Database Management System

Unit 8
Introduction to Transaction Processing Concepts and Theory

Instructor
Indra Chaudhary
[email protected]
 DBMS: Syllabus
2

 Introduction to Transaction Processing

 Transaction and System Concepts
 Desirable Properties of Transaction
 (ACID Properties)
 Characterizing Schedules Based on Recoverability
 Characterizing Schedules Based on Serializability
 Transaction Concept
3

 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
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 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.)
5
 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.)
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 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
(Desirable Properties of Transactions)
7

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 T and T , it appears to T that either T ,
i j i j
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
8
 Transaction State (Cont.)
9

 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.

 Concurrent Executions
10

 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

 Will study in Chapter 16, after studying notion of correctness of
concurrent executions.
 Schedules
11

 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
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 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
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 A serial schedule where T2 is followed by T1

 Schedule 3
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 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
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 The following concurrent schedule does not preserve the value of (A + B ).

 Serializability
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 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
17

 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
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 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 l and l are consecutive in a schedule and they do not conflict, their
i j
results would remain the same even if they had been interchanged in
the schedule.
 Conflict Serializability
19

 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.)
20

 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.)
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 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
22

 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.)
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 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
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 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
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 Consider some schedule of a set of transactions T1, T2, ..., Tn

 Precedence graph — a directed 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
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 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
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 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
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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
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 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
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 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
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Thank You