Chapter 18 : Concurrency Control

Database System Concepts, 7th Ed.

©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
See www.db-book.com for conditions on re-use
 Lock-Based Protocols

 A lock is a mechanism to control concurrent access to a data item

 Data items can be locked in two modes :
1. exclusive (X) mode. Data item can be both read as well as
written. X-lock is requested using lock-X instruction.
2. shared (S) mode. Data item can only be read. S-lock is
requested using lock-S instruction.
 Lock requests are made to concurrency-control manager. Transaction can
proceed only after request is granted.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.2 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Lock-Based Protocols (Cont.)

 Lock-compatibility matrix

 A transaction may be granted a lock on an item if the requested lock is

compatible with locks already held on the item by other transactions
 Any number of transactions can hold shared locks on an item,
 But if any transaction holds an exclusive on the item no other transaction
may hold any lock on the item.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.3 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Schedule With Lock Grants
 Grants omitted in rest of
chapter
• Assume grant
happens just before
the next instruction
following lock
request
 A locking protocol is a
set of rules followed by
all transactions while
requesting and releasing
locks.
 Locking protocols
enforce serializability by
restricting the set of
possible schedules.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.5 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Deadlock

 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 System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.6 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Deadlock (Cont.)

 The potential for deadlock exists in most locking protocols. Deadlocks are
a necessary evil.
 Starvation is also possible if concurrency control manager is badly
designed. For example:
• A transaction may be waiting for an X-lock on an item, while a
sequence of other transactions request and are granted an S-lock on
the same item.
• The same transaction is repeatedly rolled back due to deadlocks.
 Concurrency control manager can be designed to prevent starvation.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.7 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 The Two-Phase Locking Protocol

 A protocol which ensures conflict-

serializable schedules.
 Phase 1: Growing Phase
• Transaction may obtain locks

Locks
• Transaction may not release locks
 Phase 2: Shrinking Phase
• Transaction may release locks
• Transaction may not obtain locks Time
 The protocol assures serializability. It can be
proved that the transactions can be
serialized in the order of their lock points
(i.e., the point where a transaction acquired
its final lock).

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.8 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 The Two-Phase Locking Protocol (Cont.)

 Two-phase locking does not ensure freedom from deadlocks

 Extensions to basic two-phase locking needed to ensure recoverability of
freedom from cascading roll-back
• Strict two-phase locking: a transaction must hold all its exclusive
locks till it commits/aborts.
 Ensures recoverability and avoids cascading roll-backs
• Rigorous two-phase locking: a transaction must hold all locks till
commit/abort.
 Transactions can be serialized in the order in which they commit.
 Most databases implement rigorous two-phase locking, but refer to it as
simply two-phase locking

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.9 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 The Two-Phase Locking Protocol (Cont.)

 Two-phase locking is not a necessary

condition for serializability
• There are conflict serializable
schedules that cannot be obtained
if the two-phase locking protocol is
used.
 In the absence of extra information
(e.g., ordering of access to data), two-
phase locking is necessary for conflict
serializability in the following sense:
• Given a transaction Ti that does
not follow two-phase locking, we
can find a transaction Tj that uses
two-phase locking, and a schedule
for Ti and Tj that is not conflict
serializable.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.10 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Locking Protocols

 Given a locking protocol (such as 2PL)

• A schedule S is legal under a locking protocol if it can be generated
by a set of transactions that follow the protocol
• A protocol ensures serializability if all legal schedules under that
protocol are serializable

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.11 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Lock Conversions

 Two-phase locking protocol with lock conversions:

– Growing Phase:
• can acquire a lock-S on item
• can acquire a lock-X on item
• can convert a lock-S to a lock-X (upgrade)
– Shrinking Phase:
• can release a lock-S
• can release a lock-X
• can convert a lock-X to a lock-S (downgrade)
 This protocol ensures serializability

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.12 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Automatic Acquisition of Locks

 A transaction Ti issues the standard read/write instruction, without explicit

locking calls.
 The operation read(D) is processed as:
if Ti has a lock on D
then
read(D)
else begin
if necessary wait until no other
transaction has a lock-X on D
grant Ti a lock-S on D;
read(D)
end

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.13 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Automatic Acquisition of Locks (Cont.)

 The operation write(D) is processed as:

if Ti has a lock-X on D
then
write(D)
else begin
if necessary wait until no other trans. has any lock on D,
if Ti has a lock-S on D
then
upgrade lock on D to lock-X
else
grant Ti a lock-X on D
write(D)
end;

 All locks are released after commit or abort

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.14 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Implementation of Locking

 A lock manager can be implemented as a separate process

 Transactions can send lock and unlock requests as messages
 The lock manager replies to a lock request by sending a lock grant
messages (or a message asking the transaction to roll back, in case of a
deadlock)
• The requesting transaction waits until its request is answered
 The lock manager maintains an in-memory data-structure called a lock
table to record granted locks and pending requests

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.15 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Lock Table
 Dark rectangles indicate granted
locks, light colored ones indicate
waiting requests
 Lock table also records the type of
lock granted or requested
 New request is added to the end of
the queue of requests for the data
item, and granted if it is compatible
with all earlier locks
 Unlock requests result in the request
being deleted, and later requests are
checked to see if they can now be
granted
 If transaction aborts, all waiting or
granted requests of the transaction
are deleted
• lock manager may keep a list of
locks held by each transaction, to
implement this efficiently

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.16 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Graph-Based Protocols

 Graph-based protocols are an alternative to two-phase locking

 Impose a partial ordering  on the set D = {d1, d2 ,..., dh} of all data items.
• If di  dj then any transaction accessing both di and dj must access di
before accessing dj.
 The tree-protocol is a simple kind of graph protocol.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.17 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Tree Protocol

 Only exclusive locks are allowed.

 The first lock by Ti may be on any data item. Subsequently, a data Q can
be locked by Ti only if the parent of Q is currently locked by Ti.
 Data items may be unlocked at any time.
 A data item that has been locked and unlocked by Ti cannot subsequently
be relocked by Ti

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.18 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Graph-Based Protocols (Cont.)

 The tree protocol ensures conflict serializability as well as freedom from

deadlock.
 Unlocking may occur earlier in the tree-locking protocol than in the two-
phase locking protocol.
• Shorter waiting times, and increase in concurrency
• Protocol is deadlock-free, no rollbacks are required
 Drawbacks
• Protocol does not guarantee recoverability or cascade freedom
 Need to introduce commit dependencies to ensure recoverability
• Transactions may have to lock data items that they do not access.
 increased locking overhead, and additional waiting time
 potential decrease in concurrency
 Schedules not possible under two-phase locking are possible under the
tree protocol, and vice versa.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.19 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Deadlock Handling

 System is deadlocked if there is a set of transactions such that every

transaction in the set is waiting for another transaction in the set.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.20 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Deadlock Handling

 Deadlock prevention protocols ensure that the system will never enter
into a deadlock state. Some prevention strategies:
• Require that each transaction locks all its data items before it begins
execution (pre-declaration).
• Impose partial ordering of all data items and require that a
transaction can lock data items only in the order specified by the
partial order (graph-based protocol).

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.21 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 More Deadlock Prevention Strategies

 wait-die scheme — non-preemptive

• Older transaction may wait for younger one to release data item.
• Younger transactions never wait for older ones; they are rolled back
instead.
• A transaction may die several times before acquiring a lock
 wound-wait scheme — preemptive
• Older transaction wounds (forces rollback) of younger transaction
instead of waiting for it.
• Younger transactions may wait for older ones.
• Fewer rollbacks than wait-die scheme.
 In both schemes, a rolled back transactions is restarted with its original
timestamp.
• Ensures that older transactions have precedence over newer ones,
and starvation is thus avoided.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.22 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Deadlock prevention (Cont.)

 Timeout-Based Schemes:
• A transaction waits for a lock only for a specified amount of time. After
that, the wait times out and the transaction is rolled back.
• Ensures that deadlocks get resolved by timeout if they occur
• Simple to implement
• But may roll back transaction unnecessarily in absence of deadlock
 Difficult to determine good value of the timeout interval.
• Starvation is also possible

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.23 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Deadlock Detection

 Wait-for graph
• Vertices: transactions
• Edge from Ti Tj. : if Ti is waiting for a lock held in conflicting mode
byTj
 The system is in a deadlock state if and only if the wait-for graph has a
cycle.
 Invoke a deadlock-detection algorithm periodically to look for cycles.

Wait-for graph without a cycle Wait-for graph with a cycle

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.24 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Deadlock Recovery

 When deadlock is detected :

• Some transaction will have to rolled back (made a victim) to break
deadlock cycle.
 Select that transaction as victim that will incur minimum cost
• Rollback -- determine how far to roll back transaction
 Total rollback: Abort the transaction and then restart it.
 Partial rollback: Roll back victim transaction only as far as
necessary to release locks that another transaction in cycle is
waiting for
 Starvation can happen (why?)
• One solution: oldest transaction in the deadlock set is never chosen as
victim

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.25 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Multiple Granularity

 Granularity – It is the size of data item allowed to lock. Now Multiple

Granularity means hierarchically breaking up the database into blocks
which can be locked and can be track what need to lock and in what
fashion. Such a hierarchy can be represented graphically as a tree.When a
transaction locks a node in the tree explicitly, it implicitly locks all the
node's descendants in the same mode.
 Granularity of locking (level in tree where locking is done):
• Fine granularity (lower in tree): high concurrency, high locking
overhead
• Coarse granularity (higher in tree): low locking overhead, low
concurrency

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.26 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Example of Granularity Hierarchy

The levels, starting from the coarsest (top) level are

• database
• area
• file
• record

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.27 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Example of Granularity Hierarchy

 The levels, starting from the coarsest (top) level are

• database
• area
• file
• record
 The corresponding tree

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.28 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Intention Lock Modes

 In addition to S and X lock modes, there are three additional lock modes
with multiple granularity:
• intention-shared (IS): indicates explicit locking at a lower level of the
tree but only with shared locks.(fine Granularity)
• intention-exclusive (IX): indicates explicit locking at a lower level with
exclusive or shared locks
• shared and intention-exclusive (SIX): the subtree rooted by that
node is locked explicitly in shared mode and explicit locking is being
done at a lower level with exclusive-mode locks.
 Intention locks allow a higher level node to be locked in S or X mode
without having to check all descendent nodes.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.29 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Compatibility Matrix with Intention Lock Modes
 The compatibility matrix for all lock modes is:

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.30 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Multiple Granularity Locking Scheme

 Transaction Ti can lock a node Q, using the following rules:

1. The lock compatibility matrix must be observed.
2. The root of the tree must be locked first, and may be locked in any
mode.
3. A node Q can be locked by Ti in S or IS mode only if the parent of Q is
currently locked by Ti in either IX or IS mode.
4. A node Q can be locked by Ti in X, SIX, or IX mode only if the parent
of Q is currently locked by Ti in either IX or SIX mode.
5. Ti can lock a node only if it has not previously unlocked any node (that
is, Ti is two-phase).
6. Ti can unlock a node Q only if none of the children of Q are currently
locked by Ti.
 Observe that locks are acquired in root-to-leaf order, whereas they are
released in leaf-to-root order.
 Lock granularity escalation: in case there are too many locks at a
particular level, switch to higher granularity S or X lock

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.31 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Insert/Delete Operations and Predicate Reads

 Locking rules for insert/delete operations

• An exclusive lock must be obtained on an item before it is deleted

• A transaction that inserts a new tuple into the database I

automatically given an X-mode lock on the tuple
 Ensures that
• reads/writes conflict with deletes
• Inserted tuple is not accessible by other transactions until the
transaction that inserts the tuple commits

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.32 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Phantom Phenomenon

 Example of phantom phenomenon.

• A transaction T1 that performs predicate read (or scan) of a relation
 select count(*)
from instructor
where dept_name = 'Physics'
• and a transaction T2 that inserts a tuple while T1 is active but after
predicate read
 insert into instructor values ('11111', 'Feynman', 'Physics', 94000)
(conceptually) conflict in spite of not accessing any tuple in common.
 If only tuple locks are used, non-serializable schedules can result
• E.g. the scan transaction does not see the new instructor, but may
read some other tuple written by the update transaction
 Can also occur with updates
• E.g. update Wu’s department from Finance to Physics

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.33 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Insert/Delete Operations and Predicate Reads

 Another Example: T1 and T2 both find maximum instructor ID in

parallel, and create new instructors with ID = maximum ID + 1
• Both instructors get same ID, not possible in serializable schedule
 Schedule

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.34 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Handling Phantoms

 There is a conflict at the data level

• The transaction performing predicate read or scanning the relation is
reading information that indicates what tuples the relation contains
• The transaction inserting/deleting/updating a tuple updates the same
information.
• The conflict should be detected, e.g. by locking the information.
 One solution:
• Associate a data item with the relation, to represent the information
about what tuples the relation contains.
• Transactions scanning the relation acquire a shared lock in the data
item,
• Transactions inserting or deleting a tuple acquire an exclusive lock on
the data item. (Note: locks on the data item do not conflict with locks
on individual tuples.)
 Above protocol provides very low concurrency for insertions/deletions.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 18.35 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan