TRANSACTION PROCESSING AND RECOVERABILITY

ADVANCED DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

ICT 331-2

1
CHAPTER OUTLINE

1 Introduction to Transaction Processing

2 Transaction and System Concepts
3 Desirable Properties of Transactions
4 Characterizing Schedules based on Recoverability
5 Characterizing Schedules based on Serializability
6 Transaction Support in SQL
Slide 17- 2
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.

Slide 17- 3
INTRODUCTION TO TRANSACTION PROCESSING

 Concurrency
 Interleaved processing:
 Concurrent execution of processes is interleaved in a
single CPU
 Parallel processing:
 Processes are concurrently executed in multiple CPUs.
INTRODUCTION TO TRANSACTION PROCESSING
INTRODUCTION
 A Transaction: TO TRANSACTION PROCESSING

 Logical unit of database processing that includes one or

more access operations (read -retrieval, write - insert or

update, delete).

 A transaction (set of operations) may be stand-alone

specified in a high-level language like SQL submitted Slide 17- 6

INTRODUCTION TO TRANSACTION PROCESSING

 Transaction boundaries:

 Begin and End transaction.

 An application program may contain several

transactions separated by the Begin and End transaction

boundaries. Slide 17- 7

INTRODUCTION TO TRANSACTION PROCESSING

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

block (Concepts are independent of granularity) Slide 17- 8

READ AND WRITE OPERATIONS:
 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

Slide 17- 9

into the database item named X.

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. Slide 17- 10

INTRODUCTION
 TO TRANSACTION
read_item(X) command PROCESSING
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 Slide 17- 11
INTRODUCTION TO TRANSACTION PROCESSING (5)
READ AND WRITE OPERATIONS (contd.):
 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).
 TWO SAMPLE TRANSACTIONS
 FIGURE 2 Two sample transactions:
 (a) Transaction T1
 (b) Transaction T2

Slide 17- 13
INTRODUCTION TO TRANSACTION PROCESSING (6)

Why Concurrency Control is needed:

 The Lost Update Problem

 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.
CONCURRENT EXECUTION IS UNCONTROLLED: (A) THE LOST
UPDATE PROBLEM.

Slide 17- 15
INTRODUCTION TO TRANSACTION PROCESSING (6)
Why Concurrency Control is needed:

 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.

CONCURRENT EXECUTION IS UNCONTROLLED: (B) THE
TEMPORARY UPDATE PROBLEM.

Slide 17- 17
INTRODUCTION TO TRANSACTION PROCESSING (6)
 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.
CONCURRENT EXECUTION IS UNCONTROLLED: (C) THE
INCORRECT SUMMARY PROBLEM.
WHY RECOVERY IS NEEDED

 The system is responsible for making sure that either

1. all the operations in the transaction are completed successfully

and their effect is recorded permanently in the database, or

2. the transaction has no effect whatsoever on the database or on

any other transactions.
WHY RECOVERY IS NEEDED

 The DBMS must not permit some operations of a

transaction T to be applied to the database while other
operations of T are not.

 This may happen if a transaction fails after executing

some of its operations but before executing all of them.
TYPES OF FAILURES

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.
Slide 17- 22
TYPES OF FAILURES

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.
TYPES OF FAILURES
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. Slide 17- 24
TYPES OF FAILURES

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 .
TYPES OFfailure:
5. Disk FAILURES

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
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.
Slide 17- 27
TRANSACTION AND SYSTEM CONCEPTS
 Transaction states:

 Active state

 Partially committed state

 Committed state

 Failed state

 Terminated State
TRANSACTION AND SYSTEM CONCEPTS (2)

 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. Slide 17- 29
TRANSACTION AND SYSTEM CONCEPTS (2)
 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.
 Recovery manager keeps track of the following operations
TRANSACTION AND SYSTEM CONCEPTS
(cont):

 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

Slide 17- 31

that the transaction may have applied to the database

TRANSACTION AND SYSTEM CONCEPTS
 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.
STATE TRANSITION DIAGRAM ILLUSTRATING THE STATES FOR
TRANSACTION EXECUTION
TRANSACTION AND SYSTEM CONCEPTS

 The 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.

TRANSACTION AND SYSTEM CONCEPTS
 The System Log

 Log or Journal: The log keeps track of all transaction

operations that affect the values of database items.

 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.
THE SYSTEM LOG (CONT):

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.
THE SYSTEM LOG (CONT):

 [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.
THE SYSTEM LOG (CONT):

 [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.

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 .
Slide 17- 39
TRANSACTION AND SYSTEM CONCEPTS
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.
COMMIT POINT OF A TRANSACTION (CONT)

 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.
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

COMMIT POINT OF A TRANSACTION (CONT):

 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.
DESIRABLE PROPERTIES OF TRANSACTIONS (1)

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.
ACID PROPERTIES CONT. …
 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.
CHARACTERIZING SCHEDULES BASED ON RECOVERABILITY
 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.

CHARACTERIZING SCHEDULES BASED ON RECOVERABILITY

 mainly interested in the read_item and write_item operations of

the transactions, as well as the commit and abort operations.

 A shorthand notation for describing a schedule uses the

symbols r, w, c, and a r, w, c, and a.

Sa: r1(X); r2(X); W1(X); r1(Y); w2(X); W1(Y)

CHARACTERIZING SCHEDULES BASED ON RECOVERABILITY

 Two operations in a schedule are said to conflict if they

satisfy all three of the following conditions:

1. they belong to different transactions;

2. they access the same item X; and

3. at least one of the operations is a write_item(X).

CHARACTERIZING SCHEDULES BASED ON RECOVERABILITY

 A schedule S of n transactions T1 , T2, ••• , Tn, is said to

be a complete schedule if the following conditions hold:

1. The operations in S are exactly those operations in T1,

T2, •.• , Tn, including a commit or abort operation as
the last operation for each transaction in the schedule.
CHARACTERIZING SCHEDULES BASED ON RECOVERABILITY

2. For any pair of operations from the same transaction Ti,

their order of appearance in S is the same as their order
of appearance in T;

3. For any two conflicting operations, one of the two must

occur before the other in the schedule.
CHARACTERIZING SCHEDULES BASED ON RECOVERABILITY

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. Slide 17- 51
CHARACTERIZING SCHEDULES BASED ON RECOVERABILITY

Schedules classified on recoverability (contd.):

Schedules requiring cascaded rollback:
 A schedule in which uncommitted transactions that
read an item from a failed transaction must be rolled
back.
CHARACTERIZING SCHEDULES BASED ON RECOVERABILITY

Schedules classified on recoverability:

 Cascadeless schedule:

 One where every transaction reads only the items that

are written by committed transactions.

CHARACTERIZING SCHEDULES BASED ON RECOVERABILITY

 Strict Schedules:

 A schedule in which a transaction can neither read or

write an item X until the last transaction that wrote X

has committed.
CHARACTERIZING SCHEDULES BASED ON SERIALIZABILITY
CHARACTERIZING SCHEDULES BASED ON SERIALIZABILITY
CHARACTERIZING SCHEDULES BASED ON SERIALIZABILITY

 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.
 Otherwise, the schedule is called nonserial schedule.
 Serializable schedule:
 A schedule S is serializable if it is equivalent to some
serial schedule of the same n transactions.
CHARACTERIZING SCHEDULES BASED ON SERIALIZABILITY
 Result equivalent:
 Two schedules are called result equivalent if they
produce the same final state of the database.
 Conflict equivalent:
 Two schedules are said to be conflict equivalent if the
order of any two conflicting operations is the same in
both schedules.
 Conflict serializable:
 A schedule S is said to be conflict serializable if it is
conflict equivalent to some serial schedule S’.
CHARACTERIZING SCHEDULES BASED ON SERIALIZABILITY

 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.
CHARACTERIZING SCHEDULES BASED ON SERIALIZABILITY

 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.
CHARACTERIZING SCHEDULES BASED ON SERIALIZABILITY
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
TRANSACTION SUPPORT IN SQL2
 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.
TRANSACTION SUPPORT IN SQL2

 Every transaction must have an explicit end statement,

which is either a COMMIT or ROLLBACK.

Characteristics specified by a SET TRANSACTION statement
TRANSACTION SUPPORT IN SQL2
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, Slide 17- 64

TRANSACTION SUPPORT IN SQL2

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.
TRANSACTION SUPPORT IN SQL2

Potential problem with lower isolation levels:

 Dirty Read:
 Reading a value that was written by a transaction which
failed.

Slide 17- 66
TRANSACTION SUPPORT IN SQL2
Potential problem with lower isolation levels:
 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. Slide 17- 67
 TRANSACTION SUPPORT IN SQL2 (5)
 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
TRANSACTION SUPPORT IN SQL2
 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: ...
TRANSACTION SUPPORT IN SQL2 (7)

 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

Slide 17- 70
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