Module 17: Transactions

Database System Concepts, 7th Ed.

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

 Transaction Concept
 Transaction State
 Concurrent Executions
 Serializability
 Recoverability
 Implementation of Isolation
 Transaction Definition in SQL
 Testing for Serializability.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.2 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.3 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.4 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.5 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.6 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.7 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.8 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Transaction State (Cont.)

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.9 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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 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 15, after studying notion of
correctness of concurrent executions.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.10 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.11 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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 :

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.12 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Schedule 2

 A serial schedule where T2 is followed by T1

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.13 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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 .

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.14 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Schedule 4

 The following concurrent schedule does not preserve the value

of (A + B ).

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.15 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 serializability is a property of a system describing how different processes
operate on shared data

 A system is serializable if its result is the same as if the operations were

executed in some sequential order, meaning there is no overlap in execution.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.16 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Transaction-1 Transaction-2

R(a)

W(a)

R(b)

W(b)

R(b)

R(a)

W(b)

W(a)

Transaction-2 begins its execution before Transaction-1 is finished, and they are both
working on the same data, i.e., “a” and “b”, interchangeably. Where “R”-Read, “W”-
Write

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.17 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.18 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.19 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.20 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
  Conflict serializability is a type of conflict operation in serializability that operates the
same data item that should be executed in a particular order and maintains the consistency
of the database.

Tran Tran
Trans
sact sact
actio
ion – ion – It is a conflict serializable schedule as well as a serial schedule because the
n–1 graph (a DAG) has no loops. We can also determine the order of
2 3
(t1) transactions because it is a serial schedule.
(t2) (t3)

R(a)

R(b)

R(b)

W(b)

As there is no incoming edge on

W(a)
Transaction 1, Transaction 1 will be
executed first. T3 will run second
W(a)
because it only depends on T1. Due to
its dependence on both T1 and T3, t2
R(a)
will finally be executed.
W(a)
Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.21 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
  Each transaction is assigned a unique number, and the operations within each
transaction are executed in order based on that number. This ensures that no
two conflicting operations are executed concurrently. For example, consider a
database with two tables: Customers and Orders. A customer can have
multiple orders, but each order can only be associated with one customer.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.22 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
  If a non-serial schedule can be transformed into its corresponding serial schedule, it is said
to be serializable
Non-serial Schedule
 A schedule where the transactions are overlapping or switching places. As they are used to
carry out actual database operations, multiple transactions are running at once. It’s possible
that these transactions are focusing on the same data set. Therefore, it is crucial that non-
serial schedules can be serialized in order for our database to be consistent both before and
after the transactions are executed.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.23 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.24 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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 3 Schedule 6

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.25 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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 >.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.26 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 View serializability

 View serializability is a type of operation in the serializable in which each transaction

should produce some result and these results are the output of proper sequential execution
of the data item

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.27 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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.
Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.28 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.29 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 T1: Read A → Write A→ Read B → Write B`
T2: Read B → Write B`
T3: Read C → Write C→ Read D → Write D`
T4: Read D → Write D
In order for a schedule to be considered serializable, it must first satisfy the conflict
serializability property. In our example schedule above, notice that Transaction 1 (T1) and
Transaction 2 (T2) read data item B before either writing it. This causes a conflict between T1
and T2 because they are both trying to read and write the same data item concurrently.
Therefore, the given schedule does not conflict with serializability.
there is another type of serializability called view serializability which our example does
satisfy. View serializability requires that if two transactions cannot see each other's updates
(i.e., one transaction cannot see the effects of another concurrent transaction), the schedule is
considered to view serializable. In our example, Transaction 2 (T2) cannot see any updates
made by Transaction 4 (T4) because they do not share common data items. Therefore, the
schedule is viewed as serializable.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.30 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
  Benefits of Serializability in DBMS
 Predictable execution:
 Easier to Reason about & Debug
 Reduced Costs:
 Increased Performance

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.31 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Other Notions of Serializability

 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.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.32 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.33 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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
 Are there others?
Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.34 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Test for View Serializability

 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.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.35 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.36 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.37 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.38 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Concurrency Control

 A database must provide a mechanism that will ensure that

all possible schedules are
• either conflict or view serializable, and
• are recoverable and preferably cascadeless
 A policy in which only one transaction can execute at a time
generates serial schedules, but provides a poor degree of
concurrency
• Are serial schedules recoverable/cascadeless?
 Testing a schedule for serializability after it has executed is
a little too late!
 Goal – to develop concurrency control protocols that will
assure serializability.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.39 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Concurrency Control (Cont.)

 Schedules must be conflict or view serializable, and

recoverable, for the sake of database consistency, and
preferably cascadeless.
 A policy in which only one transaction can execute at a time
generates serial schedules, but provides a poor degree of
concurrency.
 Concurrency-control schemes tradeoff between the amount
of concurrency they allow and the amount of overhead that
they incur.
 Some schemes allow only conflict-serializable schedules to
be generated, while others allow view-serializable schedules
that are not conflict-serializable.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.40 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Concurrency Control vs. Serializability
Tests

 Concurrency-control protocols allow concurrent schedules,

but ensure that the schedules are conflict/view serializable,
and are recoverable and cascadeless .
 Concurrency control protocols (generally) do not examine
the precedence graph as it is being created
• Instead a protocol imposes a discipline that avoids non-
serializable schedules.
• We study such protocols in Chapter 16.
 Different concurrency control protocols provide different
tradeoffs between the amount of concurrency they allow and
the amount of overhead that they incur.
 Tests for serializability help us understand why a
concurrency control protocol is correct.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.41 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Weak Levels of Consistency

 Some applications are willing to live with weak levels of

consistency, allowing schedules that are not serializable
• E.g., a read-only transaction that wants to get an
approximate total balance of all accounts
• E.g., database statistics computed for query optimization
can be approximate (why?)
• Such transactions need not be serializable with respect
to other transactions
 Tradeoff accuracy for performance

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.42 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 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.

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.43 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Levels of Consistency

 Lower degrees of consistency useful for gathering

approximate
information about the database
 Warning: some database systems do not ensure serializable
schedules by default
 E.g., Oracle (and PostgreSQL prior to version 9) by default
support a level of consistency called snapshot isolation (not
part of the SQL standard)

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.44 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Transaction Definition in SQL

 In SQL, a transaction begins implicitly.

 A transaction in SQL ends by:
• Commit work commits current transaction and begins a
new one.
• Rollback work causes current transaction to abort.
 In almost all database systems, by default, every SQL
statement also commits implicitly if it executes successfully
• Implicit commit can be turned off by a database directive
 E.g., in JDBC -- connection.setAutoCommit(false);
 Isolation level can be set at database level
 Isolation level can be changed at start of transaction
 E.g. In SQL set transaction isolation level serializable
 E.g. in JDBC -- connection.setTransactionIsolation(

Connection.TRANSACTION_SERIALIZABLE)

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.45 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Implementation of Isolation Levels

 Locking
• Lock on whole database vs lock on items
• How long to hold lock?
• Shared vs exclusive locks
 Timestamps
• Transaction timestamp assigned e.g. when a transaction
begins
• Data items store two timestamps
 Read timestamp
 Write timestamp
• Timestamps are used to detect out of order accesses
 Multiple versions of each data item
• Allow transactions to read from a “snapshot” of the
database

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.46 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 Transactions as SQL Statements
 E.g., Transaction 1:
select ID, name from instructor where salary > 90000
 E.g., Transaction 2:
insert into instructor values ('11111', 'James', 'Marketing',
100000)
 Suppose
• T1 starts, finds tuples salary > 90000 using index and locks
them
• And then T2 executes.
• Do T1 and T2 conflict? Does tuple level locking detect the
conflict?
• Instance of the phantom phenomenon
 Also consider T3 below, with Wu’s salary = 90000
update instructor
set salary = salary * 1.1
where name = 'Wu’
 Key idea: Detect “predicate” conflicts, and use some form of
“predicate locking”

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.47 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan
 End of Chapter 17

Database System Concepts - 7th Edition 17.48 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan