Topic-1

Transaction
Topics Covered

 Transaction
 ACID Property
 Concurrency Control
 Serializability of Scheduling
Transaction

 Collection of operations that form a single logical unit of work are

called transactions.
 A transaction is a unit of program execution that accesses and possibly
updates various data items.
 A transaction is a logical unit of work that contains one or more SQL
statements.
 Usually, a transaction is initiated by a user program written in high-
level data-manipulation language or programming language, where it
is delimited by statements of the form begin transaction and end
transaction.
ACID property

 To ensure integrity of the data, database system must maintain

the following properties:
• Atomicity
• Consistency
• Isolation
• Durability
ACID property
 Atomicity: Either all operations of the transaction are reflected
properly in the database, or none are.
 Consistency: Execution of a transaction in isolation i.ie., with no other
transaction executing concurrently, preserves the consistency of the
database.
 Isolation: Even though multiple transactions may execute concurrently,
the system guarantees that, 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. Thus, each transaction is unaware of
other transactions executing concurrently in the system.
 Durability: After a transaction completes successfully, the changes it
has made to the database persist, even if there are system failures.
Atomicity
 This property states that a transaction must
be treated as an atomic unit, i.e., either all of
its operations are executed or none.
 For example, consider a transaction to
transfer Rs. 50 from account A to account B.
 In this transaction, if Rs. 50 is deducted
from account A then it must be added to
account B.
Consistency
 The database must remain in a consistent
state after any transaction.
 If the database was in a consistent state
before the execution of a transaction, it must
remain consistent after the execution of the
transaction as well.
In our example, total of A and B must
remain same before and after the execution
of transaction.
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.
 In the example once your transaction start
from step one its result should not be
accessed by any other transaction until last
step (step 6) is completed.
Durability
 After a transaction completes successfully,
the changes it has made to the database
persist(permanent), even if there are system
failures.
Once our transaction is completed up to last
step (step 6) its result must be stored
permanently. It should not be removed if the
system fails.
Transaction State
 A transaction may not always complete its execution successfully, such
transaction is termed aborted.
 Once the changes caused by an aborted transaction have been undone,
we say that the transaction has been rolled back.
 A transaction that completes its execution successfully is said to be
committed.
 Once the transactions are 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.
Transaction State

Image source : Google

Transaction State
 A transaction must be in one of the following states:
• 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
has been restored to its state prior to the start of the transaction.
• Committed, after successful transaction.
The Transaction Log
 Keeps track of all transactions that update the database. It contains:
– A record for the beginning of transaction
– For each transaction component (SQL statement)
• Type of operation being performed (update, delete, insert)
• Names of objects affected by the transaction (the name of the
table)
• “Before” and “after” values for updated fields
• Pointers to previous and next transaction log entries for the
same transaction
– The ending (COMMIT) of the transaction
This increases processing overhead but the advantage is the ability to
restore a corrupted database
Implementation of Atomicity and Durability
 The recovery-management component of a database system implements the
support for atomicity and durability.
E.g. the shadow-database scheme:
– all updates are made on a shadow copy of the database
• db_pointer is made to point to the updated shadow copy after
– the transaction reaches partial commit and
– all updated pages have been flushed to disk.

Image source : Google

Implementation of Atomicity and Durability
db_pointer always points to the current consistent copy of the
database.
• In case transaction fails, old consistent copy pointed to by
db_pointer can be used, and the shadow copy can be deleted.
The shadow-database scheme:
• Assumes that only one transaction is active at a time.
• Assumes disks do not fail
• Useful for text editors, but
o extremely inefficient for large databases (why?)
- Variant called shadow paging reduces copying of data, but is
still not practical for large databases
• Does not handle concurrent transactions
Concurrent Executions
 Multiple transactions are allowed to run concurrently in the system.
Advantages are:
– increased processor and disk utilization, leading to better
transaction throughput
• E.g. 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
– that is, to control the interaction among the concurrent
transactions in order to prevent them from destroying the
consistency of the database
Schedules
 Schedule – a sequences of instructions that specify 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.
A transaction that successfully completes its execution will have a
commit instructions as the last statement
– by default transaction assumed to execute commit instruction as its
last step
A transaction that fails to successfully complete its execution will have
an abort instruction as the last statement
Schedule - 1
 Let T1 transfer $50 from A to B, and T2
transfer 10% of the balance from A to B.
A serial schedule in which T1 is followed by
T2 :

Image source : Korth

Schedule - 2
 A serial schedule where T2 is
followed by T1

Image source : Korth

Schedule - 3
Let T1 and T2 be the transactions
defined previously.
 The following schedule is not a serial
schedule, but it is equivalent to
Schedule 1.

Image source : Korth

Schedule - 4
The following concurrent schedule does not preserve the value of
(A + B).

Image source : Korth

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
Serializability
 Simplified view of transactions
– We ignore operations other than read and write instructions
– 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.
Conflicting Instructions
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
Conflict Serializability
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
Conflict Serializability
 Schedule 3 can be transformed into Schedule 6, a serial schedule where
T2 follows T1, by series of swaps of non-conflicting instructions.
– Therefore Schedule 3 is conflict serializable.

Schedule 3 Schedule 6 Image source : Korth

Conflict Serializability
 Example of a schedule that is not conflict serializable:

We are unable to swap instructions in the above schedule to obtain

either the serial schedule < T3, T4 >, or the serial schedule < T4, T3 >.

Image source : Korth

Other Notions of Serializability
The schedule 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.

Image source : Korth

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

Image source : Google

Example Schedule (Schedule A) + Precedence Graph
T1 T2 T3 T4 T5
read(X)
read(Y)
read(Z)
read(V)
read(W)
T1 T2
read(W)
read(Y)
write(Y)
write(Z)
read(U) T3 T4
read(Y)
write(Y)
read(Z)
write(Z) Image source : Google
 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
• Are there others? Image source : Google
 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, for each data item Q,
1. If in schedule S, transaction Ti reads the initial value of Q, then in schedule S’
also transaction Ti must read the initial value of Q.
2. If in schedule S transaction Ti executes read(Q), and that value was produced
by transaction Tj (if any), then in schedule S’ also transaction Ti must read
the value of Q that was produced by the same write(Q) operation of
transaction Tj .
3. The transaction (if any) that performs the final write(Q) operation in
schedule S must also 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

Without read , if read perform is ‘Blind Write’

If there is no blind writes and if schedules is not CS than schedule is not
serializable
If there is blind writes and if schedules is not CS than check for view serializable
(VS).
Every CS is VS but vise versa is not true.
In view we have to check the sequence of only read.
Image source : Korth
View Serializability
A schedule S is view serializable if it is view equivalent to a serial
schedule.
Every conflict serializable schedule is also view serializable.
 Below is a schedule which is view-serializable but not conflict
serializable.

Every view serializable schedule that is not conflict serializable has blind
writes.
Image source : Korth
 Test for View Serializability
The precedence graph test for conflict Serializability cannot be used
directly to test for view Serializability.
– Extension to test for view Serializability has cost exponential in the
size of the precedence graph.
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 extremely unlikely.
 Recoverable Schedules
Need to address the effect of transaction failures on concurrently
running transactions.
Recoverable schedule — if a transaction Tj reads a data item previously written by a
transaction Ti , then 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.

Image source : Korth

 Cascading Rollbacks
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.

Image source : Korth

 Cascadeless Schedules
 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
 Concurrency Control
To ensure serializability practically use concurrency control protocol.
A database must provide a mechanism that will ensure that all possible
schedules are
– either conflict or view serializable, and
– are recoverable 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
– Are serial schedules recoverable/cascadeless?
Testing a schedule for serializability after it has executed is a little too late!
 Goal – to develop concurrency control protocols that will assure
serializability.
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