Concurrency Control Techniques

Why Concurrent Execution??

What sort of Problem do we have to face??
Mechanisms to handle the problems…
Database Concurrency Control
 1 Purpose of Concurrency Control
 To enforce Isolation (through mutual exclusion)
among conflicting transactions.
 To preserve database consistency through
consistency preserving execution of transactions.
 To resolve read-write and write-write conflicts.

 Example:
 In concurrent execution environment if T1 conflicts
with T2 over a data item A, then the existing
concurrency control decides if T1 or T2 should get
the A and if the other transaction is rolled-back or
waits.
Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques
 Locking is an operation which secures
 (a) permission to Read
 (b) permission to Write a data item for a transaction.
 Example:
 Lock (X). Data item X is locked in behalf of the
requesting transaction.
 Unlocking is an operation which removes these
permissions from the data item.
 Example:
 Unlock (X): Data item X is made available to all other
transactions.
 Lock and Unlock are Atomic operations.
 Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: Essential components
 Two locks modes:
 (a) shared (read) (b) exclusive (write).
 Shared mode: shared lock (X)
 More than one transaction can apply share lock on X for
reading its value but no write lock can be applied on X by
any other transaction.
 Exclusive mode: Write lock (X)
 Only one write lock on X can exist at any time and no
shared lock can be applied by any other transaction on X.
 Conflict matrix Read Write
Read

Y N
Write

N N
 Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: Essential components
 Lock Manager:
 Managing locks on data items.
 Lock table:
Transaction ID Data item id lock mode Ptr to next data item
T1 X1 Read Next

 Lock manager uses it to store the identify of transaction

locking a data item, the data item, lock mode and pointer to
the next data item locked. One simple way to implement a
lock table is through linked list.
Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: Essential components
 Database requires that all transactions should be well-
formed. A transaction is well-formed if:
 It must lock the data item before it reads or writes to it.
 It must not lock an already locked data items and it
must not try to unlock a free data item.
Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: Essential components
 The following code performs the lock operation:

B: if LOCK (X) = 0 (*item is unlocked*)

then LOCK (X)  1 (*lock the item*)
else begin
wait (until lock (X) = 0) and
the lock manager wakes up the transaction);
goto B
end;
Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: Essential components
 The following code performs the unlock operation:

LOCK (X)  0 (*unlock the item*)

if any transactions are waiting then
wake up one of the waiting the transactions;
 Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: The algorithm
 Two Phases:
 (a) Locking (Growing)
 (b) Unlocking (Shrinking).
 Locking (Growing) Phase:
 A transaction applies locks (read or write) on desired data items
one at a time.
 Transaction may obtain locks
 Transaction may not release locks
 Unlocking (Shrinking) Phase:
 A transaction unlocks its locked data items one at a time.
 Transaction may release locks
 Transaction may not obtain locks
 Requirement:
 For a transaction these two phases must be mutually exclusively,
that is, during locking phase unlocking phase must not start and
during unlocking phase locking phase must not begin.
Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: The algorithm

T1 T2 Result
read_lock (Y); read_lock (X); Initial values: X=20; Y=30
read_item (Y); read_item (X); Result of serial execution
unlock (Y); unlock (X); T1 followed by T2
write_lock (X); Write_lock (Y); X=50, Y=80.
read_item (X); read_item (Y); Result of serial execution
X:=X+Y; Y:=X+Y; T2 followed by T1
write_item (X); write_item (Y); X=70, Y=50
unlock (X); unlock (Y);
 Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: The algorithm

T1 T2 Result
read_lock (Y); X=50; Y=50
read_item (Y); Nonserializable because it.
unlock (Y); violated two-phase policy.
read_lock (X);
read_item (X);
unlock (X);
Time write_lock (Y);
read_item (Y);
Y:=X+Y;
write_item (Y);
unlock (Y);
write_lock (X);
read_item (X);
X:=X+Y;
write_item (X);
unlock (X);
Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: The algorithm
 Two-phase policy generates two locking algorithms
 (a) Basic
 (b) Conservative
 Conservative:
 Prevents deadlock by locking all desired data items
before transaction begins execution.
 Basic:
 Transaction locks data items incrementally. This may
cause deadlock which is dealt with.
 Strict:
 A more stricter version of Basic algorithm where
unlocking is performed after a transaction terminates
(commits or aborts and rolled-back). This is the most
commonly used two-phase locking algorithm.
 Deadlocks
Consider the partial schedule
Neither T3 nor T4 can make progress —
executing lock-S(B) causes T4 to wait for
T3 to release its lock on B, while executing
lock-X(A) causes T3 to wait for T4 to
release its lock on A.
 Such a situation is called a deadlock.
 To handle a deadlock one of T3 or T4 must be
rolled back and its locks released.
Database Concurrency Control
Dealing with Deadlock and Starvation
 Deadlock prevention
 A transaction locks all data items it refers to before it
begins execution.
 This way of locking prevents deadlock since a
transaction never waits for a data item.
 The conservative two-phase locking uses this approach.
Database Concurrency Control
Dealing with Deadlock and Starvation
 Deadlock detection and resolution
 In this approach, deadlocks are allowed to happen. The
scheduler maintains a wait-for-graph for detecting cycle.
If a cycle exists, then one transaction involved in the
cycle is selected (victim) and rolled-back.
 A wait-for-graph is created using the lock table. As soon
as a transaction is blocked, it is added to the graph.
When a chain like: Ti waits for Tj waits for Tk waits for
Ti or Tj occurs, then this creates a cycle. One of the
transaction o
Database Concurrency Control
Dealing with Deadlock and Starvation
 Deadlock avoidance
 There are many variations of two-phase locking
algorithm.
 Some avoid deadlock by not letting the cycle to
complete.
 That is as soon as the algorithm discovers that blocking a
transaction is likely to create a cycle, it rolls back the
transaction.
 Wound-Wait and Wait-Die algorithms use timestamps to
avoid deadlocks by rolling-back victim.
Database Concurrency Control
Dealing with Deadlock and Starvation
 Starvation
 Starvation occurs when a particular transaction
consistently waits or restarted and never gets a chance to
proceed further.
 In a deadlock resolution it is possible that the same
transaction may consistently be selected as victim and
rolled-back.
 This limitation is inherent in all priority based scheduling
mechanisms.
 In Wound-Wait scheme a younger transaction may
always be wounded (aborted) by a long running older
transaction which may create starvation.
Database Concurrency Control
Timestamp based concurrency control algorithm
 Timestamp
 A monotonically increasing variable (integer) indicating
the age of an operation or a transaction. A larger
timestamp value indicates a more recent event or
operation.
 Timestamp based algorithm uses timestamp to serialize
the execution of concurrent transactions.
Database Concurrency Control
Timestamp based concurrency control algorithm
 Basic Timestamp Ordering
 1. Transaction T issues a write_item(X) operation:
 If read_TS(X) > TS(T) or if write_TS(X) > TS(T), then
an younger transaction has already read the data item
so abort and roll-back T and reject the operation.
 If the condition in part (a) does not exist, then execute
write_item(X) of T and set write_TS(X) to TS(T).
 2. Transaction T issues a read_item(X) operation:
 If write_TS(X) > TS(T), then an younger transaction
has already written to the data item so abort and roll-
back T and reject the operation.
 If write_TS(X)  TS(T), then execute read_item(X) of
T and set read_TS(X) to the larger of TS(T) and the
current read_TS(X).
Database Concurrency Control
Timestamp based concurrency control algorithm
 Strict Timestamp Ordering
 1. Transaction T issues a write_item(X) operation:
 If TS(T) > read_TS(X), then delay T until the
transaction T’ that wrote or read X has terminated
(committed or aborted).
 2. Transaction T issues a read_item(X) operation:
 If TS(T) > write_TS(X), then delay T until the
transaction T’ that wrote or read X has terminated
(committed or aborted).
Database Concurrency Control
Timestamp based concurrency control algorithm
 Thomas’s Write Rule
 If read_TS(X) > TS(T) then abort and roll-back T and reject the
operation.
 If write_TS(X) > TS(T), then just ignore the write operation
and continue execution. This is because the most recent writes
counts in case of two consecutive writes.
 If the conditions given in 1 and 2 above do not occur, then
execute write_item(X) of T and set write_TS(X) to TS(T).
Database Concurrency Control
Multiversion concurrency control techniques
 This approach maintains a number of versions of a data item and
allocates the right version to a read operation of a transaction.
Thus unlike other mechanisms a read operation in this
mechanism is never rejected.
 Side effect:
 Significantly more storage (RAM and disk) is required to maintain
multiple versions. To check unlimited growth of versions, a garbage
collection is run when some criteria is satisfied.
Database Concurrency Control
Multiversion technique based on timestamp ordering
 This approach maintains a number of versions of a data item and
allocates the right version to a read operation of a transaction.
 Thus unlike other mechanisms a read operation in this mechanism is
never rejected.
 Side effects: Significantly more storage (RAM and disk) is
required to maintain multiple versions. To check unlimited
growth of versions, a garbage collection is run when some
criteria is satisfied.
Database Concurrency Control
Multiversion technique based on timestamp ordering
 Assume X1, X2, …, Xn are the version of a data item X created by a
write operation of transactions. With each Xi a read_TS (read
timestamp) and a write_TS (write timestamp) are associated.
 read_TS(Xi): The read timestamp of Xi is the largest of all the
timestamps of transactions that have successfully read version Xi.
 write_TS(Xi): The write timestamp of Xi that wrote the value of
version Xi.
 A new version of Xi is created only by a write operation.
Database Concurrency Control
Multiversion technique based on timestamp ordering
 To ensure serializability, the following two rules are used.
 If transaction T issues write_item (X) and version i of X has the
highest write_TS(Xi) of all versions of X that is also less than or equal
to TS(T), and read _TS(Xi) > TS(T), then abort and roll-back T;
otherwise create a new version Xi and read_TS(X) = write_TS(Xj) =
TS(T).
 If transaction T issues read_item (X), find the version i of X that has
the highest write_TS(Xi) of all versions of X that is also less than or
equal to TS(T), then return the value of Xi to T, and set the value of
read _TS(Xi) to the largest of TS(T) and the current read_TS(Xi).
Database Concurrency Control
Multiversion technique based on timestamp ordering
 To ensure serializability, the following two rules are used.
 If transaction T issues write_item (X) and version i of X has the highest
write_TS(Xi) of all versions of X that is also less than or equal to TS(T),
and read _TS(Xi) > TS(T), then abort and roll-back T; otherwise create a
new version Xi and read_TS(X) = write_TS(Xj) = TS(T).

 If transaction T issues read_item (X), find the version i of X that has the
highest write_TS(Xi) of all versions of X that is also less than or equal to
TS(T), then return the value of Xi to T, and set the value of read _TS(Xi)
to the largest of TS(T) and the current read_TS(Xi).
 Rule 2 guarantees that a read will never be rejected.
Database Concurrency Control
Multiversion Two-Phase Locking Using Certify Locks
 Concept
 Allow a transaction T’ to read a data item X while it is write
locked by a conflicting transaction T.
 This is accomplished by maintaining two versions of each data
item X where one version must always have been written by
some committed transaction. This means a write operation
always creates a new version of X.
 Database Concurrency Control
Multiversion Two-Phase Locking Using Certify Locks
 Steps
1. X is the committed version of a data item.
2. T creates a second version X’ after obtaining a write lock on X.
3. Other transactions continue to read X.
4. T is ready to commit so it obtains a certify lock on X’.
5. The committed version X becomes X’.
6. T releases its certify lock on X’, which is X now.

Compatibility tables
Read Write Read Write Certify
Read yes no Read yes no no
Write no no Write no no no
Certify no no no
Database Concurrency Control
Multiversion Two-Phase Locking Using Certify Locks
 Note:
 In multiversion 2PL read and write operations from conflicting
transactions can be processed concurrently.
 This improves concurrency but it may delay transaction commit
because of obtaining certify locks on all its writes. It avoids
cascading abort but like strict two phase locking scheme
conflicting transactions may get deadlocked.
Database Concurrency Control
Validation (Optimistic) Concurrency Control Schemes
 In this technique only at the time of commit serializability is
checked and transactions are aborted in case of non-serializable
schedules.
 Three phases:
1. Read phase
2. Validation phase
3. Write phase
1. Read phase:
 A transaction can read values of committed data items. However,
updates are applied only to local copies (versions) of the data
items (in database cache).
Database Concurrency Control
Validation (Optimistic) Concurrency Control Schemes
2. Validation phase: Serializability is checked before transactions write their
updates to the database.
 This phase for Ti checks that, for each transaction Tj that is either committed
or is in its validation phase, one of the following conditions holds:
 Tj completes its write phase before Ti starts its read phase.
 Ti starts its write phase after Tj completes its write phase, and the read_set of Ti
has no items in common with the write_set of Tj
 Both the read_set and write_set of Ti have no items in common with the
write_set of Tj, and Tj completes its read phase.
 When validating Ti, the first condition is checked first for each transaction Tj,
since (1) is the simplest condition to check. If (1) is false then (2) is checked and
if (2) is false then (3 ) is checked. If none of these conditions holds, the validation
fails and Ti is aborted.
Database Concurrency Control
Validation (Optimistic) Concurrency Control Schemes
3. Write phase: On a successful validation transactions’
updates are applied to the database; otherwise, transactions
are restarted.
Database Concurrency Control
Granularity of data items and Multiple Granularity Locking
 A lockable unit of data defines its granularity. Granularity can be
coarse (entire database) or it can be fine (a tuple or an attribute
of a relation).
 Data item granularity significantly affects concurrency control
performance. Thus, the degree of concurrency is low for coarse
granularity and high for fine granularity.
 Example of data item granularity:
1. A field of a database record (an attribute of a tuple)
2. A database record (a tuple or a relation)
3. A disk block
4. An entire file
5. The entire database
 Database Concurrency Control
Granularity of data items and Multiple Granularity Locking
 The following diagram illustrates a hierarchy of granularity from
coarse (database) to fine (record). DB

f1 f2

p11 p12 ... p1n p11 p12 ... p1n

r111 ... r11j r111 ... r11j r111 ... r11j r111 ... r11j r111 ... r11j r111 ... r11j
Database Concurrency Control
Granularity of data items and Multiple Granularity Locking
 To manage such hierarchy, in addition to read and write, three
additional locking modes, called intention lock modes are defined:
 Intention-shared (IS): indicates that a shared lock(s) will be
requested on some descendent nodes(s).
 Intention-exclusive (IX): indicates that an exclusive lock(s) will
be requested on some descendent node(s).
 Shared-intention-exclusive (SIX): indicates that the current
node is locked in shared mode but an exclusive lock(s) will be
requested on some descendent nodes(s).
 Database Concurrency Control
Granularity of data items and Multiple Granularity Locking
 These locks are applied using the following compatibility matrix:

Intention-shared (IS
Intention-exclusive (IX)
Shared-intention-exclusive
IS IX S SIX X
(SIX)
IS yes yes yes yes no
IX yes yes no no no
S yes no yes no no
SIX yes no no no no
X no no no no no
Database Concurrency Control
Granularity of data items and Multiple Granularity Locking
 The set of rules which must be followed for producing serializable schedule
are
1. The lock compatibility must adhered to.
2. The root of the tree must be locked first, in any mode..
3. A node N can be locked by a transaction T in S or IX mode only if the
parent node is already locked by T in either IS or IX mode.
4. A node N can be locked by T in X, IX, or SIX mode only if the parent of
N is already locked by T in either IX or SIX mode.
5. T can lock a node only if it has not unlocked any node (to enforce 2PL
policy).
6. T can unlock a node, N, only if none of the children of N are currently
locked by T.