Chapter 15: Transactions

► Transaction Concept
► Transaction State
► Implementation of Atomicity and Durability
► Concurrent Executions
► Serializability
► Recoverability
► Implementation of Isolation
► Transaction Definition in SQL
► Testing for Serializability.
Transaction Concept
► A transaction is a unit of program execution that accesses
and possibly updates various data items.
► A transaction must see a consistent database.
► During transaction execution the database may be
inconsistent.
► When the transaction is committed, the database must be
consistent.
► Two main issues to deal with:
► Failures of various kinds, such as hardware failures and system
crashes
► Concurrent execution of multiple transactions
ACID Properties
To preserve 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.
 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)
► Consistency requirement – the sum of A and B is unchanged by the execution of
the transaction. Responsibility of application programmer
► Atomicity requirement — if the transaction fails after step 3 and before step 6,
the system should ensure that its updates are not reflected in the database,
else an inconsistency will result. Ensuring atomicity is the responsibility of the
database system itself; specifically, it is handled by a component called the
transaction-management component,
Example of Fund Transfer
(Cont.)
► 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 despite failures.
► We can guarantee durability by ensuring that either
► 1. The updates carried out by the transaction have been written
to disk before the transaction completes.
► 2. Information about the updates carried out by the transaction
and written to disk is sufficient to enable the database to
reconstruct the updates when the database system is restarted
after the failure.
► Ensuring durability is the responsibility of a component of the
database system called the recovery-management component.
► Isolation requirement — if between steps 3 and 6, another transaction 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).
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.

► Ensuring the isolation property is the responsibility of a component

of the database system called the concurrency-control component
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 – only if no internal logical error
► kill the transaction
► Committed, after successful completion. Once a transaction has
committed, we cannot undo its effects by aborting it. The only way to
undo the effects of a committed transaction is to execute a
compensating transaction.
A transaction starts in the active state. When it finishes its final statement, it
enters the partially committed state. At this point, the transaction has
completed its execution.

But it is still possible that it may have to be aborted, since the actual output
may still be temporarily residing in main memory, and thus a hardware
failure may preclude its successful completion.

The database system then writes out enough information to disk that, even
in the event of a failure, the updates performed by the transaction can be
re-created when the system restarts after the failure. When the last of this
information is written out, the transaction enters the committed state.
Transaction State (Cont.)
Concurrent Executions

► Multiple transactions are allowed to run concurrently in the

system. Advantages are:
► increased processor and disk utilization, leading to better
transaction throughput: 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,
i.e., to control the interaction among the concurrent
transactions in order to prevent them from destroying the
consistency of the database.
 Schedules
► Schedules – sequences that indicate 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.
Example Schedules
► Let T1 transfer $50 from A to B, and T2 transfer 10% of the
balance from A to B. The following is a serial schedule
(Schedule 1 in the text), in which T1 is followed by T2.
Example Schedule (Cont.)
► Let T1 and T2 be the transactions defined previously. The
following schedule (Schedule 3 in the text) is not a serial
schedule, but it is equivalent to Schedule 1.

In both Schedule 1 and 3, the sum A + B is preserved.

Example Schedules (Cont.)
► The following concurrent schedule (Schedule 4 in the text) does
not preserve the value of the sum A + B.
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
► We ignore operations other than read and write instructions, and
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.
Conflict Serializability
► 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.
Conflict Serializability (Cont.)
► 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
► Example of a schedule that is not conflict serializable:
T3 T4
read(Q)
write(Q)
write(Q)

We are unable to swap instructions in the above schedule to

obtain either the serial schedule < T3, T4 >, or the serial schedule
< T4, T3 >.
 Conflict Serializability (Cont.)
► Schedule 3 below can be transformed into Schedule 1, a serial
schedule where T2 follows T1, by series of swaps of non-conflicting
instructions. Therefore Schedule 3 is conflict serializable.
 View Serializability
► Let S and S´ be two schedules with the same set of transactions. S
and S´ are view equivalent if the following three conditions are met:
1. For each data item Q, if transaction Ti reads the initial value of Q in
schedule S, then transaction Ti must, in schedule S´, also read the initial
value of Q.
2. For each data item Q if transaction Ti executes read(Q) in schedule S, and
that value was produced by transaction Tj (if any), then transaction Ti
must in schedule S´ also read the value of Q that was produced by
transaction Tj .
3. For each data item Q, the transaction (if any) that performs the final
write(Q) operation in schedule S must perform the final write(Q)
operation in schedule S´.
As can be seen, view equivalence is also based purely on reads
and writes alone.
View Serializability (Cont.)
► A schedule S is view serializable it is view equivalent to a serial
schedule.
► Every conflict serializable schedule is also view serializable.
► Schedule 9 (from text) — a schedule which is view-serializable but not
conflict serializable.

► Every view serializable schedule that is not conflict

serializable has blind writes.
Other Notions of Serializability
► Schedule 8 (from text) given below produces same outcome as
the serial schedule < T1, T5 >, yet is not conflict equivalent or
view equivalent to it.

► Determining such equivalence requires analysis of operations

other than read and write.
 Recoverability
Need to address the effect of transaction failures on
concurrently
running transactions.
► Recoverable schedule — For each pair of transcation, if a transaction Tj
reads a data items previously written by a transaction Ti , the commit
operation of Ti appears before the commit operation of Tj.
► The following schedule (Schedule 11) is not recoverable if T9 commits
immediately after the read

► If T8 should abort, T9 would have read (and possibly shown to the user) an
inconsistent database state. Hence database must ensure that schedules
are recoverable.
 Recoverability (Cont.)
► Cascading rollback – a single transaction failure leads to a series of
transaction rollbacks. Consider the following schedule where none of
the transactions has yet committed (so the schedule is recoverable)

►
If T10 fails, T11 and T12 must also be rolled back.
► Can lead to the undoing of a significant amount of work
Recoverability (Cont.)

► Cascadeless schedules — cascading rollbacks cannot occur; for

each pair of transactions Ti and Tj such that Tj reads a data item
previously written by Ti, the commit operation of Ti appears
before the read operation of Tj.
► Every cascadeless schedule is also recoverable
► It is desirable to restrict the schedules to those that are
cascadeless
 Implementation of Isolation

► Schedules must be conflict or view serializable, and recoverable,

for the sake of database consistency, and preferably cascadeless.
► A policy in which only one transaction can execute at a time
generates serial schedules, but provides a poor degree of
concurrency..
► Concurrency-control schemes tradeoff between the amount of
concurrency they allow and the amount of overhead that they
incur.
► Some schemes allow only conflict-serializable schedules to be
generated, while others allow view-serializable schedules that
are not conflict-serializable.
Transaction Definition in SQL
► Data manipulation language must include a construct for
specifying the set of actions that comprise a transaction.
► In SQL, a transaction begins implicitly.
► A transaction in SQL ends by:
► Commit work commits current transaction and begins a new one.
► Rollback work causes current transaction to abort.
Testing for Serializability
► Consider some schedule of a set of transactions T1, T2, ...,
Tn
► Precedence graph — a direct graph where the vertices are
the transactions (names).
► We draw an arc from Ti to Tj if the two transaction conflict,
and Ti accessed the data item on which the conflict arose
earlier.
► We may label the arc by the item that was accessed.
► Example 1 x

y
Example Schedule (Schedule A)

T1 T2 T3 T4 T5
read(X)
read(Y)
read(Z)
read(V)
read(W)
read(W)
read(Y)
write(Y)
write(Z)
read(U)
read(Y)
write(Y)
read(Z)
write(Z)
read(U)
write(U)
Precedence Graph for
Schedule A
T1 T2

T4
T3
Test for Conflict
Serializability
► A schedule is conflict serializable if and only if its
precedence graph is acyclic.
► Cycle-detection algorithms exist which take order n2
time, where n is the number of vertices in the graph.
(Better algorithms take order n + e where e is the
number of edges.)
► If precedence graph is acyclic, the serializability order
can be obtained by a topological sorting of the graph.
This is a linear order consistent with the partial order of
the graph.
For example, a serializability order for Schedule A would
be
T5 → T1 → T3 → T2 → T4 .
 Test for View Serializability

► The precedence graph test for conflict serializability must be

modified to apply to a test for view serializability.
► The problem of checking if a schedule is view serializable falls in the
class of NP-complete problems. Thus existence of an efficient
algorithm is unlikely.
However practical algorithms that just check some sufficient
conditions for view serializability can still be used.
Schedule 2 -- A Serial Schedule in Which
T2 is Followed by T1
Schedule 5 -- Schedule 3 After Swapping A Pair of
Instructions
Schedule 6 -- A Serial Schedule That is Equivalent to
Schedule 3
Schedule 7
Precedence Graph for
(a) Schedule 1 and (b) Schedule 2
Illustration of Topological
Sorting
Precedence Graph
fig. 15.21