Transaction Management Module-5

TRANSACTION MANAGEMENT

5.1 Transaction

● A transaction is an action, or series of actions that are being performed by a

single user or application program, which reads or updates the contents of the
database.
● A transaction can be defined as a logical unit of work on the database. This may
be an entire program, a piece of a program or a single command (like the SQL
commands such as INSERT or UPDATE) and it may engage in any number of
operations on the database.
● A transaction can be defined as a group of tasks. A single task is the minimum
processing unit which cannot be divided further.
● A transaction is an event which occurs on the database. Generally a transaction
reads a value from the database or writes a value to the database.
● Although a transaction can both read and write on the database, there are some
fundamental differences between these two classes of operations.
● A read operation does not change the image of the database in any way.

● But a write operation, whether performed with the intention of inserting,

updating or deleting data from the database, changes the image of the database.
● That is, we may say that these transactions bring the database from an image
which existed before the transaction occurred to an image which exists after the
transaction occurred .
● Example of a Transaction in DBMS :

✔ A simple example of a transaction will be dealing with the bank

accounts of two users let say Karlos and Ray.
✔ A simple transaction of moving an amount of 5000 from Karlos to Ray
engages many low-level jobs.
✔ As the amount of Rs. 5000 gets transferred from the Karlos's account to
Ray's account, a series of tasks gets performed in the background of the
screen.
✔ This very simple and small transaction includes several steps: decrease
Karlos's bank account from 5000:

1
Transaction Management Module-5

Open_Acc (Karlos) OldBal = Karlos.bal

NewBal = OldBal - 5000
Ram.bal = NewBal
CloseAccount(Karlos)
✔ Simply you can say, the transaction involves many tasks, such as
opening the account of Karlos, reading the old balance, decreasing the
specific amount 5000 from that account, saving new balance to an
account of Karlos and finally closing the transaction session.
✔ For adding amount 5000 in Ray's account, the same sort of tasks needs
to be done:
OpenAccount(Ray)
Old_Bal = Ray.bal
NewBal = OldBal + 1000
Ahmed.bal = NewBal
CloseAccount(B)

5.2 Properties of Transaction

✔ Every transaction, for whatever purpose it is being used, has the following four
properties.
✔ Taking the initial letters of these four properties we collectively call them the
ACID Properties. Here we try to describe them and explain them.
✔ ACID (atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability) Properties

✔ These attributes are:

(a) Atomicity- In a transaction involving two or more discrete pieces of
information, either all of the pieces are committed or none are.
(b) Consistency- A transaction either creates a new and valid state of data, or, if
any failure occurs, returns all data to its state before the transaction was started.
(c) Isolation- A transaction in process and not yet committed must remain isolated
from any other transaction.
(d) Durability- Committed data is saved by the system such that, even in the event
of a failure and system restart, the data is available in its correct state.

✔ Detailed Explanation :
5.2.1 Atomicity:
● This property ensures that either all the operations of a transaction reflect in
database or none.

2
Transaction Management Module-5

OR

● The 'all or nothing' property.

● A transaction is an indivisible entity that is either performed in its entirety or will

not get performed at all.

● This is the responsibility or duty of the recovery subsystem of the DBMS to ensure
atomicity.

● Example:

❖ we have two accounts A and B, each containing Rs 1000/-.

❖ We now start a transaction to deposit Rs 100/- from account A to Account B.

Read (A)
A = A – 100;
Write (A)
Read B;
B = B + 100;
Write (B)
❖ The transaction has 6 instructions to extract the amount from A and submit it to B.

❖ After transaction, it will show Rs 900/- in A and Rs 1100/- in B.

❖ Problem :
o Now, suppose there is a power failure just after instruction 3 (Write A) has
been complete.
o What happens now? After the system recovers , will show Rs 900/- in A, but
the same Rs 1000/-in B.
o It would be said that Rs 100/- evaporated in thin air for the power failure.
Clearly such a situation is not acceptable.
❖ Solution :
o It is to keep every value calculated by the instruction of the transaction not in any
stable storage (hard disc) but in a volatile storage (RAM), until the transaction
completes its last instruction.
o When we see that there has not been any error we do something known as a
COMMIT operation.
o Its job is to write every temporarily calculated value from the volatile storage on to
the stable storage.

3
Transaction Management Module-5

o In this way, even if power fails at instruction 3, the post recovery image of the
database will show accounts A and B both containing Rs 1000/-, as if the failed
transaction had never occurred.

5.2.2 Consistency:
● To preserve the consistency of database, the execution of transaction should take
place in isolation (that means no other transaction should run concurrently when
there is a transaction already running).
OR

● A transaction must alter the database from one steady state to another steady state.

● This is the responsibility of both the DBMS and the application developers to make
certain consistency.

● The DBMS can ensure consistency by putting into effect all the constraints that
have been particularly on the database schema such as integrity and enterprise
constraints.

● If we execute a particular transaction in isolation or together with other transaction,

(i.e. presumably in a multi-programming environment), the transaction will yield
the same expected result.

● To give better performance, every database management system supports the

execution of multiple transactions at the same time, using CPU Time Sharing.

● Concurrently executing transactions may have to deal with the problem of sharable
resources, i.e. resources that multiple transactions are trying to read/write at the
same time.

● For example:

❖ we may have a table or a record on which two transactions are trying to read or
write at the same time.

❖ Careful mechanisms are created in order to prevent mismanagement of these

sharable resources, so that there should not be any change in the way a
transaction performs.

❖ A transaction which deposits Rs 100/- to account A must deposit the same

amount whether it is acting alone or in conjunction with another transaction that
may be trying to deposit or withdraw some amount at the same time.

4
Transaction Management Module-5

5.2.3 Isolation
● For every pair of transactions, one transaction should start execution only when the
other finished execution.
In case multiple transactions are executing concurrently and trying to access a
sharable resource at the same time, the system should create an ordering in their
execution so that they should not create any anomaly in the value stored at the
sharable resource.
● There are several ways to achieve this and the most popular one is using some kind of
locking mechanism.
● Again, if you have the concept of Operating Systems, then you should remember the
semaphores, how it is used by a process to make a resource busy before starting to use it,
and how it is used to release the resource after the usage is over.
● Other processes intending to access that same resource must wait during this time.
Locking is almost similar.
● It states that a transaction must first lock the data item that it wishes to access, and
release the lock when the accessing is no longer required.
● Once a transaction locks the data item, other transactions wishing to access the same data
item must wait until the lock is released.

5.2.4 Durability:
● Once a transaction completes successfully, the changes it has made into the
database should be permanent even if there is a system failure.
● The recovery-management component of database systems ensures the durability of
transaction.
OR

● The effects of a successfully accomplished transaction are permanently recorded in

the database and must not get lost or vanished due to a subsequent failure.

● So this becomes the responsibility of the recovery sub-system to ensure durability.

● As we have seen in the explanation of the Atomicity property, the transaction, if

completes successfully, is committed.

● Once the COMMIT is done, the changes which the transaction has made to the
database are immediately written into permanent storage.

● So, after the transaction has been committed successfully, there is no question of

5
Transaction Management Module-5

any loss of information even if the power fails.

● Committing a transaction guarantees that the After transaction has been reached.

5.3 Transaction States

✔ There are the following six states in which a transaction may exist:

(i) Active: The initial state when the transaction has just started execution.
(ii) Partially Committed: At any given point of time if the transaction is executing
properly, then it is going towards it COMMIT POINT. The values generated
during the execution are all stored in volatile storage.
(iii) Failed: If the transaction fails for some reason. The temporary values are no
longer required, and the transaction is set to ROLLBACK. It means that any
change made to the database by this transaction up to the point of the failure must
be undone. If the failed transaction has withdrawn Rs. 100/- from account A, then
the ROLLBACK operation should add Rs 100/- to account A.
(iv) Aborted: When the ROLLBACK operation is over, the database reaches the
BFIM. The transaction is now said to have been aborted.
(v) Committed: If no failure occurs then the transaction reaches the COMMIT
POINT. All the temporary values are written to the stable storage and the
transaction is said to have been committed.
(vi) Terminated: Either committed or aborted, the transaction finally reaches this
state.

✔ The whole process can be described using the following diagram:

5.4 Consistency and isolation:

5.4.1 Consistency:
✔ Users are responsible for ensuring transaction consistency.

6
Transaction Management Module-5

✔ That is the user who submits a transaction must ensure that, when run to
completion by itself against a ‘consistent’ database instance, the transaction will
leave the database I a consistent state.
✔ Example:
(i)
● Fund transfer between bank accounts should not change the total amount of money
in the accounts.
● To transfer money from one account to another a transaction must debit one account
temporarily leaving the database inconsistent in a global sense, the database
consistent is preserved when the second account is credited with the transferred
amount.

(ii)
● If a faulty transfer program always credits the second amount with one dollar less
than the amount debited from the first account, the DBMS cannot be expected to
detect inconsistencies due to such errors in the user program’s logic.

5.4.2 Isolation:
✔ This property ensured by guaranteeing that, even though actions of several
transactions might be interleaved, the net effect is identical to executing all
transactions one after the other in some serial order
✔ Example:

● If two transactions T1 and T2 are executed concurrently, the net effect is guaranteed
to be equivalent to executing T1 followed by executing T2 or executing T2
followed by executing T1

Database consistency: It is the property that every transaction sees a consistent

database instance. Database consistency follows from transaction atomicity, isolation
and transaction consistency.

5.5 Implementation of Atomicity & Durability

✔ The recovery-management component of a database system can support

atomicity and durability by a variety of schemes. one of the simplest scheme is
called Shadow copy.

7
Transaction Management Module-5

5.5.1 Shadow copy:

● In the shadow-copy scheme, a transaction that wants to update the database

first creates a complete copy of the database.

● All updates are done on the new database copy, leaving the original copy, the
shadow copy, untouched.

● If at any point the transaction has to be aborted, the system merely deletes the
new copy.

● The old copy of the database has not been affected.

● This scheme is based on making copies of the database, called shadow copies,
assumes that only one transaction is active at a time.
● The scheme also assumes that the database is simply a file on disk.

● A pointer called db-pointer is maintained on disk; it points to the current copy

of the database.
● If the transaction completes, it is committed as follows:

❖ First, the operating system is asked to make sure that all pages of the new
copy of the database have been written out to disk. (Unix systems use the
flush command for this purpose.)

❖ After the operating system has written all the pages to disk, the database
system updates the pointer db-pointer to point to the new copy of the
database; the new copy then becomes the current copy of the database.

❖ The old copy of the database is then deleted.

● Figure below depicts the scheme, showing the database state before and after
the update.

8
Transaction Management Module-5

● The transaction is said to have been committed at the point where the updated
db pointer is written to disk.

5.6 Atomicity and durability

Atomicity:
✔ Transactions can be incomplete for three kinds of reasons
1. Transaction can be aborted: Transaction is aborted by the DBMS for some internal
reason; it is automatically restarted and executed a new.
2. The system may crash: because of power supply is interrupted when one or more
transactions are in progress.
3. Transaction may encounter an unexpected situation and decide to abort: read an
unexpected data value or be unable to access some disk.

✔ A DBMS ensures a transaction atomicity by undoing the actions of incomplete

transactions.
✔ To be able to do this the DBMS maintains a record called the log, of all writes to the
data base

Durability:
✔ The log is also used to ensure durability, if the system crashes before the changes
made by a completed transaction are written to disk, the log is used to remember
and restore these changes when the system restarts.

5.7 Transactions and Schedules

5.7.1 Transactions:
✔ A transaction for the DBMS is a series, or list of actions.

✔ The actions that can be executed by transaction include reads and writes of database
objects.
✔ The simple notations for actions an object O are:
RT (O): action of a transaction T reading an object O.

9
Transaction Management Module-5

WT (O): action of a transaction T writing an object O.

✔ In addition to reading and writing, each transaction must specify as its final action either
commit (completed successfully) or abort (terminate and undo all the actions carried out
thus far)
Abort T; denote the action of T aborting
Commit T; denote T committing.
✔ We make two important assumptions
1. Transactions interact with each other only via database read and write operations
(exchange action is not allowed.)
2. A database is a fixed collection of independent objects.
✔ If the first assumption is violated, the DBMS has no way to detect or prevent
inconsistencies causes by such external instructions between transactions, and it is up to
the writer of the application to ensure that the program is well-behaved.

5.7.2 Schedule:

✔ A schedule is a list of actions (reading, writing, aborting or committing) from a set of

transactions.
✔ The order in which two actions of a transaction T appear in a schedule must be the same
as the order in which they appear in T.

Classification :
(i)Serial schedule:

✔ Transactions are not interleaved, that is Transactions are executed from start to
finish, one by one.
(ii)Complete schedule

✔ A schedule that contains either an abort or commit for each transaction whose
actions are listed in it.

5.8 Concurrent Execution of Transactions

5.8.1 Motivation for Concurrent Execution

10
Transaction Management Module-5

1. While one transaction is waiting for a page to be read in from disk, the CPU can
process another transaction. This is because I/O activity can be done in parallel with CPU
activity in a computer. Overlapping I/O and CPU activity reduces the amount of time
disks and processors are idle and increases the system throughput.
2. Interleaved execution of a short transaction with a long transaction usually allows a
short transaction to complete quickly.

✔ A schedule is a collection of many transactions which is implemented as a unit.

✔ Depending upon how these transactions are arranged in within a schedule, a

schedule can be of two types:
(a)Serial: The transactions are executed one after another, in a non-preemptive manner.
(b)Concurrent: The transactions are executed in a pre-emptive, time shared method.

✔ Serial :

● In Serial schedule, there is no question of sharing a single data item among

many transactions, because not more than a single transaction is executing at
any point of time.

● However, a serial schedule is inefficient in the sense that the transactions suffer
for having a longer waiting time and response time, as well as low amount of
resource utilization.

✔ Concurrent :

● In concurrent schedule, CPU time is shared among two or more transactions in

order to run them concurrently.

● However, this creates the possibility that more than one transaction may need to
access a single data item for read/write purpose and the database could contain
inconsistent value if such accesses are not handled properly.

✔ Ex: Concurrent Execution

● Let us consider there are two transactions T1 and T2, whose instruction sets
are given as follows.

● Ex1 : T1 is the same as we have seen earlier, while T2 is a new transaction.

T1

11
Transaction Management Module-5

Read A;
A = A – 100;
Write A;
Read B;
B = B + 100;
Write B;
T2
Read A;
Temp = A * 0.1;
Read C;
C = C + Temp;
Write C;
● T2 is a new transaction which deposits to account C 10% of the amount in account A.

● If we prepare a serial schedule, then either T1 will completely finish before T2 can
begin, or T2 will completely finish before T1 can begin.
● However, if we want to create a concurrent schedule, then some Context Switching
need to be made, so that some portion of T1 will be executed, then some portion of T2
will be executed and so on.
● For example, 2: say we have prepared the following concurrent schedule.
T1 T2
Read A;
A = A – 100;
Write A;
Read A;
Temp = A * 0.1;
Read C;
C = C + Temp;
Write C;
Read B;
B = B + 100;
Write B;

● No problem here.

● We have made some Context Switching in this Schedule, the first one after executing
the third instruction of T1, and after executing the last statement of T2.
● T1 first deducts Rs 100/- from A and writes the new value of Rs 900/- into A.

● T2 reads the value of A, calculates the value of Temp to be Rs 90/- and adds the value

12
Transaction Management Module-5

to C.
● The remaining part of T1 is executed and Rs 100/- is added to B.

● It is clear that a proper Context Switching is very important in order to maintain the
Consistency and Isolation properties of the transactions.
● But let us take another example where a wrong Context Switching can bring about
disaster.
● Consider the following example 3 involving the same T1 and T2
T1 T2
Read A;
A = A – 100;
Read A;

Temp = A * 0.1;
Read C;
C = C + Temp;
Write C;

Write A;
Read B;
B = B + 100;
Write B;
● This schedule is wrong, because we have made the switching at the second instruction
of T1.
● The result is very confusing.

● If we consider accounts A and B both containing Rs 1000/- each, then the result of
this schedule should have left Rs 900/- in A, Rs 1100/- in B and add Rs 90 in C (as C
should be increased by 10% of the amount in A).
● But in this wrong schedule, the Context Switching is being performed before the new
value of Rs 900/- has been updated in A.
● T2 reads the old value of A, which is still Rs 1000/-, and deposits Rs 100/- in C.

● C makes an unjust gain of Rs 10/- out of nowhere.

● In the above example, we detected the error simple by examining the schedule and
applying common sense.

13
Transaction Management Module-5

● But there must be some well-formed rules regarding how to arrange instructions of
the transactions to create error free concurrent schedules.
● So , we go for the concept of Serializability.

5.8.2 Serializability
✔ A serializable schedule over a set S of committed transactions is a schedule whose effect
on any consistent database instance is guaranteed to be identical to that of some complete
serial schedule over S.
✔ The database instance that results from executing the given schedule is identical to the
database instance that results from executing the transactions in some serial order

Figure: A Serializable Schedule

✔ Even though the actions of T1 and T2 are interleaved, the result of this schedule is
equivalent to running T1 and then running T2.
✔ T1’s read and write of B is not influenced by T2’s action on A, and the net effect is the
same if these actions are swapped to obtain the serial schedule T1;T2.

Figure: Another Serializable Schedule

✔ DBMS might sometime executes transaction in a way that is not equivalent to any
serial execution; that is using a schedule that is not serializable this can happen for
two reasons

14
Transaction Management Module-5

● The DBMS might use a concurrency control method that ensure the executed
schedule , though not itself serializable, is equivalent to some serial schedule.

● SQL gives application programmers the ability to instruct the DBMS to choose non-
serializable schedules.

(a) Conflict Serializability

✔ Two instructions of two different transactions may want to access the same data item in
order to perform a read/write operation.

✔ Conflict Serializability deals with detecting whether the instructions are conflicting in any
way, and specifying the order in which these two instructions will be executed in case
there is any conflict.

✔ A conflict arises if at least one (or both) of the instructions is a write operation.

✔ The following rules are important in Conflict Serializability:

1. If two instructions of the two concurrent transactions are both for read operation, then
they are not in conflict, and can be allowed to take place in any order.

2. If one of the instructions wants to perform a read operation and the other instruction
wants to perform a write operation, then they are in conflict, hence their ordering is
important. If the read instruction is performed first, then it reads the old value of the data
item and after the reading is over, the new value of the data item is written. It the write
instruction is performed first, then updates the data item with the new value and the read
instruction reads the newly updated value.

3. If both the transactions are for write operation, then they are in conflict but can be
allowed to take place in any order, because the transaction do not read the value updated
by each other. However, the value that persists in the data item after the schedule is over
is the one written by the instruction that performed the last write.

✔ It may happen that we may want to execute the same set of transaction in a different
schedule on another day.

✔ Keeping in mind these rules, we may sometimes alter parts of one schedule (S1) to create
another schedule (S2) by swapping only the non-conflicting parts of the first schedule.

15
Transaction Management Module-5

✔ The conflicting parts cannot be swapped in this way because the ordering of the
conflicting instructions is important and cannot be changed in any other schedule that is
derived from the first.

✔ If these two schedules are made of the same set of transactions, then both S1 and S2
would yield the same result if the conflict resolution rules are maintained while creating
the new schedule.

✔ In that case the schedule S1 and S2 would be called Conflict Equivalent.

(b)View Serializability:

✔ This is another type of serializability that can be derived by creating another

schedule out of an existing schedule, involving the same set of transactions.

✔ These two schedules would be called View Serializable if the following rules are
followed while creating the second schedule out of the first.

✔ Let us consider that the transactions T1 and T2 are being serialized to create two
different schedules S1 and S2 which we want to be View Equivalent and both T1
and T2 want to access the same data item.

1. If in S1, T1 reads the initial value of the data item, then in S2 also, T1 should read the
initial value of that same data item.

2. If in S1, T1 writes a value in the data item which is read by T2, then in S2 also, T1
should write the value in the data item before T2 reads it.

3. If in S1, T1 performs the final write operation on that data item, then in S2
also, T1 should perform the final write operation on that data item.
✔ Except in these three cases, any alteration can be possible while creating S2 by
modifying S1.

5.8.3 Anomalies due to interleaved execution

There are 3 main ways in which a schedule involving two consistency preserving, committed
transactions could run against a consistent database and leave it in an inconsistent state.

1. Reading Uncommitted Data (WR Conflicts)

2. Unrepeatable Reads (RW conflict)

16
Transaction Management Module-5

3. Overwriting Uncommitted data (WW Conflict)

(a) Reading uncommitted data (WR Conflict)

✔ The first source of anomalies is that a transaction T2 could read a database object A that
has been modified by another transaction T1, which has not yet committed.Such a read is
called a dirty read.
✔ Example :

● Consider two transactions T1 and T2,each of which, run alone, preserves database
consistency: T1 transfers $100 from A to B and T2 increments both A and B by 6%.
● Suppose that the actions are interleaved so that-

1. The account transfer programt1 deducts $100 from account A then

2. The interest deposit program T2 reads the current values of accounts A and B and adds
6% of interest to each, and then
3. The account transfer program credits %100 to account B.

(b) Unrepeatable Reads (RW Conflicts)

✔ The second way in which anomalous behaviour could result is that a transaction T2
could change the value of an object A that has been read by a transaction T1, while T1
is still in progress.
✔ If T1 tries to read the value of A again, it will get a different result, even though it has
not modified A in the meantime.
✔ This situation could not arise in a serial execution of two transactions; it is called
Unrepeatable read.

✔ Example :

● Suppose A is the number of available copies of the book.

17
Transaction Management Module-5

● A transaction that places an order first reads A, checks that it is greater than 0, and
then decrements it.
● Transaction T1 reads A and sees the value 1.

● Transaction T2 reads A and sees the value 1, decrement A to 0 and commits.

● Transaction T1 then tries to decrement a gets an error.n progress.

If T1 tries to read the value of A again, it will get a different result, even tho

(c)Overwriting uncommitted data (WW Conflicts)

✔ The third source of anomalous behaviour is that a transaction T2 could overwrite the
value of an object A, which has already been modified by a transaction T1, while T1 is
still in progress.
✔ Example:

● Suppose that Harry and Larry are two employees and their salaries must be kept
equal.
● Transaction T1 sets their salary to $2000 and transaction T2 sets their salaries to
$1000.
● If we execute these in the serial order T1 followed by T2 , both receive the salary
$1000; the serial order T followed by T1 gives each salary $2000.
● This is acceptable from the consistency standpoint.

18
Transaction Management Module-5

✔ Note that neither transaction reads a salary value before writing it such a write is called a
blind write.

✔ Consider the following interleaving actions of T1 and T2; T2 sets Harry’s salaries to
$1000, T1 sets Larry’s salary to $2000, T2 sets Larry’s salary to $1000 and commits, and
finally T1 sets Harry’s salary to $2000 and commits.

✔ The result is not identical to the result o either of the two possible serial executions and
the interleaved schedule is therefore not serializable.

✔ It violates the desired consistency criterion that the two salaries must be equal. This
property is called lost Update problem

(d) Schedules involving Aborted Transactions

✔ All actions of aborted transactions are to be undone.

✔ A serializable Schedule over a set of transactions is a schedule whose effect on any

consistent database instance is guaranteed to be identical to that of some complete serial
schedule over the set of committed transactions in s.
✔ Example:
1. The account transfer programt1 deducts $100 from account A then
2. The interest deposit program T2 reads the current values of accounts A and B and adds
6% of interest to each, and then
3. T1 is aborted

19
Transaction Management Module-5

Figure: An Unrecoverable Schedule

✔ If T2 had not yet committed, we could deal with the situation by cascading the abort of
T1 and also aborting T2; this process recursively aborts any transaction that read data
written by T2 and so on.

✔ But T2 has already committed, and so we cannot undo its actions. We say that such a
schedule is Unrecoverable.

✔ Recoverable Schedule: transactions commit only after all transactions whose changes
they read commit.

✔ Avoid Cascading Aborts: if transaction read only the changes of committed transactions,
not only is the schedule recoverable, but also aborting a transaction can be accomplished
without cascading the abort to another transaction.

✔ Another problem in undoing the actions of a transaction, suppose that a transaction T2

overwrites the value of an object A that has been modified by a transaction T1, while T1
is still in progress, and T1 subsequently aborts.
✔ All of T1’s changes to database objects are undone by restoring the value of any object
that it modified to the value of the object before T1’s changes.
✔ When T1 is aborted and its changes are undone in this manner. T2’s changes are lost even
if T2 decides to commit.
✔ Example:

❖ If A originally had the value 5, then was changed by T1 to 6, and by T2 to 7, if T1

now aborts, the value of A becomes 5 again.
❖ Even if T2 commits, its change to A is inadvertently lost.

5.9 Lock Based Concurrency control

✔ A locking protocol is a set of rules to be followed by each transaction to ensure that,

20
Transaction Management Module-5

even though actions of several transactions might be interleaved, the net effect is
identical to executing all transactions in some serial order.
✔ Different locking protocols use different types of locks, such as
1. Shared Lock
2. Exclusive Lock
✔ Shared Lock: multiple transactions can share the object (read action)

✔ Exclusive Lock: only one transaction can use (write action)

5.9.1 Strict Two-Phase Locking (Strict 2PL)

✔ Rule 1: Each Transaction must obtain a S (shared) lock on object before reading,
and an X (exclusive) lock on object before writing.
✔ Rule 2: All locks held by a transaction are released when the transaction completes
A transaction that has an exclusive lock can also read the object.
A transaction that requests a lock is suspended until the DBMS is able to grant it the
requested lock.

✔ The DBMS keeps track of the locks it has granted and ensures that if a transaction
holds an exclusive lock on an object, no other transaction holds a shared or exclusive
lock on the same object.
✔ Requests to acquire and release locks can be automatically inserted into
transactions by the DBMS; users need not worry about these details.
✔ In effect, the locking protocol allows only safe interleaving of transactions.

✔ If two transactions access completely independent parts of the database, they

concurrently obtain the locks they need and proceed merrily on their ways.
✔ On the other hand, if two transactions access the same object, and one wants to
modify it, their actions are effectively ordered serially- all actions of one of these
transactions are completed before the other transaction can proceed.
Example:
● T1 would obtain an exclusive lock on A first and then read and write A.

● Then T2 would request a lock on A.

● However, this request cannot be granted until T1 releases its exclusive lock on A,
and the DBMS therefore suspends T2.

21
Transaction Management Module-5

● T1 now proceeds to obtain an exclusive lock on B reads and writes B, then finally
commits, at which time its locks are released.
● T2’s lock request is now granted, and it proceeds.

● In general however the actions of different transactions could be interleaved

5.9.2 Deadlocks
✔ Consider the following example

✔ Transaction T1 sets an exclusive lock on object A, T2 sets an exclusive lock on B, T1

22
Transaction Management Module-5

requests an exclusive lock on B and is queued, and T2 requests an exclusive lock on

A and is queued.
✔ Now, T1 is waiting for T2 to release its lock and T2 is waiting for T1 to release its
lock. Such a cycle of transactions waiting for locks to be released is called a deadlock.
✔ Clearly, these two transactions will make no further progress. Worse, they hold locks
that may be required by other transactions.
✔ The DBMS must either prevent or detect (and resolve) such deadlock situations.

✔ Deadlock Prevention

● We can prevent deadlocks by giving each transaction a priority and ensuring that
lower priority transactions are not allowed to wait for higher priority
transactions (or vice versa).
● One way to assign priorities is to give each transaction a timestamp when it
starts up.
● The lower the timestamp, the higher the transaction's priority, that is, the oldest
transaction has the highest priority.
● If a transaction Ti requests a lock and transaction Tj holds a conflicting lock, the
lock manager can use one of the following two policies:
o Wait-die: If It has higher priority, it is allowed to wait; otherwise it is
aborted.
o Wound-wait: If It has higher priority, abort Tj; otherwise Ti waits. In the
wait-die scheme, lower priority transactions can never wait for higher
priority transactions

● In the wound-wait scheme, higher priority transactions never wait for lower
priority transactions. In either case no deadlock cycle can develop.
● Transactions having lower timestamp value is having higher priority, this
ensures that the oldest transaction will get all the locks that it requires.
● The wait-die scheme is non preemptive; only a transaction requesting a lock can
be aborted.

✔ Deadlock Detection

● Deadlocks tend to be rare and typically involve very few transactions.

● This observation suggests that rather than taking measures to prevent deadlocks, it
may be better to detect and resolve deadlocks as they arise.
● In the detection approach, the DBMS must periodically check for deadlocks.

● When a transaction Ti is suspended because a lock that it requests cannot be

23
Transaction Management Module-5

granted, it must wait until all transactions Tj that currently hold conflicting locks
release them.
● The lock manager maintains a structure called a waits-for graph to detect deadlock
cycles.
● The nodes correspond to active transactions, and there is an arc from Ti to Tj if
(and only if) Ti is waiting for Tj to release a lock.
● The lock manager adds edges to this graph when it queues lock requests and
removes edges when it grants lock requests.
● The waits-for graph is periodically checked for cycles, which indicate deadlock.

● A deadlock is resolved by aborting a transaction that is on a cycle and releasing its

locks; this action allows some of the waiting transactions to proceed.
● As an alternative to maintaining a waits-for graph, a simplistic way to identify
deadlocks is to use a timeout mechanism: if a transaction has been waiting too long
for a lock, we can assume that it is in a deadlock cycle and abort it.

5.10 LOCK MANAGEMENT

✔ The part of the DBMS that keeps track of the locks issued to transactions is called the
lock manager.
✔ The lock manager maintains a lock table, with the data object identifier as the key.

✔ The DBMS also maintains a descriptive entry for each transaction in a transaction
table, and among other things, the entry contains a pointer to a list of locks held by
the transaction.
✔ A lock table entry for an object which can be a page or a record contains the
information like: the number of transactions currently holding a lock on the object
(this can be more than one if the object is locked in shared mode), the nature of the
lock (shared or exclusive), and a pointer to a queue of lock requests.

5.10.1 Implementing Lock and Unlock Requests

✔ According to the Strict 2PL protocol, before a transaction T reads or writes a
database object O, it must obtain a shared or exclusive lock on O and must hold on to
the lock until it commits or aborts.
✔ When a transaction needs a lock on an object, it issues a lock request to the lock
manager:
1. If a shared lock is requested, the queue of requests is empty, and the object is not
currently locked in exclusive mode, the lock manager grants the lock and updates the lock
table entry for the object (indicating that the object is locked in shared mode, and
incrementing the number of transactions holding a lock by one).

24
Transaction Management Module-5

2. If an exclusive lock is requested, and no transaction currently holds a lock on the object
(which also implies the queue of requests is empty), the lock manager grants the lock and
updates the lock table entry.
3. Otherwise, the requested lock cannot be immediately granted, and the lock request is
added to the queue of lock requests for this object. The transaction requesting the lock is
suspended.
✔ When a transaction aborts or commits, it releases all its locks. When a lock on an
object is released, the lock manager updates the lock table entry for the object and
examines the lock request at the head of the queue for this object.
✔ If this request can now be granted, the transaction that made the request is woken
up and given the lock.
✔ Indeed, if there are several requests for a shared lock on the object at the front of the
queue, all of these requests can now be granted together.
✔ Note that if T1 has a shared lock on O, and T2 requests an exclusive lock, T2's
request is queued.
✔ Now, if T3 requests a shared lock, its request enters the queue behind that of T2,
even though the requested lock is compatible with the lock held by T1.
✔ This rule ensures that T2 does not starve, that is, wait indefinitely while a stream of
other transactions acquire shared locks and thereby prevent T2 from getting the
exclusive lock that it is waiting for.

5.10.2 Atomicity of Locking and Unlocking

● To ensure atomicity of lock and unlock operations when several instances of the lock
manager code can execute concurrently, access to the lock table has to be guarded
by an operating system synchronization mechanism such as a semaphore.
● If suppose that a transaction requests an exclusive lock.

● The lock manager checks and finds that no other transaction holds a lock on the
object and therefore decides to grant the request.
● But in the meantime, another transaction might have requested and received a
conflicting lock!
● To prevent this, the entire sequence of actions in a lock request call (checking to see
if the request can be granted, updating the lock table, etc.) must be implemented as
an atomic operation.

5.11 CONCURRENCY CONTROLWITHOUT LOCKING

✔ Locking is the most widely used approach to concurrency control in a DBMS, but it is
not the only one.
✔ We now consider some alternative approaches.

25
Transaction Management Module-5

5.11.1 Optimistic Concurrency Control

✔ Locking protocols take a pessimistic approach to conflicts between transactions and
use either transaction abort or blocking to resolve conflicts.
✔ In a system with relatively light contention for data objects, the overhead of
obtaining locks and following a locking protocol must nonetheless be paid.
✔ In optimistic concurrency control, the basic premise is that most transactions will
not conflict with other transactions, and the idea is to be as permissive as possible in
allowing transactions to execute.
✔ Transactions proceed in three phases:
o 1. Read: The transaction executes, reading values from the database and writing
to a private workspace.
o 2. Validation: If the transaction decides that it wants to commit, the DBMS
checks whether the transaction could possibly have conflicted with any other
concurrently executing transaction. If there is a possible conflict, the transaction
is aborted; its private workspace is cleared and it is restarted.
o 3. Write: If validation determines that there are no possible conflicts, the changes
to data objects made by the transaction in its private workspace are copied into
the database.
✔ If, indeed, there are few conflicts, and validation can be done efficiently, this
approach should lead to better performance than locking does.
✔ If there are many conflicts, the cost of repeatedly restarting transactions (thereby
wasting the work they've done) will hurt performance significantly.
✔ Each transaction Ti is assigned a timestamp TS(Ti) at the beginning of its validation
phase, and the validation criterion checks whether the timestamp-ordering of
transactions is an equivalent serial order.
✔ For every pair of transactions  Ti and Tj such that TS(Ti) < TS(Tj), one of the
following conditions must hold:
1. Ti completes (all three phases) before Tj begins; or
2. Ti completes before Tj starts its Write phase, and Ti does not write any database
object that is read by Tj; or
3. Ti completes its Read phase before Tj completes its Read phase, and Ti does not
write any database object that is either read or written by Tj.
✔ To validate Tj, we must check to see that one of these conditions holds with
respect to each committed transaction Ti such that TS(Ti) < TS(Tj).
✔ Each of these conditions ensures that Tj's modifications are not visible to Ti.
o The first condition allows Tj to see some of Ti's changes, but clearly, they
execute completely in serial order with respect to each other.
o The second condition allows Tj to read objects while Ti is still modifying
objects, but there is no conflict because Tj does not read any object modified by
Ti. Although Tj might overwrite some objects written by Ti, all of Ti's writes
precede all of Tj's writes.

26
Transaction Management Module-5

o The third condition allows Ti and Tj to write objects at the same time, and thus
have even more overlap in time than the second condition, but the sets of
objects written by the two transactions cannot overlap. Thus, no RW, WR, or
WW conflicts are possible if any of these three conditions is met.
✔ Checking these validation criteria requires us to maintain lists of objects read and
written by each transaction.
✔ The locking overheads of lock-based approaches are replaced with the overheads
of recording read-lists and write-lists for transactions, checking for conflicts, and
copying changes from the private workspace.

5.11.2 Timestamp-Based Protocols

✔ The locking protocols that we have described thus far determine the order
between every pair of conflicting transactions at execution time by the first lock
that both members of the pair request that involves incompatible modes.
✔ Another method for determining the serializability order is to select an ordering
among transactions in advance.
✔ The most common method for doing so is to use a timestamp-ordering scheme.

Timestamps
● With each transaction Ti in the system, we associate a unique fixed timestamp,
denoted by TS (4).
● This timestamp is assigned by the database system before the transaction Ti
starts execution.
● If a transaction Ti has been assigned timestamp TS(Ti), and a new transaction Q
enters the system, then TS(4) < TS(4).
● There are two simple methods for implementing this scheme:
1. Use the value of the system clock as the timestamp; that is, a transaction's
timestamp is equal to the value of the clock when the transaction enters the
system.
2. Use a logical counter that is incremented after a new timestamp has been
assigned; that is, a transaction's timestamp is equal to the value of the counter
when the transaction enters the system.

● The timestamps of the transactions determine the serializability order.

● Thus, if TS (4) <TS(T), then the system must ensure that the produced schedule
is equivalent to a serial schedule in which transaction Ti appears before
transaction Q.
● To implement this scheme, we associate with each data item Q two timestamp
values:
o W-timestamp (Q) denotes the largest timestamp of any transaction that
27
Transaction Management Module-5

executed write (Q) successfully.

o R-timestamp(8) denotes the largest timestamp of any transaction that
executed read(Q) successfully.
● These timestamps are updated whenever a new read (Q) or write (Q) instruction
is executed.
● Advantages: This protocol ensures serializabilty and ensures freedom from
deadlock.
● Disadvantages: Starvation may occur due to continuously getting aborted and
restarting the transaction.

5.11.3 Thomas Write Rule:

Outdated writes are ignored in the Thomas write rule .It works same as Time
stamp oredering when R-W,W-R conflicts occurred. It allows more no.of
schedules than time stamp ordering as it is flexible than time stamp ordering
protocol.

The above schedule is not allowed according to TimeStamp ordering Protocol.But

allowed in Thomas Write rule which ignores W(A) inT1.So unnecessary abort
operations are avoided.

Crash Recovery
● Transactions (or units of work) against a database can be interrupted unexpectedly.
● If a failure occurs before all of the changes completed, committed, and written to disk,
the database is left in an inconsistent and unusable state.
● Crash recovery is the process by which the database is moved back to a consistent
and usable state.
● This is done by rolling back incomplete transactions and completing committed
transactions that were still in memory when the crash occurred (Figure 1).

28
 Transaction Management Module-5

Algorithm for Recovery and Isolation Exploiting Semantics (ARIES)

1. ARIES stands for “Algorithm for Recovery and Isolation Exploiting Semantics.” It was
designed to support the needs of industrial strength transaction processing systems.
ARIES uses logs to record the progress of transactions and their actions which cause
changes to recoverable data objects. The log is the source of truth and is used to ensure
that committed actions are reflected in the database, and that uncommitted actions are
undone.
2. Conceptually the log is a single ever-growing sequential file (append-only). Every log record
has a unique log sequence number (LSN), and LSNs are assigned in ascending order.

The ARIES recovery procedure consists of three main steps:

1. Analysis
The analysis step identifies the dirty (updated) pages in the buffer (Note 6), and the
set of transactions active at the time of the crash. The appropriate point in the log
where the REDO operation should start is also determined
2. REDO
The REDO phase actually reapplies updates from the log to the database. Generally,
the REDO operation is applied to only committed transactions. However, in ARIES,
this is not the case. Certain information in the ARIES log will provide the start point
for REDO, from which REDO operations are applied until the end of the log is
reached. In addition, information stored by ARIES and in the data pages will allow
ARIES to determine whether the operation to be redone has actually been applied to

29
Transaction Management Module-5

the database and hence need not be reapplied. Thus only the necessary REDO
operations are applied during recovery.
3. UNDO
During the UNDO phase, the log is scanned backwards and the operations of
transactions that were active at the time of the crash are undone in reverse order. The
information needed for ARIES to accomplish its recovery procedure includes the log,
the Transaction Table, and the Dirty Page Table. I
Before describing this topic we need to elaborate some concepts:
1. Log sequence number
It refers to a pointer used to identify the log records.
2. Dirty page table
It refers to pages with their updated version placed in main memory and disk version
of it is not updated.
A table is maintained which is useful in reducing unnecessary redo operation.
3. Fuzzy checkpoints.
A new type of checkpoints i.e. fuzzy checkpoints has been derived that allows
processes to process new transactions that alter the log has been updated without
having to update the database.

Media Recovery

● Media recovery is based on periodically making a copy of the database.

● When a database object such as a file or a page is corrupted the copy of that is brought
up-to-date by using the log.

● Media recovery requires a control file, data files (typically restored from backup), and
online and archived redo log files containing changes since the time the data files
were backed up. Media recovery is most often used to recover from media failure,

30
 Transaction Management Module-5

such as the loss of a file or disk, or a user error, such as the deletion of the contents of
a table.

Recovery from system crash

When the system is restarted after crash the recovery manager proceeds in three phases,

1)Analysis

2)Redo

3)Undo

Few techniques were

Undoing – If a transaction crashes, then the recovery manager may undo transactions i.e.
reverse the operations of a transaction.

Deferred update – This technique does not physically update the database on disk until a
transaction has reached its commit point. Before reaching commit, all transaction updates are
recorded in the local transaction workspace. If a transaction fails before reaching its commit
point, it will not have changed the database in any way so UNDO is not needed.

Immediate update – In the immediate update, the database may be updated by some
operations of a transaction before the transaction reaches its commit point.

Shadow Paging is a recovery technique that is used to recover databases. In this recovery
technique, a database is considered as made up of fixed size of logical units of storage which
are referred to as pages. pages are mapped into physical blocks of storage, with help of the
page table which allow one entry for each logical page of database

Backup techniques used were

● Full database backup – In this full database including data and database, Meta information
needed to restore the whole database, including full-text catalogs are backed up in a
predefined time series.
● Differential backup – It stores only the data changes that have occurred since last full
database backup. When same data has changed many times since last full database backup,

31
 Transaction Management Module-5

a differential backup stores the most recent version of changed data. For this first, we need
to restore a full database backup.
● Transaction log backup – In this, all events that have occurred in the database, like a record
of every single statement executed is backed up. It is the backup of transaction log entries
and contains all transaction that had happened to the database. Through this, the database
can be recovered to a specific point in time. It is even possible to perform a backup from a
transaction log if the data files are destroyed and not even a single committed transaction is
lost.

32