Database Management Systems (CO302U)

Transactions

Vinit Kakde

Department of Computer Engineering

Government College of Engineering Jalgaon
 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.)

 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, as we will see later.
 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 usingthe 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 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

 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 Schedule
3 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.

 What serial schedule is above equivalent to?

 Every view serializable schedule that is not conflict serializable
has blind
writes.
 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 of a precedence graph
 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

 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 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
 Levels of Consistency in SQL-92

 Serializable — default
 Repeatable read — only committed records to be read.
• Repeated reads of same record must return same value.
• However, a transaction may not be serializable – it may
find some
records inserted by a transaction but not find others.
 Read committed — only committed records can be read.
• Successive reads of record may return different (but
committed) values.
 Read uncommitted — even uncommitted records may be
read.