Assignment No: 2

Submitted By : Muhammad Uzair

Submitted To : MAM. NIDA GUL

Class No : 260

Section : (E)

Subject : DISTRIBUTED DATABASE SYSTEM

Department : IBMS

Discipline : (BSCS)

THE UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE

PESHAWAR PAKISTAN
QUESTION NO: 2
Explain transaction and uses of transaction?

Transactions
A transaction is a program including a collection of database operations, executed as a
logical unit of data processing. The operations performed in a transaction include one or
more of database operations like insert, delete, update or retrieve data. It is an atomic
process that is either performed into completion entirely or is not performed at all. A
transaction involving only data retrieval without any data update is called read-only
transaction.
Each high level operation can be divided into a number of low level tasks or operations. For
example, a data update operation can be divided into three tasks −
 read_item() − reads data item from storage to main memory.
 modify_item() − change value of item in the main memory.
 write_item() − write the modified value from main memory to storage.
Database access is restricted to read_item() and write_item() operations. Likewise, for all
transactions, read and write forms the basic database operations.

Uses of transaction
Single user vs multi user system
• Single-User : at most one user at a time can use the system
• Multiuser: many users can use the system concurrently.
• Multiprogramming: allows the computer to execute multiple programs at the same
time.
• Interleaving: keeps the CPU busy when a process requires an input or output
operation, the CPU switched to execute another process rather than remaining idle
during I/O time .
• Most of the theory concerning concurrency control in databases is developed in
terms of interleaved concurrency
• A Transaction is a logical unit of database processing that includes one or more
database access operation.
• These can include insertion, deletion, modification or retrieval operations.
• All database access operations between Begin Transaction and End Transaction
statements are considered one logical transaction.
•

Transaction Operations
The low level operations performed in a transaction are −
 begin_transaction − A marker that specifies start of transaction execution.
  read_item or write_item − Database operations that may be interleaved with main
memory operations as a part of transaction.
 end_transaction − A marker that specifies end of transaction.
 commit − A signal to specify that the transaction has been successfully completed in
its entirety and will not be undone.
 rollback − A signal to specify that the transaction has been unsuccessful and so all
temporary changes in the database are undone. A committed transaction cannot be
rolled back.

Transaction States
A transaction may go through a subset of five states, active, partially committed,
committed, failed and aborted.
 Active − The initial state where the transaction enters is the active state. The
transaction remains in this state while it is executing read, write or other
operations.
 Partially Committed − the transaction enters this state after the last statement of
the transaction has been executed.
 Committed − the transaction enters this state after successful completion of the
transaction and system checks have issued commit signal.
 Failed − the transaction goes from partially committed state or active state to failed
state when it is discovered that normal execution can no longer proceed or system
checks fail.
 Aborted − this is the state after the transaction has been rolled back after failure
and the database has been restored to its state that was before the transaction
began.
The following state transition diagram depicts the states in the transaction and the low
level transaction operations that causes change in states.
Desirable Properties of Transactions
Any transaction must maintain the ACID properties, viz. Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation,
and Durability.
 Atomicity − This property states that a transaction is an atomic unit of processing,
that is, either it is performed in its entirety or not performed at all. No partial
update should exist.
 Consistency − A transaction should take the database from one consistent state to
another consistent state. It should not adversely affect any data item in the
database.
 Isolation − A transaction should be executed as if it is the only one in the system.
There should not be any interference from the other concurrent transactions that
are simultaneously running.
 Durability − If a committed transaction brings about a change, that change should
be durable in the database and not lost in case of any failure.

Schedules and Conflicts

In a system with a number of simultaneous transactions, a schedule is the total order of
execution of operations. Given a schedule S comprising of n transactions, say T1, T2,
T3………..Tn; for any transaction Ti, the operations in Ti must execute as laid down in the
schedule S.

Types of Schedules

There are two types of schedules −

 Serial Schedules − In a serial schedule, at any point of time, only one transaction is
active, i.e. there is no overlapping of transactions. This is depicted in the following
graph −

 Parallel Schedules − In parallel schedules, more than one transactions are active
simultaneously, i.e. the transactions contain operations that overlap at time. This is
depicted in the following graph −
Conflicts in Schedules

In a schedule comprising of multiple transactions, a conflict occurs when two active

transactions perform non-compatible operations. Two operations are said to be in conflict,
when all of the following three conditions exists simultaneously −
 The two operations are parts of different transactions.
 Both the operations access the same data item.
 At least one of the operations is a write_item() operation, i.e. it tries to modify the
data item.

Serializability
A serializable schedule of ‘n’ transactions is a parallel schedule which is equivalent to a
serial schedule comprising of the same ‘n’ transactions. A serializable schedule contains the
correctness of serial schedule while ascertaining better CPU utilization of parallel schedule.

Equivalence of Schedules

Equivalence of two schedules can be of the following types −

 Result equivalence − Two schedules producing identical results are said to be result
equivalent.
 View equivalence − Two schedules that perform similar action in a similar manner
are said to be view equivalent.
 Conflict equivalence − Two schedules are said to be conflict equivalent if both
contain the same set of transactions and has the same order of conflicting pairs of
operations.