Database Systems

CS2313

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 Introduction to Transaction
Processing
▪ A Transaction: logical unit of database
processing that includes one or more access
operations (read -retrieval, write - insert or update,
delete).
▪ A transaction (set of operations) may be
stand-alone specified in a high level language like
SQL submitted interactively, or may be embedded
within a program.
▪ Transaction boundaries: Begin and End
transaction.
▪ An application program may contain several
transactions separated by the Begin and End
transaction boundaries.
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 SIMPLE MODEL OF A
DATABASE
▪ A database - collection of named data
items
▪ Basic operations are read and write
▪ read_item(X): Reads a database item
named X into a program variable. To
simplify our notation, we assume that the
program variable is also named X.
▪ write_item(X): Writes the value of program
variable X into the database item named X.
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 READ AND WRITE
OPERATION
▪ Basic unit of data transfer from the disk to the
computer main memory is one block. In general, a data
item (what is read or written) will be the field of some
record in the database, although it may be a larger unit
such as a record or even a whole block.

▪ read_item(X) command includes the following steps:

1. Find the address of the disk block that contains item X.

2. Copy that disk block into a buffer in main memory (if that disk
block is not already in some main memory buffer).
3. Copy item X from the buffer to the program variable named X.

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 READ AND WRITE
OPERATION
▪ write_item(X) command includes the following
steps:

1. Find the address of the disk block that contains item X.

2. Copy that disk block into a buffer in main memory (if
that disk block is not already in some main memory
buffer).
3. Copy item X from the program variable named X into
its correct location in the buffer.
4. Store the updated block from the buffer back to disk
(either immediately or at some later point in time).

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Two sample transactions. (a) Transaction T1.
(b) Transaction T2.

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 Why Concurrency Control is
needed?
▪ The Lost Update Problem.
This occurs when two transactions that access the same
database items have their operations interleaved in a
way that makes the value of some database item
incorrect.
▪ The Temporary Update (or Dirty Read) Problem.
This occurs when one transaction updates a database
item and then the transaction fails for some reason. The
updated item is accessed by another transaction before it
is changed back to its original value.
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 Why Concurrency Control is
needed?
▪ The Incorrect Summary Problem .
If one transaction is calculating an aggregate summary
function on a number of records while other transactions
are updating some of these records, the aggregate
function may calculate some values before they are
updated and others after they are updated.

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Some problems that occur when concurrent
execution is uncontrolled. (a) The lost
update problem.

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Some problems that occur when concurrent
execution is uncontrolled. (b) The temporary
update problem.

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Some problems that occur when concurrent
execution is uncontrolled. (c) The incorrect
summary problem.

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 Why recovery is needed?
(What causes a Transaction to fail)
1. A computer failure (system crash): A hardware or
software error occurs in the computer system during
transaction execution. If the hardware crashes, the
contents of the computer’s internal memory may be
lost.
2. A transaction or system error : Some operation in the
transaction may cause it to fail, such as integer overflow
or division by zero. Transaction failure may also occur
because of erroneous parameter values or because of a
logical programming error. In addition, the user may
interrupt the transaction during its execution.

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 Why recovery is needed?
3. Local errors or exception conditions detected by the
transaction:
- certain conditions necessitate cancellation of the
transaction. For example, data for the transaction may
not be found. A condition, such as insufficient account
balance in a banking database, may cause a
transaction, such as a fund withdrawal from that
account, to be canceled.
- a programmed abort in the transaction causes it to
fail.
4. Concurrency control enforcement: The concurrency
control method may decide to abort the transaction, to
be restarted later, because it violates serializability or
because several transactions are in a state of deadlock

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 Why recovery is needed?
5. Disk failure: Some disk blocks may lose their
data because of a read or write malfunction or
because of a disk read/write head crash. This
may happen during a read or a write
operation of the transaction.
6. Physical problems and catastrophes: This
refers to an endless list of problems that
includes power or air-conditioning failure,
fire, theft, sabotage, overwriting disks or tapes
by mistake, and mounting of a wrong tape by
the operator.

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 Transaction and System
Concepts
A transaction is an atomic unit of work that is either
completed in its entirety or not done at all. For recovery
purposes, the system needs to keep track of when the
transaction starts, terminates, and commits or aborts.

Transaction states:

▪ Active state
▪ Partially committed state
▪ Committed state
▪ Failed state
▪ Terminated State
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 Transaction and System
Concepts
Recovery manager keeps track of the following
operations:
▪ begin_transaction: This marks the beginning of
transaction execution.
▪ read or write: These specify read or write operations
on the database items that are executed as part of a
transaction.
▪ end_transaction: This specifies that read and write
transaction operations have ended and marks the end
limit of transaction execution. At this point it may be
necessary to check whether the changes introduced
by the transaction can be permanently applied to the
database or whether the transaction has to be aborted
because it violates concurrency control or for some
other reason. 16
 Transaction and System
Concepts
Recovery manager keeps track of the following operations
(cont):
▪ commit_transaction: This signals a successful end of the
transaction so that any changes (updates) executed by
the transaction can be safely committed to the database
and will not be undone.
▪ rollback (or abort): This signals that the transaction has
ended unsuccessfully, so that any changes or effects that
the transaction may have applied to the database must
be undone.

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 Transaction and System
Concepts
Recovery techniques use the following operators:
▪ undo: Similar to rollback except that it applies
to a single operation rather than to a whole
transaction.
▪ redo: This specifies that certain transaction
operations must be redone to ensure that all the
operations of a committed transaction have been
applied successfully to the database.

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State transition diagram illustrating the
states for transaction execution.

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 The System Log

▪ Log or Journal : The log keeps track of all transaction

operations that affect the values of database items. This
information may be needed to permit recovery from
transaction failures. The log is kept on disk, so it is not
affected by any type of failure except for disk or
catastrophic failure. In addition, the log is periodically
backed up to archival storage (tape) to guard against
such catastrophic failures.
▪ T in the following discussion refers to a unique
transaction-id that is generated automatically by the
system and is used to identify each transaction:

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 The System Log (cont)
Types of log record:
1. [start_transaction,T]: Records that transaction T has
started execution.
2. [write_item,T,X,old_value,new_value]: Records that
transaction T has changed the value of database item X
from old_value to new_value.
3. [read_item,T,X]: Records that transaction T has read
the value of database item X.
4. [commit,T]: Records that transaction T has completed
successfully, and affirms that its effect can be
committed (recorded permanently) to the database.
5. [abort,T]: Records that transaction T has been aborted.

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 The System Log (cont)
▪ protocols for recovery that avoid cascading
rollbacks do not require that read operations
be written to the system log, whereas other
protocols require these entries for recovery.
▪ strict protocols require simpler write entries
that do not include new_value

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 Recovery using log records
If the system crashes, we can recover to a consistent
database state by examining the log and techniques.
1. Because the log contains a record of every write
operation that changes the value of some database
item, it is possible to undo the effect of these write
operations of a transaction T by tracing backward
through the log and resetting all items changed by a
write operation of T to their old_values.
2. We can also redo the effect of the write operations of a
transaction T by tracing forward through the log and
setting all items changed by a write operation of T to
their new_values.

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 Commit Point of a Transaction
▪ Definition: A transaction T reaches its commit point
when all its operations that access the database have
been executed successfully and the effect of all the
transaction operations on the database has been
recorded in the log. Beyond the commit point, the
transaction is said to be committed, and its effect is
assumed to be permanently recorded in the database.
The transaction then writes an entry [commit,T] into
the log.
▪ Roll Back of transactions: Needed for transactions
that have a [start_transaction,T] entry into the log but
no commit entry [commit,T] into the log.

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Commit Point of a Transaction (cont)
▪ Redoing transactions: Transactions that have written
their commit entry in the log must also have recorded
all their write operations in the log; otherwise they
would not be committed, so their effect on the
database can be redone from the log entries. (Notice
that the log file must be kept on disk. At the time of a
system crash, only the log entries that have been
written back to disk are considered in the recovery
process because the contents of main memory may be
lost.)
▪ Force writing a log: before a transaction reaches its
commit point, any portion of the log that has not been
written to the disk yet must now be written to the disk.
This process is called force-writing the log file before
committing a transaction. 25
 ACID properties
▪ Atomicity: A transaction is an atomic unit
of processing; it is either performed in its
entirety or not performed at all.

▪ Consistency preservation: A correct

execution of the transaction must take the
database from one consistent state to
another.
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 ACID properties (cont.)
▪ Isolation: A transaction should not make its
updates visible to other transactions until it is
committed; this property, when enforced
strictly, solves the temporary update problem
and makes cascading rollbacks of transactions
unnecessary.
▪ Durability or permanency: Once a transaction
changes the database and the changes are
committed, these changes must never be lost
because of subsequent failure.
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