Transactions
Chapter 14
Transaction Concept Serializability
A Simple Transaction Transaction Isolation &
Model Atomicity
Storage Structure Tranaction Isolation
Level
Transaction Atomicity &
Durability Implementation of
Isolation Levels
Transaction Isolation
Transactions as SQL
Statements
CSc-340 10a 1
Collect Homework
Chapter 11
CSc-340 10a 2
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
Example of 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.
Example of Fund Transfer (Cont.)
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)
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
Example of 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.
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 (Cont.)
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
Schedules
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 1
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 2
• A serial schedule where 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.
In Schedules 1, 2 and 3, the sum A + B is preserved.
Schedule 4
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 transactions
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 (Cont.)
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 (Cont.)
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,
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.
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 .
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 (Cont.)
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.
Other Notions of Serializability
The schedule below produces same outcome as the serial
schedule < T1, T5 >, yet is not conflict equivalent or view
equivalent to it.
Determining such equivalence requires analysis of operations
other than read and write.
Testing for Serializability
Consider some schedule of a set of transactions T1,
T2, ..., Tn
Precedence graph — a direct graph where the vertices
are the transactions (names).
We draw an arc from Ti to Tj if the two transaction
conflict, and Ti accessed the data item on which the
conflict arose earlier.
We may label the arc by the item that was accessed.
Example 1
Test for Conflict Serializability
A schedule is conflict serializable if and only if its
precedence graph is acyclic.
Cycle-detection algorithms exist which take order n2
time, where n is the number of vertices in the
graph.
(Better algorithms take order n + e where e is the
number of edges.)
If precedence graph is acyclic, the serializability
order can be obtained by a topological sorting of
the graph.
This is a linear order consistent with the partial order
of the graph.
For example, a serializability order for Schedule A
would be
T5 T1 T3 T2 T4
Are there others?
Test for View Serializability
The precedence graph test for conflict serializability cannot
be used directly to test for view serializability.
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.
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.
Recoverable Schedules
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 T9
commits immediately after the read
If T8 should abort, T9 would have read (and possibly shown to
the user) an inconsistent database state. Hence, database must
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 (Cont.)
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 nonseralizable
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 Levels 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
Levels of Consistency in SQL-92
Serializable — default
Repeatable read — only committed records to be read, repeated
reads of same record must return same value. However, a
transaction may not be serializable – it may find some records
inserted by a transaction but not find others.
Read committed — only committed records can be read, but
successive reads of record may return different (but committed)
values.
Read uncommitted — even uncommitted records may be read.
Lower degrees of consistency useful for gathering approximate information about the
database
Warning: some database systems do not ensure serializable schedules by default
E.g. Oracle and PostgreSQL by default support a level of consistency called
snapshot isolation (not part of the SQL standard)
Transaction Definition in SQL
Data manipulation language must include a construct for
specifying the set of actions that comprise a transaction.
In SQL, a transaction begins implicitly.
A transaction in SQL ends by:
Commit work commits current transaction and begins a new one.
Rollback work causes current transaction to abort.
In almost all database systems, by default, every SQL
statement also commits implicitly if it executes successfully
Implicit commit can be turned off by a database directive
E.g. in JDBC, connection.setAutoCommit(false);
Homework/Project
Homework due Next Class:
12.1, 12.2, 12.5, 12.6, 12.9
Project Presentations Next Class!
Demo Working Version
10-15 slides (See Project Web Site for Full Info)
Email before 2:00pm
-1 (out of 5) if I don't receive by 2:00
-2 (out of 5) if I don't receive by 2:30
-3 (out of 5) if I don't receive by 3:00
CSc-340 10a 37
Final Exam
3/17 at 8:30 AM
Open Book
4 Sheets of Notes
CSc-340 10a 38
In-Class Exercise
(You are free to go after showing me your
work.)
Describe a multi-part transaction that
cannot be interrupted in your project
DB.
CSc-340 10a 39
