Chapter 4

Concurrency Control Techniques

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Outline
 Databases Concurrency Control
1. Purpose of Concurrency Control
2. Two-Phase locking
3. Time Stamp Locking Techniques
4. Multi-version Locking Techniques
5. Validation (Optimistic) Concurrency
6. Lock Granularity

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 2

Database Concurrency Control
 1 Purpose of Concurrency Control
 To enforce Isolation (through mutual exclusion) among
conflicting transactions.
 To preserve database consistency through consistency
preserving execution of transactions.
 To resolve read-write and write-write conflicts.

 Example:
 In concurrent execution environment if T1 conflicts with T2
over a data item A, then the existing concurrency control
decides if T1 or T2 should get the A and if the other
transaction is rolled-back or waits.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 3

Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques
 Locking is an operation which secures
 (a) permission to Read
 (b) permission to Write a data item for a transaction.
 Example:
 Lock (X). Data item X is locked in behalf of the requesting
transaction.
 Unlocking is an operation which removes these permissions
from the data item.
 Example:
 Unlock (X): Data item X is made available to all other
transactions.
 Lock and Unlock are Atomic operations.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5- 4

Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: Essential components
 Two locks modes:
 (a) shared (read) (b) exclusive (write).
 Shared mode: shared lock (X)
 More than one transaction can apply share lock on X for
reading its value but no write lock can be applied on X by any
other transaction.
 Exclusive mode: Write lock (X)
 Only one write lock on X can exist at any time and no shared
lock can be applied by any other transaction on X.
 Conflict matrix Read Write
Read

Y N
Write

N N

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 5

Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: Essential
components
 Lock Manager:
 Managing locks on data items.
 Lock table:
 Lock manager uses it to store the identify of
transaction locking a data item, the data item, lock
mode and pointer to the next data item locked. One
simple way to implement a lock table is through
linked list.
Transaction ID Data item id lock mode Ptr to next data item
T1 X1 Read Next
Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 6
Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: Essential
components
 Database requires that all transactions should be
well-formed. A transaction is well-formed if:
 It must lock the data item before it reads or writes to
it.
 It must not lock an already locked data items and it
must not try to unlock a free data item.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 7

Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: Essential components
 The following code performs the lock operation:

B:if LOCK (X) = 0 (*item is unlocked*)

then LOCK (X)  1 (*lock the item*)
else begin
wait (until lock (X) = 0) and
the lock manager wakes up the transaction);
goto B
end;

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 8

Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: Essential
components
 The following code performs the unlock operation:

LOCK (X)  0 (*unlock the item*)

if any transactions are waiting then
wake up one of the waiting the transactions;

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 9

Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: Essential components
 The following code performs the read operation:
B: if LOCK (X) = “unlocked” then
begin LOCK (X)  “read-locked”;
no_of_reads (X)  1;
end
else if LOCK (X)  “read-locked” then
no_of_reads (X)  no_of_reads (X) +1
else begin wait (until LOCK (X) = “unlocked” and
the lock manager wakes up the transaction);
go to B
end;

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 10

Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: Essential components
 The following code performs the write lock operation:
B: if LOCK (X) = “unlocked” then
begin LOCK (X)  “read-locked”;
no_of_reads (X)  1;
end
else if LOCK (X)  “read-locked” then
no_of_reads (X)  no_of_reads (X) +1
else begin wait (until LOCK (X) = “unlocked” and
the lock manager wakes up the transaction);
go to B
end;

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 11

Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: Essential components
 The following code performs the unlock operation:
if LOCK (X) = “write-locked” then
begin LOCK (X)  “unlocked”;
wakes up one of the transactions, if any
end
else if LOCK (X)  “read-locked” then
begin
no_of_reads (X)  no_of_reads (X) -1
if no_of_reads (X) = 0 then
begin
LOCK (X) = “unlocked”;
wake up one of the transactions, if any
end
end;

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 12

Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: Essential components
 Lock conversion
 Lock upgrade: existing read lock to write lock

if Ti has a read-lock (X) and Tj has no read-lock (X) (i  j) then

convert read-lock (X) to write-lock (X)
else
force Ti to wait until Tj unlocks X

 Lock downgrade: existing write lock to read lock

Ti has a write-lock (X) (*no transaction can have any lock on
X*)
convert write-lock (X) to read-lock (X)

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 13

Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: The algorithm
 Two Phases:
 (a) Locking (Growing)

 (b) Unlocking (Shrinking).

 Locking (Growing) Phase:

 A transaction applies locks (read or write) on desired data items

one at a time.
 Unlocking (Shrinking) Phase:
 A transaction unlocks its locked data items one at a time.

 Requirement:
 For a transaction these two phases must be mutually exclusively,

that is, during locking phase unlocking phase must not start and
during unlocking phase locking phase must not begin.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 14

Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: The algorithm

T1 T2 Result
read_lock (Y); read_lock (X); Initial values: X=20; Y=30
read_item (Y); read_item (X); Result of serial execution
unlock (Y); unlock (X); T1 followed by T2
write_lock (X); Write_lock (Y); X=50, Y=80.
read_item (X); read_item (Y); Result of serial execution
X:=X+Y; Y:=X+Y; T2 followed by T1
write_item (X); write_item (Y); X=70, Y=50
unlock (X); unlock (Y);

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 15

Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: The algorithm

T1 T2 Result
read_lock (Y); X=50; Y=50
read_item (Y); Nonserializable because it.
unlock (Y); violated two-phase policy.
read_lock (X);
read_item (X);
Time unlock (X);
write_lock (Y);
read_item (Y);
Y:=X+Y;
write_item (Y);
unlock (Y);
write_lock (X);
read_item (X);
X:=X+Y;
write_item (X);
unlock (X);

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 16

Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: The algorithm

T’1 T’2
read_lock (Y); read_lock (X); T1 and T2 follow two-phase
read_item (Y); read_item (X); policy but they are subject to
write_lock (X); Write_lock (Y); deadlock, which must be
unlock (Y); unlock (X); dealt with.
read_item (X); read_item (Y);
X:=X+Y; Y:=X+Y;
write_item (X); write_item (Y);
unlock (X); unlock (Y);

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 17

Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: The algorithm
 Two-phase policy generates two locking algorithms
 (a) Basic

 (b) Conservative

 Conservative:
 Prevents deadlock by locking all desired data items before

transaction begins execution.

 Basic:
 Transaction locks data items incrementally. This may cause

deadlock which is dealt with.

 Strict:
 A more stricter version of Basic algorithm where unlocking is

performed after a transaction terminates (commits or aborts and

rolled-back). This is the most commonly used two-phase locking
algorithm.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 18

Database Concurrency Control
Dealing with Deadlock and Starvation
 Deadlock
T’1 T’2
read_lock (Y); T1 and T2 did follow two-phase
read_item (Y); policy but they are deadlock
read_lock (X);
read_item (Y);
write_lock (X);
(waits for X) write_lock (Y);
(waits for Y)

 Deadlock (T’1 and T’2)

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 19

Database Concurrency Control
Dealing with Deadlock and Starvation
 Deadlock prevention

 A transaction locks all data items it refers to before

it begins execution.
 This way of locking prevents deadlock since a
transaction never waits for a data item.
 The conservative two-phase locking uses this
approach.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 20

Database Concurrency Control
Dealing with Deadlock and Starvation
 Deadlock detection and resolution

 In this approach, deadlocks are allowed to happen. The

scheduler maintains a wait-for-graph for detecting cycle. If
a cycle exists, then one transaction involved in the cycle is
selected (victim) and rolled-back.
 A wait-for-graph is created using the lock table. As soon as
a transaction is blocked, it is added to the graph. When a
chain like: Ti waits for Tj waits for Tk waits for Ti or Tj
occurs, then this creates a cycle. One of the transaction o

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 21

Database Concurrency Control
Dealing with Deadlock and Starvation
 Deadlock avoidance

 There are many variations of two-phase locking algorithm.

 Some avoid deadlock by not letting the cycle to complete.
 That is as soon as the algorithm discovers that blocking a
transaction is likely to create a cycle, it rolls back the
transaction.
 Wound-Wait and Wait-Die algorithms use timestamps to
avoid deadlocks by rolling-back victim.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 22

Database Concurrency Control
Dealing with Deadlock and Starvation
 Starvation

 Starvation occurs when a particular transaction consistently

waits or restarted and never gets a chance to proceed
further.
 In a deadlock resolution it is possible that the same
transaction may consistently be selected as victim and
rolled-back.
 This limitation is inherent in all priority based scheduling
mechanisms.
 In Wound-Wait scheme a younger transaction may always
be wounded (aborted) by a long running older transaction
which may create starvation.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 23

Database Concurrency Control
Timestamp based concurrency control algorithm
 Timestamp

 A monotonically increasing variable (integer)

indicating the age of an operation or a transaction.
A larger timestamp value indicates a more recent
event or operation.
 Timestamp based algorithm uses timestamp to
serialize the execution of concurrent transactions.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 24

Timestamps
 Integer or Long Format:
 The number of units (such as seconds or
milliseconds) since a specified reference point
(epoch).
 Example: 1637688675 (Unix timestamp,
representing the number of seconds since
January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 UTC).
 Date and Time Format:
 Example: 2023-11-24T12:34:56Z (ISO 8601
format, representing the date and time in UTC).
Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 25
Timestamp Cont’d…
 write_TS(X) > TS(T1) means that the last
committed transaction that wrote to the data item
X did so after the current transaction T1 started.
 In other words, the data item X has been modified
by a transaction with a timestamp greater than
the timestamp of the current transaction.
 read_TS(X) > TS(T1) means that the last
committed transaction that read the data item X
did so after the current transaction T1 started.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 26

Database Concurrency Control
Timestamp based concurrency control algorithm
 Basic Timestamp Ordering

 1. Transaction T issues a write_item(X) operation:

 If read_TS(X) > TS(T) or if write_TS(X) > TS(T), then an
younger transaction has already read the data item so abort
and roll-back T and reject the operation.
 If the condition in part (a) does not exist, then execute
write_item(X) of T and set write_TS(X) to TS(T).
 2. Transaction T issues a read_item(X) operation:
 If write_TS(X) > TS(T), then an younger transaction has
already written to the data item so abort and roll-back T and
reject the operation.
 If write_TS(X)  TS(T), then execute read_item(X) of T and set
read_TS(X) to the larger of TS(T) and the current read_TS(X).

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 27

Database Concurrency Control
Timestamp based concurrency control algorithm
 Strict Timestamp Ordering

 1. Transaction T issues a write_item(X) operation:

 If TS(T) > read_TS(X), then delay T until the
transaction T’ that wrote or read X has terminated
(committed or aborted).
 2. Transaction T issues a read_item(X) operation:
 If TS(T) > write_TS(X), then delay T until the
transaction T’ that wrote or read X has terminated
(committed or aborted).

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 28

Database Concurrency Control
Timestamp based concurrency control algorithm
 Thomas’s Write Rule

 If read_TS(X) > TS(T) then abort and roll-back T

and reject the operation.
 If write_TS(X) > TS(T), then just ignore the write
operation and continue execution. This is because
the most recent writes counts in case of two
consecutive writes.
 If the conditions given in 1 and 2 above do not
occur, then execute write_item(X) of T and set
write_TS(X) to TS(T).

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 29

Database Concurrency Control
Multiversion concurrency control techniques
 This approach maintains a number of versions of a
data item and allocates the right version to a read
operation of a transaction. Thus unlike other
mechanisms a read operation in this mechanism is
never rejected.
 Side effect:
 Significantly more storage (RAM and disk) is
required to maintain multiple versions. To check
unlimited growth of versions, a garbage collection is
run when some criteria is satisfied.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 30

Database Concurrency Control
Multiversion technique based on timestamp
ordering
 This approach maintains a number of versions of a
data item and allocates the right version to a read
operation of a transaction.
 Thus unlike other mechanisms a read operation in
this mechanism is never rejected.
 Side effects: Significantly more storage (RAM and
disk) is required to maintain multiple versions. To
check unlimited growth of versions, a garbage
collection is run when some criteria is satisfied.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 31

Database Concurrency Control
Multiversion technique based on timestamp ordering
 Assume X1, X2, …, Xn are the version of a data item X
created by a write operation of transactions. With each Xi a
read_TS (read timestamp) and a write_TS (write timestamp)
are associated.
 read_TS(Xi): The read timestamp of Xi is the largest of all
the timestamps of transactions that have successfully read
version Xi.
 write_TS(Xi): The write timestamp of Xi that wrote the
value of version Xi.
 A new version of Xi is created only by a write operation.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 32

Database Concurrency Control
Multiversion technique based on timestamp ordering
 To ensure serializability, the following two rules are used.
 If transaction T issues write_item (X) and version i of X has the
highest write_TS(Xi) of all versions of X that is also less than
or equal to TS(T), and read _TS(Xi) > TS(T), then abort and
roll-back T; otherwise create a new version Xi and read_TS(X)
= write_TS(Xj) = TS(T).

 If transaction T issues read_item (X), find the version i of X

that has the highest write_TS(Xi) of all versions of X that is
also less than or equal to TS(T), then return the value of Xi to
T, and set the value of read _TS(Xi) to the largest of TS(T)
and the current read_TS(Xi).
 Rule 2 guarantees that a read will never be rejected.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 33

Database Concurrency Control
Multiversion Two-Phase Locking Using Certify
Locks
 Concept

 Allow a transaction T’ to read a data item X while it

is write locked by a conflicting transaction T.
 This is accomplished by maintaining two versions
of each data item X where one version must
always have been written by some committed
transaction. This means a write operation always
creates a new version of X.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 34

Cont’d…
 Certify Lock (CL):
 A Certify Lock is a lock associated with a
particular version of a data item.
 It certifies that the transaction holds a lock on the
correct version of the data item for its read
operations.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 35

MV2PL Protocol:
 Growing Phase (Lock Acquisition):
 Transactions follow the traditional 2PL protocol
during the growing phase, acquiring locks as
needed.
 Write locks are obtained for write operations, and
Certify Locks are obtained for read operations.
 Certification Phase:
 During this phase, the transaction validates that it
holds Certify Locks on the correct versions of the
data items it wants to read.
Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 36
Cont’d…
 Validation:
 For each read operation, the transaction checks
that the Certify Lock it holds is still valid (i.e., the
version of the data item has not changed since
the lock was obtained).
 If the Certify Lock is still valid, the read operation
proceeds. Otherwise, the transaction may need
to be rolled back.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 37

Cont’d…
 Release Phase:
 If the Certification Phase is successful, the
transaction enters the Release Phase.
 Locks are released during this phase, allowing
other transactions to acquire them.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 38

Steps of Multiversion Two-Phase
Locking (MV2PL)
 1. Initial State:
 There is a committed version of a data item X (let's
call it X).
 No transactions have acquired any locks on X.
 2. Transaction T Creates a Second Version (X'):
 Transaction T starts and obtains a write lock on
the existing committed version of the data item X.
 T then creates a new version of the data item X,
referred to as X', by making modifications.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 39

Cont’d..
 3. Other Transactions Continue to Read X:
 While T is creating the new version X', other
transactions that started before T's write lock are
still reading the original committed version X.
These transactions are not affected by T's
ongoing modifications.
 4.Transaction T Obtains a Certify Lock on X':
 When T is ready to commit, it obtains a Certify
Lock on the newly created version X'.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 40

Cont’d..
 The Certify Lock certifies that T has the correct
and consistent version of the data item for its
read operations.
 5. Committed Version X Becomes X':
 Upon successful certification and before T
commits, the new version X' becomes the
committed version. This is essentially the point
where T's modifications are accepted and
become visible to other transactions.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 41

Cont’d..
 6. T Releases Its Certify Lock on X' (Which Is
Now X):
 After the commitment of T, it releases the Certify
Lock on the version X' (now the committed
version). At this point, the Certify Lock is
essentially released on the committed version X,
and other transactions can acquire read locks on
this version.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 42

Database Concurrency Control
Multiversion Two-Phase Locking Using Certify
Locks
 Note:

 In multiversion 2PL read and write operations from

conflicting transactions can be processed
concurrently.
 This improves concurrency but it may delay
transaction commit because of obtaining certify
locks on all its writes.
 It avoids cascading abort but like strict two phase
locking scheme conflicting transactions may get
deadlocked.
Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 43
Database Concurrency Control
Validation (Optimistic) Concurrency Control Schemes
 In this technique only at the time of commit serializability
is checked and transactions are aborted in case of non-
serializable schedules.
 Three phases:
1. Read phase
2. Validation phase
3. Write phase
1. Read phase:
 A transaction can read values of committed data items.
However, updates are applied only to local copies (versions)
of the data items (in database cache).

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 44

Database Concurrency Control
Validation (Optimistic) Concurrency Control Schemes
2. Validation phase: Serializability is checked before transactions write
their updates to the database.
 This phase for Ti checks that, for each transaction Tj that is either

committed or is in its validation phase, one of the following

conditions holds:
 Tj completes its write phase before Ti starts its read phase.
 Ti starts its write phase after Tj completes its write phase, and the
read_set of Ti has no items in common with the write_set of Tj
 Both the read_set and write_set of Ti have no items in common with
the write_set of Tj, and Tj completes its read phase.
 When validating Ti, the first condition is checked first for each
transaction Tj, since (1) is the simplest condition to check. If (1) is
false then (2) is checked and if (2) is false then (3 ) is checked. If
none of these conditions holds, the validation fails and Ti is aborted.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 45

Database Concurrency Control
Validation (Optimistic) Concurrency Control
Schemes
3. Write phase: On a successful validation
transactions’ updates are applied to the
database; otherwise, transactions are restarted.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 46

Database Concurrency Control
Granularity of data items and Multiple Granularity Locking
 A lockable unit of data defines its granularity. Granularity
can be coarse (entire database) or it can be fine (a tuple
or an attribute of a relation).
 Data item granularity significantly affects concurrency
control performance. Thus, the degree of concurrency is
low for coarse granularity and high for fine granularity.
 Example of data item granularity:
1. A field of a database record (an attribute of a tuple)
2. A database record (a tuple or a relation)
3. A disk block
4. An entire file
5. The entire database

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 47

Database Concurrency Control
Granularity of data items and Multiple Granularity
Locking
 The following diagram illustrates a hierarchy of

granularity from coarse (database) to fine

(record). DB

f1 f2

p11 p12 ... p1n p11 p12 ... p1n

r111 ... r11j r111 ... r11j r111 ... r11j r111 ... r11j r111 ... r11j r111 ... r11j

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 48

Database Concurrency Control
Granularity of data items and Multiple Granularity Locking
 To manage such hierarchy, in addition to read and write,

three additional locking modes, called intention lock

modes are defined:
 Intention-shared (IS): indicates that a shared lock(s) will be
requested on some descendent nodes(s).
 Intention-exclusive (IX): indicates that an exclusive lock(s)
will be requested on some descendent node(s).
 Shared-intention-exclusive (SIX): indicates that the
current node is locked in shared mode but an exclusive
lock(s) will be requested on some descendent nodes(s).

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 49

Database Concurrency Control
Granularity of data items and Multiple Granularity
Locking
 These locks are applied using the following

compatibility matrix: Intention-shared (IS

Intention-exclusive (IX)
IS IX S SIX X Shared-intention-exclusive
(SIX)
IS yes yes yes yes no
IX yes yes no no no
S yes no yes no no
SIX yes no no no no
X no no no no no

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 50

Database Concurrency Control
Granularity of data items and Multiple Granularity Locking
 The set of rules which must be followed for producing serializable
schedule are
1. The lock compatibility must adhered to.
2. The root of the tree must be locked first, in any mode..
3. A node N can be locked by a transaction T in S or IX mode only if
the parent node is already locked by T in either IS or IX mode.
4. A node N can be locked by T in X, IX, or SIX mode only if the
parent of N is already locked by T in either IX or SIX mode.
5. T can lock a node only if it has not unlocked any node (to enforce
2PL policy).
6. T can unlock a node, N, only if none of the children of N are
currently locked by T.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 51

Database Concurrency Control
Granularity of data items and Multiple Granularity Locking: An example of a serializable execution:
T1 T2 T3
IX(db)
IX(f1)
IX(db)
IS(db)
IS(f1)
IS(p11)
IX(p11)
X(r111)
IX(f1)
X(p12)
S(r11j)
IX(f2)
IX(p21)
IX(r211)
Unlock (r211)
Unlock (p21)
Unlock (f2)
S(f2)

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 52

Database Concurrency Control
 Granularity of data items and Multiple Granularity Locking: An example
of a serializable execution (continued):
T1 T2 T3
unlock(p12)
unlock(f1)
unlock(db)

unlock(r111)
unlock(p11)
unlock(f1)
unlock(db)
unlock (r111j)
unlock (p11)
unlock (f1)
unlock(f2)
unlock(db)

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 53

Application Area
 1. Lock-Based Concurrency Control:
 • Application Area: Financial Systems
 • Explanation: In financial systems where
transactions involve updates to account
balances, lock-based concurrency control
ensures that multiple transactions cannot
concurrently modify the same account balance.
This prevents issues such as lost updates and
ensures accurate financial records.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 54

 Two-Phase Locking (2PL):
 • Application Area: Reservation Systems
(e.g., airline or hotel booking)
 • Explanation: In reservation systems,
multiple users may attempt to reserve the same
resource simultaneously. Two-Phase Locking
ensures that conflicting operations, such as
booking the same seat on a flight, are serialized.
Once a reservation is made, it is locked until the
transaction is committed or rolled back.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 55

 3. Multi-Version Concurrency Control (MVCC):
 • Application Area: Content Management
Systems
 • Explanation: Content management systems
often involve concurrent read and write
operations. MVCC allows multiple users to read
the content concurrently, even while others are
making updates. Each user sees a consistent
snapshot of the content as of the start of their
transaction.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 56

 4. Optimistic Concurrency Control:
 • Application Area: E-commerce Systems
 • Explanation: In e-commerce systems,
optimistic concurrency control is suitable for
scenarios where conflicts are rare. For example,
when users are browsing products, optimistic
concurrency allows them to add items to their
carts without locking the products. Conflicts are
checked at the time of checkout.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 57

 Timestamp-Based Concurrency Control:
 Application Area: Manufacturing Systems

(e.g., inventory management)

 Explanation: Timestamp-based concurrency

control is useful in manufacturing systems

where multiple processes may update
inventory levels concurrently. Each transaction
is assigned a timestamp, and conflicts are
resolved based on these timestamps to ensure
accurate and timely inventory updates.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 58

Summary
 Databases Concurrency Control
1. Purpose of Concurrency Control
2. Two-Phase locking
3. Limitations of CCMs
4. Index Locking
5. Lock Compatibility Matrix
6. Lock Granularity

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 59