Chapter 18

Concurrency Control Techniques

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe

Database Concurrency Control
 1 Purpose of Concurrency Control
 To enforce Isolation (through mutual exclusion) among
conflicting transactions.
 To preserve database consistency through consistency
preserving execution of transactions.
 To resolve read-write and write-write conflicts.

 Example:
 In concurrent execution environment if T1 conflicts with T2
over a data item A, then the existing concurrency control
decides if T1 or T2 should get the A and if the other
transaction is rolled-back or waits.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 2

Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques
 Locking is an operation which secures
 (a) permission to Read
 (b) permission to Write a data item for a transaction.
 Example:
 Lock (X). Data item X is locked in behalf of the requesting
transaction.
 Unlocking is an operation which removes these permissions
from the data item.
 Example:
 Unlock (X): Data item X is made available to all other
transactions.
 Lock and Unlock are Atomic operations.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 3

Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: Essential components
 Two locks modes:
 (a) shared (read) (b) exclusive (write).
 Shared mode: shared lock (X)
 More than one transaction can apply share lock on X for
reading its value but no write lock can be applied on X by any
other transaction.
 Exclusive mode: Write lock (X)
 Only one write lock on X can exist at any time and no shared
lock can be applied by any other transaction on X.
 Conflict matrix Read Write
Read

Y N
Write

N N

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 4

Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: Essential
components
 Lock Manager:
 Managing locks on data items.
 Lock table:
 Lock manager uses it to store the identify of
transaction locking a data item, the data item, lock
mode and pointer to the next data item locked. One
simple way to implement a lock table is through
linked list.
Transaction ID Data item id lock mode Ptr to next data item
T1 X1 Read Next
Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 5
Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: Essential
components
 Database requires that all transactions should be
well-formed. A transaction is well-formed if:
 It must lock the data item before it reads or writes to
it.
 It must not lock an already locked data items and it
must not try to unlock a free data item.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 6

Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: (Binary Lock)
 The following code performs the lock operation:

B:if LOCK (X) = 0 (*item is unlocked*)

then LOCK (X)  1 (*lock the item*)
else begin
wait (until lock (X) = 0 and
the lock manager wakes up the transaction);
goto B
end;

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 7

Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: Essential
components
 The following code performs the unlock operation:

LOCK (X)  0 (*unlock the item*)

if any transactions are waiting then
wake up one of the waiting the transactions;

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 8

Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: (Multiple-mode locks:
shared/exclusive or read/write locks)
 The following code performs the read_lock(X) operation:
B: if LOCK (X) = “unlocked” then
begin LOCK (X)  “read-locked”;
no_of_reads (X)  1;
end
else if LOCK (X)  “read-locked” then
no_of_reads (X)  no_of_reads (X) +1
else begin wait (until LOCK (X) = “unlocked” and
the lock manager wakes up the transaction);
go to B
end;

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 9

Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: Essential components
 The following code performs the write_lock(X) operation:
B: if LOCK (X) = “unlocked” then
begin LOCK (X)  “write-locked”;
else begin wait (until LOCK (X) = “unlocked” and
the lock manager wakes up the transaction);
go to B
end;

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 10

Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: Essential components
 The following code performs the unlock(X) operation:
if LOCK (X) = “write-locked” then
begin LOCK (X)  “unlocked”;
wakes up one of the waiting transactions, if any
end
else if LOCK (X)  “read-locked” then
begin
no_of_reads (X)  no_of_reads (X) -1
if no_of_reads (X) = 0 then
begin
LOCK (X) = “unlocked”;
wake up one of the waiting transactions, if any
end
end;

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 11

Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: Essential components
 Lock conversion
 Lock upgrade: existing read lock to write lock

if Ti has a read-lock (X) and Tj has no read-lock (X) (i  j) then

convert read-lock (X) to write-lock (X)
else
force Ti to wait until Tj unlocks X

 Lock downgrade: existing write lock to read lock

Ti has a write-lock (X) (*no transaction can have any lock on X*)
convert write-lock (X) to read-lock (X)

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 12

Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: The algorithm
 Two Phases:
 (a) Locking (Growing)

 (b) Unlocking (Shrinking).

 Locking (Growing) Phase:

 A transaction applies locks (read or write) on desired data items

one at a time.
 Unlocking (Shrinking) Phase:
 A transaction unlocks its locked data items one at a time.

 Requirement:
 For a transaction these two phases must be mutually exclusively,

that is, during locking phase unlocking phase must not start and
during unlocking phase locking phase must not begin.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 13

Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: The algorithm

T1 T2 Result
read_lock (Y); read_lock (X); Initial values: X=20; Y=30
read_item (Y); read_item (X); Result of serial execution
unlock (Y); unlock (X); T1 followed by T2
write_lock (X); Write_lock (Y); X=50, Y=80.
read_item (X); read_item (Y); Result of serial execution
X:=X+Y; Y:=X+Y; T2 followed by T1
write_item (X); write_item (Y); X=70, Y=50
unlock (X); unlock (Y);

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 14

Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: The algorithm

T1 T2 Result
read_lock (Y); X=50; Y=50
read_item (Y); Nonserializable because it.
unlock (Y); violated two-phase policy.
read_lock (X);
read_item (X);
Time unlock (X);
write_lock (Y);
read_item (Y);
Y:=X+Y;
write_item (Y);
unlock (Y);
write_lock (X);
read_item (X);
X:=X+Y;
write_item (X);
unlock (X);

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 15

Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: The algorithm

T’1 T’2
read_lock (Y); read_lock (X); T1 and T2 follow two-phase
read_item (Y); read_item (X); policy but they are subject to
write_lock (X); Write_lock (Y); deadlock, which must be
unlock (Y); unlock (X); dealt with.
read_item (X); read_item (Y);
X:=X+Y; Y:=X+Y;
write_item (X); write_item (Y);
unlock (X); unlock (Y);

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 16

Database Concurrency Control
Two-Phase Locking Techniques: The algorithm
 Two-phase policy generates two locking algorithms
 (a) Basic

 (b) Conservative

 Conservative:
 Prevents deadlock by locking all desired data items before
transaction begins execution.
 Basic:
 Transaction locks data items incrementally. This may cause
deadlock which is dealt with.
 Strict:
 A more stricter version of Basic algorithm where unlocking is
performed after a transaction terminates (commits or aborts and
rolled-back). This is the most commonly used two-phase locking
algorithm.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 17

Database Concurrency Control
Dealing with Deadlock and Starvation
 Deadlock
T’1 T’2
read_lock (Y); T1 and T2 did follow two-phase
read_item (Y); policy but they are deadlock
read_lock (X);
read_item (Y);
write_lock (X);
(waits for X) write_lock (Y);
(waits for Y)

 Deadlock (T’1 and T’2)

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

Database Concurrency Control
Dealing with Deadlock and Starvation
 Deadlock prevention

 A transaction locks all data items it refers to before

it begins execution.
 This way of locking prevents deadlock since a
transaction never waits for a data item.
 The conservative two-phase locking uses this
approach.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 19

Database Concurrency Control
Dealing with Deadlock and Starvation
 Deadlock detection and resolution

 In this approach, deadlocks are allowed to happen. The

scheduler maintains a wait-for-graph for detecting cycle. If
a cycle exists, then one transaction involved in the cycle is
selected (victim) and rolled-back.
 A wait-for-graph is created using the lock table. As soon as
a transaction is blocked, it is added to the graph. When a
chain like: Ti waits for Tj waits for Tk waits for Ti or Tj
occurs, then this creates a cycle. One of the transaction o

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 20

Database Concurrency Control
Dealing with Deadlock and Starvation
 Deadlock avoidance

 There are many variations of two-phase locking algorithm.

 Some avoid deadlock by not letting the cycle to complete.
 That is as soon as the algorithm discovers that blocking a
transaction is likely to create a cycle, it rolls back the
transaction.
 Wound-Wait and Wait-Die algorithms use timestamps to
avoid deadlocks by rolling-back victim.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 21

Database Concurrency Control
Dealing with Deadlock and Starvation
 Starvation

 Starvation occurs when a particular transaction consistently

waits or restarted and never gets a chance to proceed
further.
 In a deadlock resolution it is possible that the same
transaction may consistently be selected as victim and
rolled-back.
 This limitation is inherent in all priority based scheduling
mechanisms.
 In Wound-Wait scheme a younger transaction may always
be wounded (aborted) by a long running older transaction
which may create starvation.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 22

Database Concurrency Control
Timestamp based concurrency control algorithm
 Timestamp

 A monotonically increasing variable (integer)

indicating the age of an operation or a transaction.
A larger timestamp value indicates a more recent
event or operation.
 Timestamp based algorithm uses timestamp to
serialize the execution of concurrent transactions.

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 23

Database Concurrency Control
Timestamp based concurrency control algorithm
 Basic Timestamp Ordering

 1. Transaction T issues a write_item(X) operation:

 If read_TS(X) > TS(T) or if write_TS(X) > TS(T), then an
younger transaction has already read the data item so abort
and roll-back T and reject the operation.
 If the condition in part (a) does not exist, then execute
write_item(X) of T and set write_TS(X) to TS(T).
 2. Transaction T issues a read_item(X) operation:
 If write_TS(X) > TS(T), then an younger transaction has
already written to the data item so abort and roll-back T and
reject the operation.
 If write_TS(X)  TS(T), then execute read_item(X) of T and set
read_TS(X) to the larger of TS(T) and the current read_TS(X).

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 24

Database Concurrency Control
Timestamp based concurrency control algorithm
 Strict Timestamp Ordering

 1. Transaction T issues a write_item(X) operation:

 If TS(T) > read_TS(X), then delay T until the
transaction T’ that wrote or read X has terminated
(committed or aborted).
 2. Transaction T issues a read_item(X) operation:
 If TS(T) > write_TS(X), then delay T until the
transaction T’ that wrote or read X has terminated
(committed or aborted).

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 25

Database Concurrency Control
Timestamp based concurrency control algorithm
 Thomas’s Write Rule

 If read_TS(X) > TS(T) then abort and roll-back T

and reject the operation.
 If write_TS(X) > TS(T), then just ignore the write
operation and continue execution. This is because
the most recent writes counts in case of two
consecutive writes.
 If the conditions given in 1 and 2 above do not
occur, then execute write_item(X) of T and set
write_TS(X) to TS(T).

Copyright © 2007 Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe Slide 18- 26