Chapter 14: Transactions

 Transaction Concept
 Transaction State
 Concurrent Executions
 Serializability
 Implementation of Isolation

14.2

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.

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 Transaction State (Cont.)

14.4

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

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 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.

14.6

Example of Data Access

buffer
Buffer Block A input(A)
X A
Buffer Block B Y B
output(B)
read(X)
write(Y)

x2
x1
y1

work area work area

of T1 of T2

memory disk

Database System Concepts - 6th Edition 16.7 ©Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan

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 Example of Fund Transfer (Cont.)
 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)
 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

14.8

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.

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 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.

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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 16, after studying notion of correctness
of concurrent executions.

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 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

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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 :

14.13

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 Schedule 2
• A serial schedule where T2 is followed by T1

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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.

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 Schedule 4
 The following concurrent schedule does not preserve the
value of (A + B ).

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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

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 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.

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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.

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 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

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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

14.21

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 Anomalies with Interleaved Execution

 Reading Uncommitted Data (WR Conflicts, “dirty

reads”):

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Anomalies with Interleaved Execution

 Unrepeatable Reads (RW Conflicts):

14.23

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 Anomalies (Continued)
 Overwriting Uncommitted Data (WW Conflicts):

14.24

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End of Chapter 14

Database System Concepts, 6th Ed.

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

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