Chapter 2: Transactions

Chapter 2: Transactions
 Transaction Concept
 Transaction State
 Concurrent Executions
 Serializability
 Recoverability
 Implementation of Isolation
 Transaction Definition in SQL
 Testing for Serializability.
 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.
 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 T transfer $50 from A to B, and T transfer
1 2
10% of the balance from A to B.
 A serial schedule in which T is followed by T :
1 2
 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,
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 .
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.
 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.

 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
x

y
Example Schedule (Schedule A) + Precedence
Graph

T1 T2 T3 T4 T5
read(X)
read(Y)
read(Z)
read(V)
read(W) T T
read(W)
read(Y) 1 2
write(Y)
write(Z)
read(U)
read(Y)
write(Y)
T T
read(Z)
write(Z) 4
3
read(U)
write(U)
T
5
 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
 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 ensure that schedules are recoverable.
 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 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.
 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.
 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);
End of Chapter