Chapter 5

Transaction Processing
Concepts

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

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

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 2

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.
Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 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 (set of operations) may be stand-
alone specified in a high level language like SQL
submitted interactively, or may be embedded within
a program.
 Transaction boundaries:
 Begin and End transaction.
 An application program may contain several
transactions separated by the Begin and End
transaction boundaries.
Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 4
Introduction to Transaction Processing
(3)
SIMPLE MODEL OF A DATABASE (for purposes of
discussing transactions):
 A database is a collection of named data items

 Granularity of data - a field, a record , or a whole disk

block (Concepts are independent of granularity)
 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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 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 (what 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.
Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 6
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).

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 7

Two sample transactions
 Two sample transactions:
 (a) Transaction T1
 (b) Transaction T2

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 8

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.
Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 9
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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 12

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.

2. A transaction or system error:

Some operation in the transaction may cause it to
fail, such as integer overflow or division by zero.
The user may interrupt the transaction during its
execution.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 13

Introduction to Transaction Processing
(13)
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.
Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 14
Introduction to Transaction Processing
(14)
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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 15

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 State

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 16

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.
Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 17
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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 18

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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 19

State transition diagram illustrating
the states for transaction execution

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 20

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.
Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 21
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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 22

Transaction and System Concepts (8)
 The System Log (cont):
 Protocols for recovery that avoid cascading rollbacks
do not require that read operations be written to the
system log, whereas other protocols require these
entries for recovery.

 Strict protocols require simpler write entries that do

not include new_value.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 23

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
and using one of the techniques.
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.
Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 24
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.
Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 25
 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.
Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 26
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.
Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 27
4 Characterizing Schedules based on
Recoverability (1)
 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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 28

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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 29

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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 30

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 nonserial schedule.

 Serializable schedule:
 A schedule S is serializable if it is equivalent to some
serial schedule of the same n transactions.

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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’.
Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 32
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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 33

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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 34

Characterizing Schedules based on
Serializability (5)
Practical approach:
 Come up with 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.)
 Current approach used in most DBMSs:
 Use of locks with two phase locking

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 35

Characterizing Schedules based on
Serializability (6)
 View equivalence:
 A less restrictive definition of equivalence of
schedules

 View serializability:
 Definition of serializability based on view
equivalence.
 A schedule is view serializable if it is view equivalent
to a serial schedule.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 36

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’.
Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 37
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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 38

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.
Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 39
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.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 40

Characterizing Schedules based on
Serializability (11)
Testing for conflict serializability: Algorithm 17.1:
 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.
Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 41
Constructing the Precedence Graphs
 Constructing the precedence graphs for schedules A and D 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).

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 42

 Another example of serializability
Testing

A. The Read &Write operations of three transactions T1,T2 &T3

B. Schedule E
C. Schedule F

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Another Example of Serializability
Testing

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 44

Another Example of Serializability
Testing

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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

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 46

Characterizing Schedules based on
Serializability (15)
Other Types of Equivalence of Schedules (contd.)
 Example: bank credit / debit transactions on a given
item are separable and commutative.
 Consider the following schedule S for the two
transactions:
 Sh : r1(X); w1(X); r2(Y); w2(Y); r1(Y); w1(Y); r2(X);
w2(X);
 Using conflict serializability, it is not serializable.
 However, if it came from a (read,update, write) sequence
as follows:
 r1(X); X := X – 10; w1(X); r2(Y); Y := Y – 20;r1(Y);

 Y := Y + 10; w1(Y); r2(X); X := X + 20; (X);

 Sequence explanation: debit, debit, credit, credit.

 It is a correct schedule for the given semantics
Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 5 - 47