operation of Tj.
▪ The following schedule (Schedule 11) is not recoverable

▪ If T8 should abort, T9 would have read (and possibly shown to the user) an inconsistent database state.
Hence, database must ensure that schedules are recoverable.
 Cascading Rollbacks

▪ Cascading rollback – a single transaction failure leads to a series of transaction rollbacks. Consider
the following schedule where none of the transactions has yet committed (so the schedule is
recoverable)

If T10 fails, T11 and T12 must also be rolled back.

▪ Can lead to the undoing of a significant amount of work
 Cascadeless Schedules

▪ Cascadeless schedules — cascading rollbacks cannot occur;

• For each pair of transactions Ti and Tj such that Tj reads a data item previously written by Ti, the
commit operation of Ti appears before the read operation of Tj.
▪ Every Cascadeless schedule is also recoverable
▪ It is desirable to restrict the schedules to those that are cascadeless
 Concurrency Control

▪ A database must provide a mechanism that will ensure that all possible schedules are
• either conflict or view serializable, and
• are recoverable and preferably cascadeless
▪ A policy in which only one transaction can execute at a time generates serial schedules, but provides a
poor degree of concurrency
• Are serial schedules recoverable/cascadeless?
▪ Testing a schedule for serializability after it has executed is a little too late!
▪ Goal – to develop concurrency control protocols that will assure serializability.
 Concurrency Control continue ..

▪ Schedules must be conflict or view serializable, and recoverable, for the sake of database consistency,
and preferably cascadeless.
▪ A policy in which only one transaction can execute at a time generates serial schedules, but provides a
poor degree of concurrency.
▪ Concurrency-control schemes tradeoff between the amount of concurrency they allow and the amount
of overhead that they incur.
▪ Some schemes allow only conflict-serializable schedules to be generated, while others allow
view-serializable schedules that are not conflict-serializable.
 Concurrency Control VS Serializability Tests

▪ Concurrency-control protocols allow concurrent schedules, but ensure that the schedules are
conflict/view serializable, and are recoverable and cascadeless .
▪ Concurrency control protocols (generally) do not examine the precedence graph as it is being created
• Instead a protocol imposes a discipline that avoids non-serializable schedules.
• We study such protocols in Chapter 16.
▪ Different concurrency control protocols provide different tradeoffs between the amount of concurrency
they allow and the amount of overhead that they incur.
▪ Tests for serializability help us understand why a concurrency control protocol is correct.
 Weak Level of Consistency

▪ Some applications are willing to live with weak levels of consistency, allowing schedules that are not
serializable
• E.g., a read-only transaction that wants to get an approximate total balance of all accounts
• E.g., database statistics computed for query optimization can be approximate (why?)
• Such transactions need not be serializable with respect to other transactions
▪ Tradeoff accuracy for performance
 Failure Classification

▪ Transaction failure :
• Logical errors: transaction cannot complete due to some internal error condition
• System errors: the database system must terminate an active transaction due to an error
condition (e.g., deadlock)
▪ System crash: a power failure or other hardware or software failure causes the system to crash.
• Fail-stop assumption: non-volatile storage contents are assumed to not be corrupted by system
crash
▪ Database systems have numerous integrity checks to prevent corruption of disk data
▪ Disk failure: a head crash or similar disk failure destroys all or part of disk storage
• Destruction is assumed to be detectable: disk drives use checksums to detect failures
 Recovery Algorithms

▪ Suppose transaction Ti transfers $50 from account A to account B

• Two updates: subtract 50 from A and add 50 to B
▪ Transaction Ti requires updates to A and B to be output to the database.
• A failure may occur after one of these modifications have been made but before both of them are
made.
• Modifying the database without ensuring that the transaction will commit may leave the database
in an inconsistent state
• Not modifying the database may result in lost updates if failure occurs just after transaction
commits
▪ Recovery algorithms have two parts
1. Actions taken during normal transaction processing to ensure enough information exists to recover
from failures
2. Actions taken after a failure to recover the database contents to a state that ensures atomicity,
consistency and durability