Chapter 3 ADB

Chapter 21
Introduction to
Transaction
Processing
Concepts and
Theory
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley

Chapter 3
Transaction
Processing Concepts

Chapter 3
➢ Introduction to Transaction Processing
➢ Transaction and System Concepts
➢ Desirable Properties of Transactions
➢ Characterizing Schedules based on
Recoverability
➢ Characterizing Schedules based on
Serializability
➢ Transaction Support in SQL

Introduction to Transaction Processing
• Transaction: An executing program (process) that
includes one or more database access operations
– Read operations (database retrieval, such as SQL SELECT)
– Write operations (modify database, such as SQL INSERT,
UPDATE, DELETE)
– Transaction: A logical unit of database processing
– Example: Bank balance transfer of $100 dollars from a
checking account to a saving account in a BANK database
• Note: Each execution of a program is a distinct transaction with
different parameters
– Bank transfer program parameters: savings account number,
checking account number, transfer amount

Introduction to Transaction Processing (cont.)
• A transaction (set of operations) may be:
– stand-alone, specified in a high level language like
SQL submitted interactively, or
– consist of database operations embedded within a
program (most transactions)
• Transaction boundaries: Begin and End
transaction.
– Note: An application program may contain several
transactions separated by Begin and End transaction
boundaries

• Transaction Processing Systems: Large
multi-user database systems supporting
thousands of concurrent transactions (user
processes) per minute
• Two Modes of Concurrency
– Interleaved processing: concurrent execution of
processes is interleaved in a single CPU
– Parallel processing: processes are concurrently
executed in multiple CPUs (Figure 21.1)
– Basic transaction processing theory assumes
interleaved concurrency

For transaction processing purposes, a simple
database model is used:
• A database - collection of named data items
• Granularity (size) of a data item - a field (data
item value), a record, or a whole disk block
– TP concepts are independent of granularity
• Basic operations on an item X:
– 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.

READ AND WRITE OPERATIONS:

⚫ Basic unit of data transfer from the disk to the
computer main memory is one disk block (or page).
A data item X (what is read or written) will usually
be the field of some record in the database,
although it may be a larger unit such as a whole
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.

READ AND WRITE OPERATIONS (cont.):

⚫ 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 it 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).

Why we need concurrency control
Without Concurrency Control, problems may

occur with concurrent transactions:
• Lost Update Problem.
Occurs when two transactions update the same data
item, but both read the same original value before
update (Figure 21.3(a), next slide)
• The Temporary Update (or Dirty Read) Problem.
This occurs when one transaction T1 updates a
database item X, which is accessed (read) by another
transaction T2; then T1 fails for some reason (Figure
21.3(b)); X was (read) by T2 before its value is
changed back (rolled back or UNDONE) after T1 fails

Why we need concurrency control (cont.)
• The Incorrect Summary Problem .

One transaction is calculating an aggregate summary
function on a number of records (for example, sum
(total) of all bank account balances) while other
transactions are updating some of these records (for
example, transferring a large amount between two
accounts, see Figure 21.3(c)); the aggregate function
may read some values before they are updated and
others after they are updated.

Why we need concurrency control (cont.)
• The Unrepeatable Read Problem .

A transaction T1 may read an item (say, available
seats on a flight); later, T1 may read the same item
again and get a different value because another
transaction T2 has updated the item (reserved seats
on the flight) between the two reads by T1

Why recovery is needed
Causes of transaction failure:

1. A computer failure (system crash): A hardware or
software error occurs during transaction execution. If
the hardware crashes, the contents of the computer’s
internal main 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.

Why recovery is needed (cont.)
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, to be canceled
- a programmed abort causes the transaction 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
(see Chapter 22).

Why recovery is needed (cont.)
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 kind of failure and
item 6 are more severe than items 1 through 4.
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.

Transaction and System Concepts
A transaction is an atomic unit of work that is either

completed in its entirety or not done at all. A
transaction passes through several states (Figure 21.4,
similar to process states in operating systems).
Transaction states:
• Active state (executing read, write operations)
• Partially committed state (ended but waiting for
system checks to determine success or failure)
• Committed state (transaction succeeded)
• Failed state (transaction failed, must be rolled back)
• Terminated State (transaction leaves system)

Transaction and System Concepts (cont.)
DBMS Recovery Manager needs system to keep track of the
following operations (in the system log file):
• begin_transaction: Start of transaction execution.
• read or write: Read or write operations on the database
items that are executed as part of a transaction.
• end_transaction: Specifies end of read and write
transaction operations have ended. System may still
have to check whether the changes (writes) introduced
by transaction can be permanently applied to the database
(commit transaction); or whether the transaction has to
be rolled back (abort transaction) because it violates
concurrency control or for some other reason.

Recovery manager keeps track of the following operations

(cont.):
• commit_transaction: Signals successful end of
transaction; any changes (writes) executed by
transaction can be safely committed to the database and
will not be undone.
• abort_transaction (or rollback): Signals transaction has
ended unsuccessfully; any changes or effects that the
transaction may have applied to the database must be
undone.

❑ System operations used during recovery

❑ undo(X): Similar to rollback except that it
applies to a single write operation rather than
to a whole transaction.
❑ redo(X): This specifies that a write operation of a
committed transaction must be redone to ensure
that it has been applied permanently to the
database on disk.

The System Log File

• Is an append-only file to keep track of all operations of all
transactions in the order in which they occurred. This
information is needed during recovery from failures
• Log is kept on disk - not affected except for disk or
catastrophic failure
• As with other disk files, a log main memory buffer is kept
for holding the records being appended until the whole
buffer is appended to the end of the log file on disk
• Log is periodically backed up to archival storage (tape)
to guard against catastrophic failures

Types of records (entries) in log file:
• [start_transaction,T]: Records that transaction T has
started execution.
• [write_item,T,X,old_value,new_value]: T has changed
the value of item X from old_value to new_value.
• [read_item,T,X]: T has read the value of item X (not
needed in many cases).
• [end_transaction,T]: T has ended execution
• [commit,T]: T has completed successfully, and
committed.
• [abort,T]: T has been aborted.

Commit Point of a Transaction:

⚫ Definition: 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 file (on disk).
⚫ The transaction is then said to be committed.

Commit Point of a Transaction (cont.):
⚫ Log file buffers: Like database files on disk, whole disk blocks
must be read or written to main memory buffers.
⚫ For log file, the last disk block (or blocks) of the file will be in
main memory buffers to easily append log entries at end of file.
⚫ Force writing the log buffer: before a transaction reaches its
commit point, any main memory buffers of the log that have not
been written to disk yet must be copied to disk.
⚫ Called force-writing the log buffers before committing a
transaction.
⚫ Needed to ensure that any write operations by the transaction are
recorded in the log file on disk before the transaction commits

Desirable Properties of Transactions
❑ Called 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.

Desirable Properties of Transactions (cont.)
ACID properties (cont.):

• Isolation: Even though transactions are executing
concurrently, they should appear to be executed in
isolation – that is, their final effect should be as if each
transaction was executed in isolation from start to finish.
• Durability or permanency: Once a transaction is

committed, its changes (writes) applied to the database
must never be lost because of subsequent failure.

Desirable Properties of Transactions (cont.)
• Atomicity: Enforced by the recovery protocol.

• Consistency preservation: Specifies that each
transaction does a correct action on the database on its
own. Application programmers and DBMS constraint
enforcement are responsible for this.
• Isolation: Responsibility of the concurrency control
protocol.
• Durability or permanency: Enforced by the recovery
protocol.

Schedules of Transactions
• 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).
• Figure 21.5 (next slide) shows 4 possible schedules (A,

B, C, D) of two transactions T1 and T2:
– Order of operations from top to bottom
– Each schedule includes same operations
– Different order of operations in each schedule

Schedules of Transactions (cont.)
• Schedules can also be displayed in more
compact notation
• Order of operations from left to right
• Include only read (r) and write (w)
operations, with transaction id (1, 2, …)
and item name (X, Y, …)
• Can also include other operations such as
b (begin), e (end), c (commit), a (abort)

• Formal definition of a schedule (or history) S of
n transactions T1, T2, ..., Tn :
• An ordering of all the operations of the
transactions subject to the constraint that, for
each transaction Ti that participates in S, the
operations of Ti in S must appear in the same
order in which they occur in Ti.
• Note: Operations from other transactions Tj can

be interleaved with the operations of Ti in S.

• For n transactions T1, T2, ..., Tn, where each Ti has mi
read and write operations, the number of possible
schedules is (! is factorial function):
(m1 + m2 + … + mn)! / ( (m1)! * (m2)! * … * (mn)! )
• Generally very large number of possible schedules

• Some schedules are easy to recover from after a failure,
while others are not
• Some schedules produce correct results, while others
produce incorrect results
• Rest of chapter characterizes schedules by classifying
them based on ease of recovery (recoverability) and
correctness (serializability)

Characterizing Schedules based
on Recoverability
Schedules classified into two main classes:
• Recoverable schedule: One where no committed
transaction needs to be rolled back (aborted).
• 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.
• Non-recoverable schedule: A schedule where a
committed transaction may have to be rolled back
during recovery.
• This violates Durability from ACID properties (a committed
transaction cannot be rolled back) and so non-recoverable
schedules should not be allowed.

Characterizing Schedules Based
on Recoverability (cont.)
Summary:
• Many schedules can exist for a set of transactions
• The set of all possible schedules can be partitioned into
two subsets: recoverable and non-recoverable
• A subset of the recoverable schedules are cascadeless
• If blind writes are allowed, a subset of the cascadeless
schedules are strict
• If blind writes are not allowed, the set of cascadeless
schedules is the same as the set of strict schedules

on Serializability
• Among the large set of possible schedules, we want
to characterize which schedules are guaranteed to
give a correct result
• The consistency preservation property of the
ACID properties states that: each transaction if
executed on its own (from start to finish) will
transform a consistent state of the database into
another consistent state
• Hence, each transaction is correct on its own

on Serializability (cont.)
• Serial schedule: A schedule S is serial if, for every
transaction T participating in the schedule, all the
operations of T are executed consecutively (without
interleaving of operations from other transactions) in
the schedule.
• Otherwise, the schedule is called nonserial.
• Based on the consistency preservation property,
any serial schedule will produce a correct result
(assuming no inter-dependencies among different
transactions)

• Serial schedules are not feasible for performance
reasons:
– No interleaving of operations
– Long transactions force other transactions to
wait
– System cannot switch to other transaction when
a transaction is waiting for disk I/O or any other
event
– Need to allow concurrency with interleaving
without sacrificing correctness

Characterizing Schedules
based on Serializability (cont.)
• Serializability is generally hard to check at
run-time:
– Interleaving of operations is generally
handled by the operating system through the
process scheduler
– Difficult to determine beforehand how the
operations in a schedule will be interleaved
– Transactions are continuously started and
terminated

Characterizing Schedules Based
Practical approach:
• Come up with methods (concurrency control
protocols) to ensure serializability.
• DBMS concurrency control subsystem will
enforce the protocol rules and thus guarantee
serializability of schedules
• Current approach used in most DBMSs:
– Use of locks with two phase locking (see Section 22.1)

• View equivalence: A less restrictive definition of
equivalence of schedules than conflict
serializability when blind writes are allowed
• View serializability: definition of serializability

based on view equivalence. A schedule is view
serializable if it is view equivalent to a serial
schedule.

Transaction Support in SQL
• 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.

End of Chapter 3

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Chapter 21

Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley

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READ AND WRITE OPERATIONS:

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READ AND WRITE OPERATIONS (cont.):

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Without Concurrency Control, problems may

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• The Incorrect Summary Problem .

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• The Unrepeatable Read Problem .

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Causes of transaction failure:

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3. Local errors or exception conditions detected by the

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5. Disk failure: Some disk blocks may lose their data

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A transaction is an atomic unit of work that is either

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Recovery manager keeps track of the following operations

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❑ System operations used during recovery

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The System Log File

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Commit Point of a Transaction:

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ACID properties (cont.):

• Durability or permanency: Once a transaction is

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• Atomicity: Enforced by the recovery protocol.

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• Figure 21.5 (next slide) shows 4 possible schedules (A,

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• Note: Operations from other transactions Tj can

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• Generally very large number of possible schedules

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• View serializability: definition of serializability

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• A single SQL statement is always considered