UNIT-IV

Transaction Processing Concept: Transaction system, Testing of serializability, serializability of schedules,

conflict & view serializable schedule, recoverability, Recovery from transaction failures, log based recovery,
checkpoints, deadlock handling.
Distributed Database: distributed data storage, concurrency control, directory system.
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:

o Failures of various kinds, such as hardware failures and system crashes
o Concurrent execution of multiple transactions
 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
o If the transaction fails after step 3 and before step 6, money will be “lost” leading to an inconsistent
database state

o Failure could be due to software or hardware

o 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.

 Consistency requirement in above example:

o The sum of A and B is unchanged by the execution of the transaction
 In general, consistency requirements include
o Explicitly specified integrity constraints such as primary keys and foreign keys
o Implicit integrity constraints
o e.g., sum of balances of all accounts, minus sum of loan amounts must equal value of cash-in-
hand
 A transaction, when starting to execute, must see a consistent database.
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  During transaction execution the database may be temporarily inconsistent.
 When the transaction completes successfully the database must be consistent
o Erroneous transaction logic can lead to inconsistency
 Isolation requirement — if between steps 3 and 6 (of the fund transfer transaction) , 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. 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
o That is, one after the other.
 However, executing multiple transactions concurrently has significant benefits, as we will see later.
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.
o 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:
o Restart the transaction
 can be done only if no internal logical error
o Kill the transaction
 Committed – after successful completion.

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Concurrent Executions
 Multiple transactions are allowed to run concurrently in the system. Advantages are:
o 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
o Reduced average response time for transactions: short transactions need not wait behind long
ones.
 Concurrency control schemes – mechanisms to achieve isolation
o That is, to control the interaction among the concurrent transactions in order to prevent them from
destroying the consistency of the database
Schedules
 Schedule – a sequences of instructions that specify the chronological order in which instructions of
concurrent transactions are executed

o A schedule for a set of transactions must consist of all instructions of those transactions

o 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

o 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 1
 Let T1 transfer $50 from A to B, and T2 transfer 10% of the balance from A to B.

 An example of a serial schedule in which T1 is followed by T2:

Schedule 2

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  A serial schedule in which T2 is followed by T1:

Schedule 3
 Let T1 and T2 be the transactions defined previously. The following schedule is not a serial schedule, but
it is equivalent to Schedule 1.

Note -- In schedules 1, 2 and 3, the sum “A + B” is preserved.

Schedule 4
 The following concurrent schedule does not preserve the sum 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
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Conflicting Instructions
 Let li and lj be two Instructions of transactions Ti and Tj respectively. Instructions li and lj 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.
o 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.
 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
 Schedule 3 can be transformed into Schedule 6 -- a serial schedule where T2 follows T1, by a series of
swaps of non-conflicting instructions. Therefore, Schedule 3 is conflict serializable.

 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 >.

Recoverable Schedules
 Recoverable schedule — if a transaction Tj reads a data item previously written by a transaction Ti ,
then the commit operation of Ti must appear before the commit operation of Tj.

 The following schedule is not recoverable if T9 commits immediately after the read(A) operation.

 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.

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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 — 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
 Example of a schedule that is NOT cascadeless

Testing Conflict Serializability:

Precedence Graph
Precedence Graph or Serialization Graph is used commonly to test Conflict Serializability of a schedule.
It is a directed Graph (V, E) consisting of a set of nodes V = {T1, T2, T3……….Tn} and a set of directed edges

E={e1,e2,e3………………em}.
The graph contains one node for each Transaction Ti. An edge ei is of the form Tj –> Tk where Tj is the starting
node of ei and Tk is the ending node of ei. An edge ei is constructed between nodes Tj to Tk if one of the operations
in Tj appears in the schedule before some conflicting operation in Tk.

The Algorithm can be written as:

1. Create a node T in the graph for each participating transaction in the schedule.
2. For the conflicting operation read(X) and write(X) – If a Transaction Tj executes a read(X) after Ti
executes a write(X), draw an edge from Ti to Tj in the graph.
3. For the conflicting operation write(X) and read(X) – If a Transaction Tj executes a write(X) after Ti
executes a read(X), draw an edge from Ti to Tj in the graph.
4. For the conflicting operation write(X) and write(X) – If a Transaction Tj executes a write(X) after Ti
executes a write(X), draw an edge from Ti to Tj in the graph.
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 5. The Schedule S is serializable if there is no cycle in the precedence graph.
If there is no cycle in the precedence graph, it means we can construct a serial schedule S’ which is conflict
equivalent to the schedule S.
For example,
1. Consider the schedule S :S : r1(x) r1(y) w2(x) w1(x) r2(y)

Creating Precedence graph:

1. Make two nodes corresponding to Transaction T1 and T2.

2. For the conflicting pair r1(x) w2(x), where r1(x) happens before w2(x), draw an edge from T1 to T2.

3. For the conflicting pair w2(x) w1(x), where w2(x) happens before w1(x), draw an edge from T2 to T1.

Since the graph is cyclic, we can conclude that it is not conflict serializable to any schedule serial schedule.

2. Consider the schedule S1 S1: r1(x) r3(y) w1(x) w2(y) r3(x) w2(x)

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 .
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 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.

 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.

Test for View Serializability

 The precedence graph test for conflict serializability cannot be used directly to test for view serializability.

o Extension to test for view serializability has cost exponential in the size of the precedence graph.

 The problem of checking if a schedule is view serializable falls in the class of NP-complete problems.

o Thus, existence of an efficient algorithm is extremely unlikely.

 However, practical algorithms that just check some sufficient conditions for view serializability can still
be used.

Failure Classification
 Transaction failure:

o Logical errors: transaction cannot complete due to some internal error condition

o 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.

o Fail-stop assumption: non-volatile storage contents are assumed to not be corrupted as result
of a 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

o Destruction is assumed to be detectable: disk drives use checksums to detect failures

Log-based Recovery

Log is a sequence of records, which maintains the records of actions performed by a transaction. It is important
that the logs are written prior to the actual modification and stored on a stable storage media, which is failsafe.

Log-based recovery works as follows −

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  The log file is kept on a stable storage media.
 When a transaction enters the system and starts execution, it writes a log about it.
1. When the transaction starts, it writes logs as follows-
<Tn, Start>

2. When the transaction modifies an item X, it write logs as follows –

<Tn, X, V1, V2>

It reads Tn has changed the value of X, from V1 to V2.

3. When the transaction finishes, it logs −
<Tn, commit>

The database can be modified using two approaches −

 Deferred database modification − All logs are written on to the stable storage and the database is
updated when a transaction commits.
 Immediate database modification − Each log follows an actual database modification. That is, the
database is modified immediately after every operation.
Recovery with Concurrent Transactions
When more than one transaction are being executed in parallel, the logs are interleaved. At the time of recovery,
it would become hard for the recovery system to backtrack all logs, and then start recovering. To ease this situation,
most modern DBMS use the concept of 'checkpoints'.

Checkpoint
 Keeping and maintaining logs in real time and in real environment may fill out all the memory space
available in the system.
 As time passes, the log file may grow too big to be handled at all.
 Checkpoint is a mechanism where all the previous logs are removed from the system and stored
permanently in a storage disk.
 Checkpoint declares a point before which the DBMS was in consistent state, and all the transactions were
committed.

Recovery
When a system with concurrent transactions crashes and recovers, it behaves in the following manner –

 The recovery system reads the logs backwards from the end to the last checkpoint.
 It maintains two lists, an undo-list and a redo-list.
 If the recovery system sees a log with <Tn, Start> and <Tn, Commit> or just <Tn, Commit>, it puts the
transaction in the redo-list.

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  If the recovery system sees a log with <Tn, Start> but no commit or abort log found, it puts the
transaction in undo-list.
All the transactions in the undo-list are then undone and their logs are removed. All the transactions in the redo-
list and their previous logs are removed and then redone before saving their logs.

Distributed Database System

 A distributed database system consists of loosely coupled sites that share no physical component
 Database systems that run on each site are independent of each other
 Transactions may access data at one or more sites
Homogeneous Distributed Databases
 In a homogeneous distributed database
 All sites have identical software
 Are aware of each other and agree to cooperate in processing user requests.
 Each site surrenders part of its autonomy in terms of right to change schemas or software
 Appears to user as a single system
heterogeneous distributed database
 In a heterogeneous distributed database
 Different sites may use different schemas and software
 Difference in schema is a major problem for query processing
 Difference in software is a major problem for transaction processing
 Sites may not be aware of each other and may provide only
limited facilities for cooperation in transaction processing
Data Fragmentation
 Division of relation r into fragments r1, r2, …, rn which contain sufficient information to reconstruct
relation r.
 Horizontal fragmentation: each tuple of r is assigned to one or more fragments
 Vertical fragmentation: the schema for relation r is split into several smaller schemas
 All schemas must contain a common candidate key (or superkey) to ensure lossless join
property.
 A special attribute, the tuple-id attribute may be added to each schema to serve as a candidate
key.
 Example : relation account with following schema
 Account = (account_number, branch_name , balance )

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