Chapter 15 : Concurrency Control

Database System Concepts, 6th Ed.

©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
See www.db-book.com for conditions on re-use
 Outline

■ Lock-Based Protocols
■ Timestamp-Based Protocols
■ Validation-Based Protocols
■ Multiple Granularity
■ Multiversion Schemes
■ Insert and Delete Operations
■ Concurrency in Index Structures

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.2 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Lock-Based Protocols
■ A lock is a mechanism to control concurrent access to a data
item
■ Data items can be locked in two modes :
1. exclusive (X) mode. Data item can be both read as well as
written. X-lock is requested using lock-X instruction.
2. shared (S) mode. Data item can only be read. S-lock is
requested using lock-S instruction.
■ Lock requests are made to the concurrency-control manager
by the programmer. Transaction can proceed only after
request is granted.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.3 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Lock-Based Protocols (Cont.)
■ Lock-compatibility matrix

S X
S true false

X false false

■ A transaction may be granted a lock on an item if the requested

lock is compatible with locks already held on the item by other
transactions
■ Any number of transactions can hold shared locks on an item,
● But if any transaction holds an exclusive on the item no other
transaction may hold any lock on the item.
■ If a lock cannot be granted, the requesting transaction is made to
wait till all incompatible locks held by other transactions have
been released. The lock is then granted.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.4 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Lock-Based Protocols (Cont.)
■ Example of a transaction performing locking:
T2: lock-S(A);
read (A);
unlock(A);
lock-S(B);
read (B);
unlock(B);
display(A+B)
■ Locking as above is not sufficient to guarantee serializability
— if A and B get updated in-between the read of A and B,
the displayed sum would be wrong.
■ A locking protocol is a set of rules followed by all
transactions while requesting and releasing locks. Locking
protocols restrict the set of possible schedules.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.5 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 The Two-Phase Locking Protocol

■ This protocol ensures conflict-serializable schedules.

■ Phase 1: Growing Phase
● Transaction may obtain locks
● Transaction may not release locks
■ Phase 2: Shrinking Phase
● Transaction may release locks
● Transaction may not obtain locks
■ The protocol assures serializability. It can be proved that the
transactions can be serialized in the order of their lock points
(i.e., the point where a transaction acquired its final lock).

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.6 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 The Two-Phase Locking Protocol (Cont.)

■ There can be conflict serializable schedules that cannot be

obtained if two-phase locking is used.
■ However, in the absence of extra information (e.g., ordering of
access to data), two-phase locking is needed for conflict
serializability in the following sense:
● Given a transaction Ti that does not follow two-phase
locking, we can find a transaction Tj that uses two-phase
locking, and a schedule for Ti and Tj that is not conflict
serializable.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.7 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Lock Conversions
■ Two-phase locking with lock conversions:
– First Phase:
● can acquire a lock-S on item
● can acquire a lock-X on item
● can convert a lock-S to a lock-X (upgrade)
– Second Phase:
● can release a lock-S
● can release a lock-X
● can convert a lock-X to a lock-S (downgrade)
■ This protocol assures serializability. But still relies on the
programmer to insert the various locking instructions.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.8 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Automatic Acquisition of Locks

■ A transaction Ti issues the standard read/write instruction,

without explicit locking calls.
■ The operation read(D) is processed as:
if Ti has a lock on D
then
read(D)
else begin
if necessary wait until no other
transaction has a lock-X on D
grant Ti a lock-S on D;
read(D)
end

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.9 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Automatic Acquisition of Locks (Cont.)
■ write(D) is processed as:
if Ti has a lock-X on D
then
write(D)
else begin
if necessary wait until no other transaction has any lock on D,
if Ti has a lock-S on D
then
upgrade lock on D to lock-X
else
grant Ti a lock-X on D
write(D)
end;
■ All locks are released after commit or abort

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.10 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Deadlocks
■ Consider the partial schedule

■ Neither T3 nor T4 can make progress — executing lock-S(B)

causes T4 to wait for T3 to release its lock on B, while executing
lock-X(A) causes T3 to wait for T4 to release its lock on A.
■ Such a situation is called a deadlock.
● To handle a deadlock one of T3 or T4 must be rolled back
and its locks released.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.11 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Deadlocks (Cont.)

■ Two-phase locking does not ensure freedom from deadlocks.

■ In addition to deadlocks, there is a possibility of starvation.
■ Starvation occurs if the concurrency control manager is badly
designed. For example:
● A transaction may be waiting for an X-lock on an item,
while a sequence of other transactions request and are
granted an S-lock on the same item.
● The same transaction is repeatedly rolled back due to
deadlocks.
■ Concurrency control manager can be designed to prevent
starvation.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.12 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Deadlocks (Cont.)
■ The potential for deadlock exists in most locking protocols.
Deadlocks are a necessary evil.
■ When a deadlock occurs there is a possibility of cascading roll-
backs.
■ Cascading roll-back is possible under two-phase locking. To
avoid this, follow a modified protocol called strict two-phase
locking -- a transaction must hold all its exclusive locks till it
commits/aborts.
■ Rigorous two-phase locking is even stricter. Here, all locks
are held till commit/abort. In this protocol transactions can be
serialized in the order in which they commit.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.13 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Implementation of Locking
■ A lock manager can be implemented as a separate process to
which transactions send lock and unlock requests
■ The lock manager replies to a lock request by sending a lock
grant messages (or a message asking the transaction to roll
back, in case of a deadlock)
■ The requesting transaction waits until its request is answered
■ The lock manager maintains a data-structure called a lock
table to record granted locks and pending requests
■ The lock table is usually implemented as an in-memory hash
table indexed on the name of the data item being locked

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.14 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Lock Table
■ Dark blue rectangles indicate granted
locks; light blue indicate waiting requests
■ Lock table also records the type of lock
granted or requested
■ New request is added to the end of the
queue of requests for the data item, and
granted if it is compatible with all earlier
locks
■ Unlock requests result in the request
being deleted, and later requests are
checked to see if they can now be
granted
■ If transaction aborts, all waiting or granted
requests of the transaction are deleted
● lock manager may keep a list of locks
held by each transaction, to
implement this efficiently

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.15 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Deadlock Handling
■ System is deadlocked if there is a set of transactions such that
every transaction in the set is waiting for another transaction in
the set.
■ Deadlock prevention protocols ensure that the system will
never enter into a deadlock state. Some prevention strategies :
● Require that each transaction locks all its data items before it
begins execution (predeclaration).
● Impose partial ordering of all data items and require that a
transaction can lock data items only in the order specified by
the partial order.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.16 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 More Deadlock Prevention Strategies
■ Following schemes use transaction timestamps for the sake of
deadlock prevention alone.
■ wait-die scheme — non-preemptive
● older transaction may wait for younger one to release data item.
(older means smaller timestamp) Younger transactions never
Younger transactions never wait for older ones; they are rolled
back instead.
● a transaction may die several times before acquiring needed data
item
■ wound-wait scheme — preemptive
● older transaction wounds (forces rollback) of younger transaction
instead of waiting for it. Younger transactions may wait for older
ones.
● may be fewer rollbacks than wait-die scheme.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.17 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Deadlock prevention (Cont.)
■ Both in wait-die and in wound-wait schemes, a rolled back
transactions is restarted with its original timestamp. Older transactions
thus have precedence over newer ones, and starvation is hence
avoided.
■ Timeout-Based Schemes:
● a transaction waits for a lock only for a specified amount of time. If
the lock has not been granted within that time, the transaction is
rolled back and restarted,
● Thus, deadlocks are not possible
● simple to implement; but starvation is possible. Also difficult to
determine good value of the timeout interval.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.18 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Deadlock Detection
■ Deadlocks can be described as a wait-for graph, which consists of a
pair G = (V,E),
● V is a set of vertices (all the transactions in the system)
● E is a set of edges; each element is an ordered pair Ti ®Tj.
■ If Ti ® Tj is in E, then there is a directed edge from Ti to Tj, implying
that Ti is waiting for Tj to release a data item.
■ When Ti requests a data item currently being held by Tj, then the edge
Ti ® Tj is inserted in the wait-for graph. This edge is removed only
when Tj is no longer holding a data item needed by Ti.
■ The system is in a deadlock state if and only if the wait-for graph has a
cycle. Must invoke a deadlock-detection algorithm periodically to look
for cycles.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.19 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Deadlock Detection (Cont.)

T18 T20 T18 T20

T17 T17

T19 T19

Wait-for graph without a cycle Wait-for graph with a cycle

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.20 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Deadlock Recovery
■ When deadlock is detected :
● Some transaction will have to rolled back (made a victim) to
break deadlock. Select that transaction as victim that will incur
minimum cost.
● Rollback -- determine how far to roll back transaction
4 Total rollback: Abort the transaction and then restart it.
4 More effective to roll back transaction only as far as
necessary to break deadlock.
● Starvation happens if same transaction is always chosen as
victim. Include the number of rollbacks in the cost factor to
avoid starvation

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.21 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Multiple Granularity
■ Allow data items to be of various sizes and define a hierarchy of data
granularities, where the small granularities are nested within larger
ones
■ Can be represented graphically as a tree.
■ When a transaction locks a node in the tree explicitly, it implicitly locks
all the node's descendents in the same mode.
■ Granularity of locking (level in tree where locking is done):
● fine granularity (lower in tree): high concurrency, high locking
overhead
● coarse granularity (higher in tree): low locking overhead, low
concurrency

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.22 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Example of Granularity Hierarchy
DB

A1 A2

Fa Fb Fc

ra1 ra2 ran rb1 rb k rc1 rc

m

The levels, starting from the coarsest (top) level are

● database
● area
● file
● record

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.23 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Intention Lock Modes
■ In addition to S and X lock modes, there are three additional lock
modes with multiple granularity:
● intention-shared (IS): indicates explicit locking at a lower level of
the tree but only with shared locks.
● intention-exclusive (IX): indicates explicit locking at a lower level
with exclusive or shared locks
● shared and intention-exclusive (SIX): the subtree rooted by that
node is locked explicitly in shared mode and explicit locking is
being done at a lower level with exclusive-mode locks.
■ intention locks allow a higher level node to be locked in S or X mode
without having to check all descendent nodes.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.24 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Compatibility Matrix with Intention Lock Modes

■ The compatibility matrix for all lock modes is:

IS IX S SIX X
IS true true true true false
IX true true false false false
S true false true false false
SIX true false false false false
X false false false false false

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.25 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Multiple Granularity Locking Scheme
■ Transaction Ti can lock a node Q, using the following rules:
1. The lock compatibility matrix must be observed.
2. The root of the tree must be locked first, and may be locked in any
mode.
3. A node Q can be locked by Ti in S or IS mode only if the parent of Q
is currently locked by Ti in either IX or IS mode.
4. A node Q can be locked by Ti in X, SIX, or IX mode only if the parent
of Q is currently locked by Ti in either IX or SIX mode.
5. Ti can lock a node only if it has not previously unlocked any node
(that is, Ti is two-phase).
6. Ti can unlock a node Q only if none of the children of Q are currently
locked by Ti.
■ Observe that locks are acquired in root-to-leaf order, whereas they are
released in leaf-to-root order.
■ Lock granularity escalation: in case there are too many locks at a
particular level, switch to higher granularity S or X lock

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.26 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Timestamp-Based Protocols
■ Each transaction is issued a timestamp when it enters the system. If
an old transaction Ti has time-stamp TS(Ti), a new transaction Tj is
assigned time-stamp TS(Tj) such that TS(Ti) <TS(Tj).
■ The protocol manages concurrent execution such that the time-stamps
determine the serializability order.
■ In order to assure such behavior, the protocol maintains for each data
Q two timestamp values:
● W-timestamp(Q) is the largest time-stamp of any transaction that
executed write(Q) successfully.
● R-timestamp(Q) is the largest time-stamp of any transaction that
executed read(Q) successfully.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.27 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Timestamp-Based Protocols (Cont.)
■ The timestamp ordering protocol ensures that any conflicting read
and write operations are executed in timestamp order.
■ Suppose a transaction Ti issues a read(Q)
1. If TS(Ti) £ W-timestamp(Q), then Ti needs to read a value of Q
that was already overwritten.
■ Hence, the read operation is rejected, and Ti is rolled back.
2. If TS(Ti) ³ W-timestamp(Q), then the read operation is
executed, and R-timestamp(Q) is set to max(R-timestamp(Q),
TS(Ti)).

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.28 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Timestamp-Based Protocols (Cont.)
■ Suppose that transaction Ti issues write(Q).
1. If TS(Ti) < R-timestamp(Q), then the value of Q that Ti is
producing was needed previously, and the system assumed that
that value would never be produced.
■ Hence, the write operation is rejected, and Ti is rolled back.
2. If TS(Ti) < W-timestamp(Q), then Ti is attempting to write an
obsolete value of Q.
■ Hence, this write operation is rejected, and Ti is rolled back.
3. Otherwise, the write operation is executed, and W-timestamp(Q)
is set to TS(Ti).

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.29 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Example Use of the Protocol
A partial schedule for several data items for transactions with
timestamps 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.30 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Correctness of Timestamp-Ordering Protocol

■ The timestamp-ordering protocol guarantees serializability since all

the arcs in the precedence graph are of the form:

Thus, there will be no cycles in the precedence graph

■ Timestamp protocol ensures freedom from deadlock as no
transaction ever waits.
■ But the schedule may not be cascade-free, and may not even be
recoverable.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.31 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Recoverability and Cascade Freedom
■ Problem with timestamp-ordering protocol:
● Suppose Ti aborts, but Tj has read a data item written by Ti
● Then Tj must abort; if Tj had been allowed to commit earlier, the
schedule is not recoverable.
● Further, any transaction that has read a data item written by Tj
must abort
● This can lead to cascading rollback --- that is, a chain of rollbacks
■ Solution 1:
● A transaction is structured such that its writes are all performed at
the end of its processing
● All writes of a transaction form an atomic action; no transaction
may execute while a transaction is being written
A transaction that aborts is restarted with a new timestamp
●
■ Solution 2: Limited form of locking: wait for data to be committed
before reading it
■ Solution 3: Use commit dependencies to ensure recoverability

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.32 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Thomas Write Rule
■ Modified version of the timestamp-ordering protocol in which obsolete
write operations may be ignored under certain circumstances.
■ When Ti attempts to write data item Q, if TS(Ti) < W-timestamp(Q),
then Ti is attempting to write an obsolete value of {Q}.
● Rather than rolling back Ti as the timestamp ordering protocol
would have done, this {write} operation can be ignored.
■ Otherwise this protocol is the same as the timestamp ordering
protocol.
■ Thomas' Write Rule allows greater potential concurrency.

● Allows some view-serializable schedules that are not conflict-

serializable.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.33 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Validation-Based Protocol
■ Execution of transaction Ti is done in three phases.
1. Read and execution phase: Transaction Ti writes only to
temporary local variables
2. Validation phase: Transaction Ti performs a ''validation test''
to determine if local variables can be written without violating
serializability.
3. Write phase: If Ti is validated, the updates are applied to the
database; otherwise, Ti is rolled back.
■ The three phases of concurrently executing transactions can be
interleaved, but each transaction must go through the three phases in
that order.
● Assume for simplicity that the validation and write phase occur
together, atomically and serially
4 I.e., only one transaction executes validation/write at a time.
■ Also called as optimistic concurrency control since transaction
executes fully in the hope that all will go well during validation

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.34 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Validation-Based Protocol (Cont.)
■ Each transaction Ti has 3 timestamps
● Start(Ti) : the time when Ti started its execution
● Validation(Ti): the time when Ti entered its validation phase
● Finish(Ti) : the time when Ti finished its write phase
■ Serializability order is determined by timestamp given at validation
time; this is done to increase concurrency.
● Thus, TS(Ti) is given the value of Validation(Ti).
■ This protocol is useful and gives greater degree of concurrency if
probability of conflicts is low.
● because the serializability order is not pre-decided, and
● relatively few transactions will have to be rolled back.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.35 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Validation Test for Transaction Tj
■ If for all Ti with TS (Ti) < TS (Tj) either one of the following condition
holds:
● finish(Ti) < start(Tj)
● start(Tj) < finish(Ti) < validation(Tj) and the set of data items
written by Ti does not intersect with the set of data items read
by Tj.
then validation succeeds and Tj can be committed. Otherwise,
validation fails and Tj is aborted.
■ Justification: Either the first condition is satisfied, and there is no
overlapped execution, or the second condition is satisfied and
■ the writes of Tj do not affect reads of Ti since they occur after
Ti has finished its reads.
■ the writes of Ti do not affect reads of Tj since Tj does not read
any item written by Ti.

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.36 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Schedule Produced by Validation
■ Example of schedule produced using validation

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.37 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 End of Module 16

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.62 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Deadlocks
■ Consider the following two transactions:
T1: write (X) T2: write(Y)
write(Y) write(X)

■ Schedule with deadlock

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 15.63 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan