Chapter 3

Transaction Processing Concepts

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 (1)

• 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.
3
Introduction to Transaction Processing (2)
• A Transaction:
– Logical unit of database processing that includes one or more access operations (read
(retrieval), write (insert) or update, delete).

• A transaction may be an entire program, a part of a program, or a single command (for

example, the SQL command INSERT or UPDATE), and it may involve any number of
operations on the database.

• 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 (3)

• A database is a collection of named data items

• Granularity is the level of detail at which data are stored in a database. how detail-oriented
a single field is.

• 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.

5
Introduction to Transaction Processing (4)
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 (that 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:

– Find the address of the disk block that contains item X.

– Copy that disk block into a buffer in main memory (if that disk block is not already in
some main memory buffer).

– Copy item X from the buffer to the program variable named X.

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Introduction to Transaction Processing (5)
READ AND WRITE OPERATIONS (contd.):

• write_item(X) command includes the following steps:

– Find the address of the disk block that contains item X.

– Copy that disk block into a buffer in main memory (if that disk block is not already in
some main memory buffer).

– Copy item X from the program variable named X into its correct location in the buffer.

– Store the updated block from the buffer back to disk (either immediately or at some later
point in time).

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 Two sample transactions
• FIGURE 17.2 Two sample transactions:
– (a) Transaction T1
– (b) Transaction T2

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The functions that a DBMS should provide
• Among the various functions the three closely related functions that are intended to ensure that the
database is reliable and remains in a consistent state are:
1. transaction support,
2. concurrency control services, and
3. recovery services
• They are mutually dependent.

• Both concurrency control and recovery are required to protect the database from data
inconsistencies and data loss.
• concurrency control protocol prevents database accesses from interfering with one another.
• Database recovery is the process of restoring the database to a correct state following a
failure.
9
Introduction to Transaction Processing (6)
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.
• 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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Concurrent execution is uncontrolled: (a) The lost update problem.

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Concurrent execution is uncontrolled: (b) The temporary update
problem.

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Concurrent execution is uncontrolled: (c) The incorrect summary problem.

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Introduction to Transaction Processing (12)
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.

14
Introduction to Transaction Processing (13)
Why recovery is needed (Contd.):

(What causes a Transaction to fail)

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.
15
Introduction to Transaction Processing (14)
Why recovery is needed (contd.):

(What causes a Transaction to fail)

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 (1)
• 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/Aborted State
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Transaction and System Concepts (2)
• 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 (3)

• 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.

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Transaction and System Concepts (4)

• 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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State transition diagram illustrating the states for transaction execution

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Transaction and System Concepts (6)

• 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.

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Transaction and System Concepts (7)
• The System Log (cont):
– 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:
– Types of log record:
• [start_transaction,T]: Records that transaction T has started execution.
• [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.
• [read_item,T,X]: Records that transaction T has read the value of database item X.
• [commit,T]: Records that transaction T has completed successfully, and affirms that its effect
can be committed (recorded permanently) to the database.
• [abort,T]: Records that transaction T has been aborted.

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Transaction and System Concepts (9)
Recovery using log records:

• If the system crashes, we can recover to a consistent database state by examining the log:

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.

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Transaction and System Concepts (10)
Commit Point of a Transaction:
• Definition a Commit Point:
– 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.

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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.

• 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.

• Durability or permanency: Once a transaction changes the database and the changes are
committed, these changes must never be lost because of subsequent failure.
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4. Characterizing Schedules based on Recoverability (1)
Schedules and Recoverability

• 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 T1 in S must appear in the same order in which
they occur in T1.

– Note, however, that operations from other transactions Tj can be interleaved with the operations of
Ti in S.
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.
Characterizing Schedules based on Recoverability (3)
Schedules classified on recoverability (contd.):

• 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 non-serial schedule.

• Serializable schedule:

– A schedule S is serializable if it is equivalent to some serial schedule of the same n

transactions.

• Serializability
• In serializability, the ordering of read and write operations is important:

– If two transactions only read a data item, they do not conflict and order is not important.

– If two transactions either read or write completely separate data items, they do not
conflict and order is not important.

– If one transaction writes a data item and another either reads or writes the same data
item, the order of execution is important.
 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’.

– if it can be transformed into a serial schedule by swapping non-conflicting operations.

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.

36
Characterizing Schedules based on Serializability (5)

Practical approach: 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.)

• There are two main concurrency control techniques that allow transactions to execute safely
in parallel subject to certain constraints:

– locking and

– timestamp methods.

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Characterizing Schedules based on Serializability (6)

• View serializability:

– Definition of serializability based on view equivalence.

– A schedule is said to be View-Serializable if it is view equivalent to a Serial

Schedule (where no interleaving of transactions is possible).

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Characterizing Schedules based on Serializability (7)

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’.

39
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 same view in both schedules.

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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 T1 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.

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Characterizing Schedules based on Serializability (11)
Testing for conflict serializability: Algorithm:

– Looks at only read_Item (X) and write_Item (X) operations

– Constructs a precedence graph (serialization graph) - a graph with directed edges

– An edge is created from Ti to Tj if one of the operations in Ti appears before a conflicting

operation in Tj

– The schedule is serializable if and only if the precedence graph has no cycles.

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Constructing the Precedence Graphs

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).

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Another example of serializability Testing

45
Another Example of Serializability Testing

46
Another Example of Serializability Testing

47
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

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6. Transaction Support in SQL2 (1)

• 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.

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Transaction Support in SQL2 (2)
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.

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Transaction Support in SQL2 (3)
Characteristics specified by a SET TRANSACTION statement in SQL2 (contd.):

• 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.

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Transaction Support in SQL2 (4)
Potential problem with lower isolation levels:

• Dirty Read:

– Reading a value that was written by a transaction which failed.

• Non-repeatable 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 (5)

• Potential problem with lower isolation levels (contd.):

– 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.
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Transaction Support in SQL2 (6)

• 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 non repeatable
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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