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 Chapter Three

Transaction Processing Concepts

 Chapter Outline

Characterizing
Schedules based
Intro. to Desirable on Recoverability
Transaction and Transaction
Transaction Properties of &
System Concepts Support in SQL
Processing Transactions
Serializability

1
 Brainstorming

1. What is meant by the concurrent execution of database transactions in a

multiuser system?
2. Discuss why concurrency control is needed and give informal examples.
3. Discuss the different types of failures of database transactions
4. Discuss the atomicity, durability, isolation, and consistency preservation
properties of a database transaction.
5. What is a serial schedule? What is a serializable schedule? Why is a serial
schedule considered correct? Why is a serializable schedule considered
correct?
6. Discuss the different measures of transaction equivalence. What is the
difference between conflict equivalence and view equivalence?
Slide 17- 4
3.1 Introduction to Transaction Processing
Single-User System:
♪ At most, one user at a time can use the system.
Multiuser System:
♪ Many users can access the system concurrently.
Concurrency
Interleaved processing:
♪ Concurrent execution of processes is interleaved in a single
CPU
 Parallel processing:
♪ Processes are concurrently executed in multiple CPUs.

2
 Cont’d...
A Transaction:
♪ Logical unit of database processing that includes one or more access
operations (read :-retrieval, write :- insert or update, delete).
♪ is the action or series of actions that carried out by users or application,
which reads or updates the contents of the database.
♪ a logical unit of works on a database

Transaction boundaries:
♪ Begin and End transaction.

An application program may contain several transactions

separated by the Begin and End transaction boundaries.

3
 Cont’d...
SIMPLE MODEL OF A DATABASE (for purposes of discussing transactions):
 A database is a collection of named data items
 Granularity of data - a field, a record , or a whole disk
 Basic operations are read and write
 read_item(X): Reads a database item named X into a program variable.
To simplify our notation, we assume that the program variable is also
named X.
 write_item(X): Writes the value of program variable X into the database
item named X.

4
 Cont’d...
READ AND WRITE OPERATIONS:
 Basic unit of data transfer from the disk to the computer main memory is one
block. In general, a data item (what is read or written) will be the field of some
record in the database, although it may be a larger unit such as a record or
even a whole block.
read_item(X) command includes the following steps:
 Find the address of the disk block that contains item X.
 Copy that disk block into a buffer in main memory (if that disk block is
not already in some main memory buffer).
 Copy item X from the buffer to the program variable named X.

5
 Cont’d...
READ AND WRITE OPERATIONS (cont’d...):
write_item(X) command includes the following steps:
 Find the address of the disk block that contains item X.
 Copy that disk block into a buffer in main memory (if that disk block
is not already in some main memory buffer).
 Copy item X from the program variable named X into its correct
location in the buffer.
 Store the updated block from the buffer back to disk (either
immediately or at some later point in time).

6
 Two sample transactions
FIGURE 17.2 Two sample transactions:
(a) Transaction T1
(b) Transaction T2

7
 Cont’d...
Why Concurrency Control is needed ?
 The Lost Update Problem/WR Conflicts

This occurs when two transactions that access the same database items have their
operations interleaved in a way that makes the value of some database item incorrect.
 The Temporary Update (or Dirty Read) Problem

This occurs when one transaction updates a database item and then the transaction fails for
some reason .
The updated item is accessed by another transaction before it is changed back to its
original value.
 The Incorrect Summary Problem

If one transaction is calculating an aggregate summary function on a number of records

while other transactions are updating some of these records, the aggregate function may
calculate some values before they are updated and others after they are updated.

8
Concurrent execution is uncontrolled:
(a) The lost update problem

9
Concurrent execution is uncontrolled:
(b) The temporary update problem.

10
Concurrent execution is uncontrolled:
(c) The incorrect summary problem.

11
Example b: The incorrect summary problem

Slide 17- 15
 Cont’d...
Why recovery is needed: ?
1. A computer failure (system crash):
A hardware or software error occurs in the computer system during transaction
execution. If the hardware crashes, the contents of the computer’s internal
memory may be lost.

2. A transaction or system error:

Some operation in the transaction may cause it to fail, such as integer
overflow or division by zero. Transaction failure may also occur
because of erroneous parameter values or because of a logical
programming error. In addition, the user may interrupt the transaction
during its execution.
12
 Cont’d...
Why recovery is needed (Cont’d.)
3. Local errors or exception conditions detected by the transaction:

Certain conditions necessitate cancellation of the transaction.

For example, data for the transaction may not be found. A condition, such
as insufficient account balance in a banking database, may cause a
transaction, such as a fund withdrawal from that account, to be
canceled.
4. Concurrency control enforcement:

The concurrency control method may decide to abort the

transaction, to be restarted later, because it violates serializability or
because several transactions are in a state of deadlock.
13
 Cont’d...
Why recovery is needed (cont’d...):
5. Disk failure:
Some disk blocks may lose their data because of a read or
write malfunction or because of a disk read/write head crash.
This may happen during a read or a write operation of the
transaction.
6. Physical problems and catastrophes:
This refers to an endless list of problems that includes power or air-
conditioning failure, fire, theft, sabotage, overwriting disks or tapes by
mistake, and mounting of a wrong tape by the operator.

14
 3.2 Transaction and System Concepts
A transaction is an atomic unit of work that is either completed in
its entirety or not done at all.
 For recovery purposes, the system needs to keep track of
when the transaction starts, terminates, and commits or
aborts.
Transaction states:(Reading Assignment)
 Active state
 Partially committed state
 Committed state
 Failed state
 Terminated State

Referance site:- https://www.javatpoint.com/dbms-states-of-

15
 Cont’d...
Recovery manager keeps track of the following operations:
 begin_transaction: This marks the beginning of transaction execution.
 read or write: These specify read or write operations on the database items
that are executed as part of a transaction.
 end_transaction: This specifies that read and write transaction operations
have ended and marks the end limit of transaction execution.
 At this point it may be necessary to check whether the changes introduced
by the transaction can be permanently applied to the database or whether
the transaction has to be aborted because it violates concurrency control or
for some other reason.

16
 Cont’d...
Recovery manager keeps track of the following operations (cont’d):
commit_transaction: This signals a successful end of the
transaction so that any changes (updates) executed by the
transaction can be safely committed to the database and will not
be undone.
rollback (or abort): This signals that the transaction has ended
unsuccessfully, so that any changes or effects that the
transaction may have applied to the database must be undone.

17
 Cont’d...
 Recovery techniques use the following operators:
 undo: Similar to rollback except that it applies to a
single operation rather than to a whole transaction.
 redo: This specifies that certain transaction operations
must be redone to ensure that all the operations of a
committed transaction have been applied successfully to
the database.

18
State transition diagram illustrating the states for
transaction execution

19
 System Log
Log or Journal: the log keeps track of all transaction operations
that affect the values of database items.
This information may be needed to permit recovery from transaction
failures.
The log is kept on disk, so it is not affected by any type of failure
except for disk or catastrophic failure.
In addition, the log is periodically backed up to archival storage (tape)

to guard against such catastrophic failures.

20
 Cont’d...
T in the following discussion refers to a unique transaction-id that is
generated automatically by the system and is used to identify each
transaction:
 Types of log record:
 [start_transaction,T]: Records that transaction T has started
execution.
 [write_item,T,X,old_value,new_value]: Records that transaction
T has changed the value of database item X from old_value to
new_value.
 [read_item,T,X]: Records that transaction T has read the value
of database item X.
 [commit,T]: Records that transaction T has completed
successfully, and affirms that its effect can be committed
(recorded permanently) to the database.
 [abort,T]: Records that transaction T has been aborted.
21
 Cont’d...

 The System Log (cont):

 Protocols for recovery that avoid cascading rollbacks
do not require that read operations be written to the
system log, whereas other protocols require these entries
for recovery.
 Strict protocols require simpler write entries that do not
include new_value (see Section 17.4/ REFERANCE).

22
 Recovery using log records:
If the system crashes, we can recover to a consistent database state by
examining the log.

1. Because the log contains a record of every write operation that changes
the value of some database item, it is possible to undo the effect of these
write operations of a transaction T by tracing backward through the log
and resetting all items changed by a write operation of T to their
old_values.
2. We can also redo the effect of the write operations of a transaction T by
tracing forward through the log and setting all items changed by a write
operation of T (that did not get done permanently) to their new_values.

23
 Recovery using log records:
Commit Point of a Transaction:
Definition a Commit Point:
 A transaction T reaches its commit point when all its operations that
access the database have been executed successfully and the effect of
all the transaction operations on the database has been recorded in the
log.
 Beyond the commit point, the transaction is said to be committed,
and its effect is assumed to be permanently recorded in the database.
 The transaction then writes an entry [commit,T] into the log.
Roll Back of transactions:
 Needed for transactions that have a [start_transaction,T] entry into the
log but no commit entry [commit,T] into the log.

24
 Cont’d...
Commit Point of a Transaction (cont):
 Redoing transactions:
 Transactions that have written their commit entry in the log must also have

recorded all their write operations in the log; otherwise they would not be
committed, so their effect on the database can be redone from the log
entries. (Notice that the log file must be kept on disk.
 At the time of a system crash, only the log entries that have been written

back to disk are considered in the recovery process because the contents of
main memory may be lost.)
 Force writing a log:
 Before a transaction reaches its commit point, any portion of the log that

has not been written to the disk yet must now be written to the disk.
 This process is called force-writing the log file before committing a

transaction.

25
 3.3 Desirable Properties of Transactions
ACID properties :-
 Atomicity: A transaction is an atomic unit of processing; it is either performed
in its entirety or not performed at all.
 Consistency preservation: A correct execution of the transaction must take the
database from one consistent state to another.
 Isolation: A transaction should not make its updates visible to other
transactions until it is committed; this property, when enforced strictly, solves
the temporary update problem and makes cascading rollbacks of transactions
unnecessary .
 Durability OR permanency: Once a transaction changes the database and the
changes are committed, these changes must never be lost because of
subsequent failure.
26
 3.4 Characterizing Schedules based on Recoverability
Transaction schedule or history:
 When transactions are executing concurrently in an interleaved fashion, the
order of execution of operations from the various transactions forms what is
known as a transaction schedule (or history).
A schedule (or history) S of n transactions T1, T2, …, Tn:
 It is an ordering of the operations of the transactions subject to the constraint that,
for each transaction Ti that participates in S, the operations of T1 in S must appear
in the same order in which they occur in T1.
 Note, however, that operations from other transactions Tj can be interleaved with
the operations of Ti in S.

27
 Schedules classified on recoverability:
 Recoverable schedule:
 One where no transaction needs to be rolled back.

 A schedule S is recoverable if no transaction T in S commits until all

transactions T’ that have written an item that T reads have committed.

 Cascadeless schedule:
 One where every transaction reads only the items that are written by

committed transactions.
 Schedules requiring cascaded rollback:
 A schedule in which uncommitted transactions that read an item from a

failed transaction must be rolled back.

 Strict Schedules:
 A schedule in which a transaction can neither read nor write an item X until
the last transaction that wrote X has committed.

28
3.5 Characterizing Schedules based on Serializability
A. Serial schedule:
 A schedule S is serial if, for every transaction T participating in the schedule,
all the operations of T are executed consecutively in the schedule.
 Therefore, in a serial schedule, only one transaction at a time is active the
commit (or abort) of the active transaction initiates execution of the next
transaction
 Otherwise, the schedule is called nonserial schedule.

B. Serializable schedule:
 A schedule S is serializable if it is equivalent to some serial schedule of the
same n transactions.

30
 Cont’d...
C. Result equivalent:
Two schedules are called result equivalent if they produce the same final
state of the database.
D. Conflict equivalent:
Two schedules are said to be conflict equivalent if the order of any two
conflicting operations is the same in both schedules.
E. Conflict serializable:
A schedule S is said to be conflict serializable if it is conflict equivalent to
some serial schedule S’.

31
 Cont’d...
Being serializable is not the same as being serial
Being serializable implies that the schedule is a correct schedule.



It will leave the database in a consistent state.
The interleaving is appropriate and will result in a state
as if the transactions were serially executed, yet will achieve
efficiency due to concurrent execution.

32
 Cont’d...
Serializability is hard to check.
 Interleaving of operations occurs in an operating system
through some scheduler
 Difficult to determine beforehand how the operations in
a schedule will be interleaved.

33
 Cont’d...
Practical approach:
 Come up with methods (protocols) to ensure serializability.
 It’s not possible to determine when a schedule begins and when it
ends.
Hence, we reduce the problem of checking the whole
schedule to checking only a committed project of the schedule
(i.e. operations from only the committed transactions.)
 Current approach used in most DBMSs:
Use of locks with two phase locking /2PL

34
 Cont’d...
 View equivalence:
A less restrictive definition of equivalence of schedules
 View serializability:
Definition of serializability based on view equivalence.
A schedule is view serializable if it is view equivalent to a
serial schedule.

35
 Cont’d...
 Two schedules are said to be view equivalent if the following
three conditions hold:
1. The same set of transactions participates in S and S’, and S and S’
include the same operations of those transactions.
2. For any operation Ri(X) of Ti in S, if the value of X read by the
operation has been written by an operation Wj(X) of Tj (or if it is the
original value of X before the schedule started), the same condition
must hold for the value of X read by operation Ri(X) of Ti in S’.
3. If the operation Wk(Y) of Tk is the last operation to write item Y in S,
then Wk(Y) of Tk must also be the last operation to write item Y in S’.

36
 Cont’d...
 The premise behind view equivalence:
 As long as each read operation of a transaction reads the result
of the same write operation in both schedules, the write
operations of each transaction must produce the same results.
 “The view”: the read operations are said to see the same view
in both schedules.

37
 Cont’d...
Relationship between view and conflict equivalence:
 The two are same under constrained write assumption which
assumes that if T writes X, it is constrained by the value of X it
read; i.e., new X = f(old X); /f=function
 Conflict serializability is stricter than view serializability.
With unconstrained write (or blind write), a schedule that is
view serializable is not necessarily conflict serializable.
 Any conflict serializable schedule is also view serializable, but
not vice versa.

38
 Cont’d...
 Relationship between view and conflict equivalence (cont):
 Consider the following schedule of three transactions
 T1: r1(X), w1(X); T2: w2(X); and T3: w3(X):
 Schedule Sa: r1(X); w2(X); w1(X); w3(X); c1; c2; c3;

 In Sa, the operations w2(X) and w3(X) are blind writes, since T1
and T3 do not read the value of X.
 Sa is view serializable, since it is view equivalent to the serial schedule
T1, T2, T3.
 However, Sa is not conflict serializable, since it is not conflict
equivalent to any serial schedule.

39
 Cont’d...
Testing for conflict serializability: Algorithm 17.1:
 Looks at only read_Item (X) and write_Item (X) operations
 Constructs a precedence graph (serialization graph) - a graph
with directed edges
 An edge is created from Ti to Tj if one of the operations in Ti
appears before a conflicting operation in Tj
 The schedule is serializable if and only if the precedence graph
has no cycles.

40
 Constructing the Precedence Graphs
 FIGURE 17.7 Constructing the precedence graphs for schedules A and D from Figure
17.5 to test for conflict serializability.
 (a) Precedence graph for serial schedule A.
 (b) Precedence graph for serial schedule B.
 (c) Precedence graph for schedule C (not serializable).
 (d) Precedence graph for schedule D (serializable, equivalent to schedule A).

41
Another example of serializability Testing

42
Another Example of Serializability Testing

43
Another Example of Serializability Testing

44
More Example: Conflict Serializability(Transn)
Let us consider the following transaction schedule and test it for Conflict
Serializability

T1 T2 T3
R(X)
R(X)
W(Y)
W(X)
R(Y)
W(Y)

Slide 17- 48
 Cont’d...
 Now, we will list all the conflicting operations. Further, we will
determine whether the schedule is conflict serializable
using Precedence Graph.
 Two operations are said to be conflicting if the belong to
different transaction, operate on same data and at least one of
them is a write operation.
1.R3(X) and W2(X) [ T3 -> T2 ]
2. W1(Y) and R3(Y) [ T1 -> T3 ]
3. W1(Y) and W2(Y) [ T1 -> T2 ]
4. R3(Y) and W2(Y) [ T3 -> T2 ]

Constructing the precedence graph, we see there are no cycles in the graph.
Therefore, the schedule is Conflict Serializable.

Slide 17- 49
 cont’d..
Draw the Precedence Graph for schedule S1 based on the above
transaction dependencies.

is,
ule
edh
T2 s c
-> ble
T3 liza
-> ria
T1 e se
· Therefore, Th
the topological orderings can be found by performing
the Topological Sort of the above precedence graph.

Slide 17- 50
 Characterizing Schedules based on Serializability (Cont’d...)

Other Types of Equivalence of Schedules

Under special semantic constraints, schedules that are
otherwise not conflict serializable may work correctly.
 Using commutative operations of addition and subtraction
(which can be done in any order) certain non-serializable
transactions may work correctly

45
 Cont’d...
Other Types of Equivalence of Schedules (contd.)
 Example: bank credit / debit transactions on a given item are
separable and commutative.
 Consider the following schedule S for the two transactions:
 Sh : r1(X); w1(X); r2(Y); w2(Y); r1(Y); w1(Y); r2(X); w2(X);
 Using conflict serializability, it is not serializable.
 However, if it came from a (read,update, write) sequence as follows:
 r1(X); X := X – 10; w1(X); r2(Y); Y := Y – 20;r1(Y);
 Y := Y + 10; w1(Y); r2(X); X := X + 20; (X);
 Sequence explanation: debit, debit, credit, credit.
 It is a correct schedule for the given semantics
46
 3.6 Transaction Support in SQL

 A single SQL statement is always considered to be atomic.

Either the statement completes execution without error or it fails
and leaves the database unchanged.
 With SQL, there is no explicit Begin Transaction statement.
Transaction initiation is done implicitly when particular SQL
statements are encountered.
 Every transaction must have an explicit end statement, which is
either a COMMIT or ROLLBACK.
47
 Cont’d...
Characteristics specified by a SET TRANSACTION statement in
SQL2:
 Access mode:
 READ ONLY or READ WRITE.
 The default is READ WRITE unless the isolation level of READ
UNCOMITTED is specified, in which case READ ONLY is assumed.

 Diagnostic size n, specifies an integer value n, indicating the

number of conditions that can be held simultaneously in the

diagnostic area.

48
 Cont’d...
Characteristics specified by a SET TRANSACTION statement in
SQL2 (contd.):
 Isolation level <isolation>, where <isolation> can be READ
UNCOMMITTED, READ COMMITTED, REPEATABLE READ
or SERIALIZABLE. The default is SERIALIZABLE.
 With SERIALIZABLE: the interleaved execution of transactions
will adhere to our notion of serializability.
 However, if any transaction executes at a lower level, then
serializability may be violated.

49
 Cont’d...
Potential problem with lower isolation levels:
 Dirty Read:
 Reading a value that was written by a transaction which failed.
 Nonrepeatable Read:
 Allowing another transaction to write a new value between multiple reads
of one transaction.
 A transaction T1 may read a given value from a table. If another
transaction T2 later updates that value and T1 reads that value again, T1
will see a different value.
 Consider that T1 reads the employee salary for Smith. Next, T2 updates the
salary for Smith. If T1 reads Smith's salary again, then it will see a different
value for Smith's salary.
50
 Cont’d...
 Potential problem with lower isolation levels (contd.):
 Phantoms:
 New rows being read using the same read with a condition.
 A transaction T1 may read a set of rows from a table, perhaps based
on some condition specified in the SQL WHERE clause.
 Now suppose that a transaction T2 inserts a new row that also
satisfies the WHERE clause condition of T1, into the table used by
T1.
 If T1 is repeated, then T1 will see a row that previously did not exist,
called a phantom.

51
 Cont’d...
 Sample SQL transaction:
EXEC SQL whenever sqlerror go to UNDO;
EXEC SQL SET TRANSACTION
READ WRITE
DIAGNOSTICS SIZE 5
ISOLATION LEVEL SERIALIZABLE;
EXEC SQL INSERT
INTO EMPLOYEE (FNAME, LNAME, SSN, DNO, SALARY)
VALUES ('Robert','Smith','991004321',2,35000);
EXEC SQL UPDATE EMPLOYEE
SET SALARY = SALARY * 1.1
WHERE DNO = 2;
EXEC SQL COMMIT;
GOTO THE_END;
UNDO: EXEC SQL ROLLBACK;
THE_END: ...

52
 Cont’d...
 Possible violation of serializabilty:
Type of Violation
Isolation Dirty nonrepeatable
level read read phantom
_______________________________________________________
READ UNCOMMITTED yes yes yes
READ COMMITTED no yes yes
REPEATABLE READ no no yes
SERIALIZABLE no no no

53
54
 TEST ONE (5%)
Draw the serializable graphs for the schedule S1 and S2 and state
whether each schedule is:-
(i)conflict serializable or not
(ii)view serializable or not.
If a schedule is conflict/view serializable , write down equivalent
serial schedule(s)

S1:r1(X);r2(Z);r1(Z);r3(X);r3(Y);w1(X);w3(Y);r2(Y);w2(Z);w2(Y);
S2:r1(X);r2(Z);r3(X);r1(Z);r2(Y);r3(Y);w1(X);w2(Z);w3(Y);w2(Y);

Slide 17- 61