Advanced DB

Chapter Three
Introduction to Transaction
Processing Concepts and Theory

Chapter Outline

1 Introduction to Transaction Processing

2 Transaction and System Concepts
3 Desirable Properties of Transactions
4 Characterizing Schedules based on Recoverability
5 Characterizing Schedules based on Serializability
6 Transaction Support in SQL

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1 Introduction to Transaction Processing

• Single-User System: At most one user at a time can use

the system.
• Multiuser System: Many users can access the system
concurrently.
• Concurrency
– Interleaved processing: concurrent execution of
processes is interleaved in a single CPU
– Parallel processing: processes are concurrently executed
in multiple CPUs.

Introduction to Transaction Processing (cntd)

 A Transaction: logical unit of database processing that

includes one or more access operations (read -retrieval,
write - insert or update, delete).
 A transaction (set of operations) may be stand-alone
specified in a high level language like SQL submitted
interactively, or may be embedded within a program.
 Transaction boundaries: Begin and End transaction.
 An application program may contain several
transactions separated by the Begin and End
transaction boundaries.

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Introduction to Transaction Processing (cntd)

 A database - collection of named data items

 Granularity of data - a field, a record , or a whole
disk block (Concepts are independent of granularity)
 Basic operations are read and write
– read_item(X): Reads a database item named X into a
program variable. To simplify our notation, we assume
that the program variable is also named X.
– write_item(X): Writes the value of program variable X
into the database item named X.

Introduction to Transaction Processing (cntd)

READ AND WRITE OPERATIONS:

 Basic unit of data transfer from the disk to the computer main
memory is one block.
 In general, a data item (what is read or written) will be the
field of some record in the database, although it may be a
larger unit such as a record or even a whole block.

 read_item(X) command includes the following steps:

1. Find the address of the disk block that contains item X.
2. Copy that disk block into a buffer in main memory (if that
disk block is not already in some main memory buffer).
3. Copy item X from the buffer to the program variable
named X.

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Introduction to Transaction Processing (cntd)

READ AND WRITE OPERATIONS (cont.):

• write_item(X) command includes the following steps:
1. Find the address of the disk block that contains item X.
2. Copy that disk block into a buffer in main memory (if that
disk block is not already in some main memory buffer).
3. Copy item X from the program variable named X into its
correct location in the buffer.
4. Store the updated block from the buffer back to disk (either
immediately or at some later point in time).

FIGURE-1: Two sample transactions. (a) Transaction T1.

(b) Transaction T2.

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Introduction to Transaction Processing (cntd)

Why Concurrency Control is needed:

 The Lost Update Problem
This occurs when two transactions that access the
same database items have their operations
interleaved in a way that makes the value of some
database item incorrect.
 The Temporary Update (or Dirty Read) Problem
This occurs when one transaction updates a database
item and then the transaction fails for some reason.
The updated item is accessed by another transaction
before it is changed back to its original value.

Introduction to Transaction Processing (cntd)

Why Concurrency Control is needed (cont.):

 The Incorrect Summary Problem
If one transaction is calculating an aggregate
summary function on a number of records while
other transactions are updating some of these records,
the aggregate function may calculate some values
before they are updated and others after they are
updated.

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FIGURE-2.1: Some problems that occur when concurrent

execution is uncontrolled. (a) The lost update problem.

FIGURE 2.2 (continued)

Some problems that occur when concurrent execution is
uncontrolled. (b) The temporary update problem.

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FIGURE 2.3 (continued)

Some problems that occur when concurrent execution is
uncontrolled. (c) The incorrect summary problem.

Introduction to Transaction Processing (cntd)

Why recovery is needed:

(What causes a Transaction to fail)
1. A computer failure (system crash): A hardware or
software error occurs in the computer system during
transaction execution. If the hardware crashes, the
contents of the computer’s internal memory may be lost.
2. A transaction or system error : Some operation in the
transaction may cause it to fail, such as integer
overflow or division by zero. Transaction failure may
also occur because of erroneous parameter values or
because of a logical programming error. In addition, the
user may interrupt the transaction during its execution.

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Introduction to Transaction Processing (cntd)

Why recovery is needed (cont.):
3. Local errors or exception conditions detected by the
transaction:
- certain conditions necessitate cancellation of the transaction.
- For example, data for the transaction may not be found. A
condition, such as insufficient account balance in a banking
database, may cause a transaction, such as a fund withdrawal
from that account, to be canceled.
- a programmed abort in the transaction causes it to fail.
4. Concurrency control enforcement: The concurrency
control method may decide to abort the transaction, to be
restarted later, because it violates serializability or because
several transactions are in a state of deadlock.

Introduction to Transaction Processing (cntd)

Why recovery is needed (cont.):

5. Disk failure: Some disk blocks may lose their data
because of a read or write malfunction or because of a
disk read/write head crash. This may happen during a
read or a write operation of the transaction.
6. Physical problems and catastrophes: This refers to
an endless list of problems that includes power or air-
conditioning failure, fire, theft, sabotage, overwriting
disks or tapes by mistake, and mounting of a wrong
tape by the operator.

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2 Transaction and System Concepts

A transaction is an atomic unit of work that is either
completed in its entirety or not done at all. For recovery
purposes, the system needs to keep track of when the
transaction starts, terminates, and commits or aborts.

Transaction states:
• Active state
• Partially committed state
• Committed state
• Failed state
• Terminated State

Transaction and System Concepts

Recovery manager keeps track of the following operations:
 begin_transaction: This marks the beginning of
transaction execution.
 read or write: These specify read or write operations on
the database items that are executed as part of a transaction.

 end_transaction: This specifies that read and write

transaction operations have ended and marks the end limit
of transaction execution.
- At this point it may be necessary to check whether the
changes introduced by the transaction can be permanently
applied to the database or whether the transaction has to be
aborted because it violates concurrency control or for some
other reason.

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Transaction and System Concepts

Recovery manager keeps track of the following

operations (cont):
 commit_transaction: This signals a successful end of
the transaction so that any changes (updates) executed
by the transaction can be safely committed to the
database and will not be undone.
 rollback (or abort): This signals that the transaction
has ended unsuccessfully, so that any changes or
effects that the transaction may have applied to the
database must be undone.

Transaction and System Concepts

Recovery techniques use the following operators:
 undo: Similar to rollback except that it applies to
a single operation rather than to a whole
transaction.
 redo: This specifies that certain transaction
operations must be redone to ensure that all the
operations of a committed transaction have been
applied successfully to the database.

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FIGURE 3 - State transition diagram illustrating the

states for transaction execution.

Transaction and System Concepts

The System Log

 Log or Journal : The log keeps track of all transaction
operations that affect the values of database items. This
information may be needed to permit recovery from
transaction failures. The log is kept on disk, so it is not
affected by any type of failure except for disk or
catastrophic failure. In addition, the log is periodically
backed up to archival storage (tape) to guard against
such catastrophic failures.
 T in the following discussion refers to a unique
transaction-id that is generated automatically by the
system and is used to identify each transaction:

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Transaction and System Concepts

The System Log (cont):
Types of log record:

1. [start_transaction,T ]: Records that transaction T has

started execution.
2. [write_item,T,X,old_value,new_value]: Records that
transaction T has changed the value of database item X
from old_value to new_value.
3. [read_item,T,X]: Records that transaction T has read the
value of database item X.
4. [commit,T ]: Records that transaction T has completed
successfully, and affirms that its effect can be committed
(recorded permanently) to the database.
5. [abort,T ]: Records that transaction T has been aborted.

Transaction and System Concepts

The System Log (cont):

 protocols for recovery that avoid cascading rollbacks
do not require that read operations be written to the
system log, whereas other protocols require these
entries for recovery.
 strict protocols require simpler write entries that do
not include new_value.

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Transaction and System Concepts

Recovery using log records:
If the system crashes, we can recover to a consistent database
state by examining the log and using one of the techniques
described in Chapter 19 (textbook).
1. Because the log contains a record of every write operation
that changes the value of some database item, it is possible
to undo the effect of these write operations of a transaction
T by tracing backward through the log and resetting all
items changed by a write operation of T to their old_values.
2. We can also redo the effect of the write operations of a
transaction T by tracing forward through the log and setting
all items changed by a write operation of T (that did not get
done permanently) to their new_values.

Transaction and System Concepts (10)

Commit Point of a Transaction:

 Definition: A transaction T reaches its commit point
when all its operations that access the database have been
executed successfully and the effect of all the transaction
operations on the database has been recorded in the log.
Beyond the commit point, the transaction is said to be
committed, and its effect is assumed to be permanently
recorded in the database. The transaction then writes an
entry [commit,T] into the log.
 Roll Back of transactions: Needed for transactions that
have a [start_transaction,T] entry into the log but no
commit entry [commit,T] into the log.

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Transaction and System Concepts (11)

Commit Point of a Transaction (cont):
 Redoing transactions: Transactions that have written their
commit entry in the log must also have recorded all their
write operations in the log; otherwise they would not be
committed, so their effect on the database can be redone
from the log entries. (Notice that the log file must be kept
on disk. At the time of a system crash, only the log entries
that have been written back to disk are considered in the
recovery process because the contents of main memory
may be lost.)
 Force writing a log: before a transaction reaches its
commit point, any portion of the log that has not been
written to the disk yet must now be written to the disk. This
process is called force-writing the log file before
committing a transaction.

3. Desirable Properties of Transactions (1)

ACID properties:
 Atomicity: A transaction is an atomic unit of
processing; it is either performed in its entirety or not
performed at all.

 Consistency preservation: A correct execution of

the transaction must take the database from one
consistent state to another.

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Desirable Properties of Transactions (2)

ACID properties (cont.):

 Isolation: A transaction should not make its updates visible
to other transactions until it is committed; this property,
when enforced strictly, solves the temporary update
problem and makes cascading rollbacks of transactions
unnecessary (see Chapter 21 of text).
 Durability or permanency: Once a transaction changes
the database and the changes are committed, these changes
must never be lost because of subsequent failure.

4. Characterizing Schedules based on

Recoverability (1)

 Transaction schedule or history: When transactions are

executing concurrently in an interleaved fashion, the order
of execution of operations from the various transactions
forms what is known as a transaction schedule (or history).

 A schedule (or history) S of n transactions T1, T2, ..., Tn :

It is an ordering of the operations of the transactions
subject to the constraint that, for each transaction Ti that
participates in S, the operations of Ti in S must appear in
the same order in which they occur in Ti. Note, however,
that operations from other transactions Tj can be
interleaved with the operations of Ti in S.

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Characterizing Schedules based on Recoverability (2)

Schedules classified on recoverability:
 Recoverable schedule: One where no transaction needs to
be rolled back.
A schedule S is recoverable if no transaction T in S
commits until all transactions T’ that have written an item
that T reads have committed.
 Cascadeless schedule: One where every transaction reads
only the items that are written by committed transactions.
Schedules requiring cascaded rollback: A schedule in
which uncommitted transactions that read an item from a
failed transaction must be rolled back.
 Strict Schedules: A schedule in which a transaction can
neither read or write an item X until the last transaction that
wrote X has committed.

5. Characterizing Schedules based on

Serializability (1)
 Serial schedule: A schedule S is serial if, for every
transaction T participating in the schedule, all the
operations of T are executed consecutively in the
schedule. Otherwise, the schedule is called nonserial
schedule.
 Serializable schedule: A schedule S is serializable if it
is equivalent to some serial schedule of the same n
transactions.

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Characterizing Schedules based on Serializability (2)

 Result equivalent: Two schedules are called result

equivalent if they produce the same final state of the
database.
 Conflict equivalent: Two schedules are said to be
conflict equivalent if the order of any two conflicting
operations is the same in both schedules.
 Conflict serializable: A schedule S is said to be
conflict serializable if it is conflict equivalent to some
serial schedule S’.

Characterizing Schedules based on Serializability (3)

 Being serializable is not the same as being serial

 Being serializable implies that the schedule is a

correct schedule.
– It will leave the database in a consistent state.
– The interleaving is appropriate and will result in a
state as if the transactions were serially executed,
yet will achieve efficiency due to concurrent
execution.

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Characterizing Schedules based on Serializability (4)

 Serializability is hard to check.

– Interleaving of operations occurs in an operating
system through some scheduler
– Difficult to determine beforehand how the
operations in a schedule will be interleaved.

Characterizing Schedules based on Serializability (5)

Practical approach:
 Come up with methods (protocols) to ensure
serializability.
 It’s not possible to determine when a schedule begins
and when it ends. Hence, we reduce the problem of
checking the whole schedule to checking only a
committed project of the schedule (i.e. operations from
only the committed transactions.)
 Current approach used in most DBMSs:
– Use of locks with two phase locking

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Characterizing Schedules based on Serializability

 View equivalence: A less restrictive definition of

equivalence of schedules

 View serializability: definition of serializability based

on view equivalence. A schedule is view serializable if
it is view equivalent to a serial schedule.

Characterizing Schedules based on Serializability

Two schedules are said to be view equivalent if the

following three conditions hold:
1. The same set of transactions participates in S and S’,
and S and S’ include the same operations of those
transactions.
2. For any operation Ri(X) of Ti in S, if the value of X
read by the operation has been written by an operation
Wj(X) of Tj (or if it is the original value of X before the
schedule started), the same condition must hold for the
value of X read by operation Ri(X) of Ti in S’.
3. If the operation Wk(Y) of Tk is the last operation to
write item Y in S, then Wk(Y) of Tk must also be the
last operation to write item Y in S’.

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Characterizing Schedules based on Serializability (8)

The premise behind view equivalence:

 As long as each read operation of a transaction reads
the result of the same write operation in both
schedules, the write operations of each transaction
must produce the same results.
 “The view”: the read operations are said to see the the
same view in both schedules.

Characterizing Schedules based on Serializability (9)

Relationship between view and conflict equivalence:

 The two are same under constrained write assumption
which assumes that if T writes X, it is constrained by
the value of X it read; i.e., new X = f(old X)
 Conflict serializability is stricter than view
serializability. With unconstrained write (or blind write),
a schedule that is view serializable is not necessarily
conflict serializable.
 Any conflict serializable schedule is also view
serializable, but not vice versa.

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Characterizing Schedules based on Serializability (10)

Relationship between view and conflict equivalence (cont):
Consider the following schedule of three transactions
T1: r1(X), w1(X); T2: w2(X); and T3: w3(X):
Schedule Sa: r1(X); w2(X); w1(X); w3(X); c1; c2; c3;

In Sa, the operations w2(X) and w3(X) are blind writes,

since T2 and T3 do not read the value of X.

Sa is view serializable, since it is view equivalent to the

serial schedule T1, T2, T3. However, Sa is not
conflict serializable, since it is not conflict equivalent
to any serial schedule.
(Note: r = read, w = write, c = commit)

Characterizing Schedules based on Serializability (11)

Testing for conflict serializability

Algorithm 17.1:
1. Looks at only read_Item (X) and write_Item (X)
operations
2. Constructs a precedence graph (serialization graph) - a
graph with directed edges
3. An edge is created from Ti to Tj if one of the operations
in Ti appears before a conflicting operation in Tj
4. The schedule is serializable if and only if the precedence
graph has no cycles.

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FIGURE-17.7
Constructing the precedence graphs for schedules A and D from
Figure 17.5 to test for conflict serializability. (a) Precedence
graph for serial schedule A. (b) Precedence graph for serial
schedule B. (c) Precedence graph for schedule C (not
serializable). (d) Precedence graph for schedule D (serializable,
equivalent to schedule A).

FIGURE 17.8
Another example of serializability testing. (a) The
READ and WRITE operations of three transactions
T1, T2, and T3.

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FIGURE 17.8 (continued)

Another example of serializability testing. (b) Schedule E.

FIGURE 17.8 (continued)

Another example of serializability testing. (c) Schedule F.

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Characterizing Schedules based on Serializability (14)

Other Types of Equivalence of Schedules

 Under special semantic constraints, schedules that
are otherwise not conflict serializable may work
correctly. Using commutative operations of addition
and subtraction (which can be done in any order)
certain non-serializable transactions may work
correctly

Characterizing Schedules based on Serializability (15)

Other Types of Equivalence of Schedules (cont.)

Example: bank credit / debit transactions on a given item are
separable and commutative.
Consider the following schedule S for the two transactions:
Sh : r1(X); w1(X); r2(Y); w2(Y); r1(Y); w1(Y); r2(X); w2(X);
Using conflict serializability, it is not serializable.
However, if it came from a (read, update, write) sequence as follows:
r1(X); X := X – 10; w1(X); r2(Y); Y := Y – 20;r1(Y);
Y := Y + 10; w1(Y); r2(X); X := X + 20; (X);
Sequence explanation: debit, debit, credit, credit.
It is a correct schedule for the given semantics

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6 Transaction Support in SQL2

 A single SQL statement is always considered to be
atomic. Either the statement completes execution
without error or it fails and leaves the database
unchanged.
 With SQL, there is no explicit Begin Transaction
statement. Transaction initiation is done implicitly
when particular SQL statements are encountered.
 Every transaction must have an explicit end
statement, which is either a COMMIT or
ROLLBACK.

Transaction Support in SQL2

Characteristics specified by a SET

TRANSACTION statement in SQL2:
 Access mode: READ ONLY or READ WRITE. The default
is READ WRITE unless the isolation level of READ
UNCOMITTED is specified, in which case READ ONLY is
assumed.
 Diagnostic size n, specifies an integer value n, indicating
the number of conditions that can be held simultaneously in
the diagnostic area. (Supply user feedback information)

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Transaction Support in SQL2

Characteristics specified by a SET TRANSACTION

statement in SQL2 (cont.):
 Isolation level <isolation>, where <isolation> can be READ
UNCOMMITTED, READ COMMITTED, REPEATABLE
READ or SERIALIZABLE. The default is
SERIALIZABLE.
With SERIALIZABLE: the interleaved execution of
transactions will adhere to our notion of serializability.
However, if any transaction executes at a lower level, then
serializability may be violated.

Transaction Support in SQL2

Potential problem with lower isolation levels:
 Dirty Read: Reading a value that was written by a
transaction which failed.
 Nonrepeatable Read: Allowing another transaction to
write a new value between multiple reads of one
transaction.
A transaction T1 may read a given value from a table.
If another transaction T2 later updates that value and T1
reads that value again, T1 will see a different value.
Consider that T1 reads the employee salary for Smith.
Next, T2 updates the salary for Smith. If T1 reads Smith's
salary again, then it will see a different value for Smith's
salary.

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Transaction Support in SQL2

Potential problem with lower isolation levels (cont.):
 Phantoms: New rows being read using the same
read with a condition.
A transaction T1 may read a set of rows from a
table, perhaps based on some condition specified in
the SQL WHERE clause. Now suppose that a
transaction T2 inserts a new row that also satisfies
the WHERE clause condition of T1, into the table
used by T1. If T1 is repeated, then T1 will see a row
that previously did not exist, called a phantom.

Transaction Support in SQL2

Sample SQL transaction:
EXEC SQL whenever sqlerror go to UNDO;
EXEC SQL SET TRANSACTION
READ WRITE
DIAGNOSTICS SIZE 5
ISOLATION LEVEL SERIALIZABLE;
EXEC SQL INSERT
INTO EMPLOYEE (FNAME, LNAME, SSN, DNO, SALARY)
VALUES ('Robert','Smith','991004321',2,35000);
EXEC SQL UPDATE EMPLOYEE
SET SALARY = SALARY * 1.1
WHERE DNO = 2;
EXEC SQL COMMIT;
GOTO THE_END;
UNDO: EXEC SQL ROLLBACK;
THE_END: ...

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Transaction Support in SQL2 (7)

Possible violation of serializabilty:

Type of Violation
___________________________________
Isolation Dirty nonrepeatable
level read read phantom
_____________________ _____ _________ ____________________
READ UNCOMMITTED yes yes yes
READ COMMITTED no yes yes
REPEATABLE READ no no yes
SERIALIZABLE no no no

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