Chapter 3

Introduction to Transaction
Processing Concepts and
Theory

1
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

2
1. Introduction to Transaction Processing
• Single-User System:
– At most one user at a time can use the database
management system.
– Eg. Personal computer system
• Multiuser System:
– Many users can access the DBMS concurrently.
– Eg. Air line reservation, Bank and the like system
are operated by many users who submit
transaction concurrently to the system
– This is achieved by multiprogramming , which
allows the computer to execute multiple programs
/processes at the same time.

3
• Concurrency
– Interleaved processing:
• Concurrent execution of processes is interleaved in
a single CPU using for example, round robin
algorithm
Advantages:
• keeps the CPU busy when the process requires I/O
by switching to execute another process rather than
remaining idle during I/O time
• prevents long process from delaying other
processes.
– Parallel processing:
• If Processes are concurrently executed in multiple
CPUs.

4
• 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 an application
program.
• Transaction boundaries:
– Any single transaction in an application program is
bounded with Begin and End statements.
• An application program may contain several transactions
separated by the Begin and End transaction boundaries.
• If the database operations in a transaction do not update the
database but only retrieve data, the transaction is called a read-only
transaction; otherwise it is known as a read-write transaction
5
SIMPLE MODEL OF A DATABASE :
• A database is a collection of named data items
• Granularity of data - a field, a record , or a
whole disk block that measure the size of the
data item
• Basic operations that a transaction can perform
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.
6
• 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.
7
• 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).
• The DBMS maintains a number of buffers in the main
memory that holds data base disk blocks which contains
the data base items being processed.
– When all the buffers are occupied and If there is a need for
additional database block to be coped to the main memory ;
some buffer management policy is used to choose for
replacement but if the chosen buffer has been modified ,
it must be written back to disk before it is used.
8
Two sample transactions
(a) Transaction T1
(b) Transaction T2

9
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.

10
• 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.

Fig 2: Temporal update problem

11
• 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.

12
 The Unrepeatable Read Problem

• Another problem that may occur is called

unrepeatable read, where a transaction T reads
the same item twice and the item is changed by
another transaction T between the two reads.
Hence, T receives different values for its two
reads of the same item.

13
• Why recovery is needed:
-Whenever a transaction is submitted to the DBMS for execution, the
system is responsible for making sure that either all operations in
the transaction to be completed successfully (committed) or the
transaction has no effect on the data base or any other transaction
(aborted).
-The DBMS may permit some operations of a transaction T to be
applied to the data base but a transaction may fails after executing
some of its operations
• Types of Failures: - transaction / system / media failur
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
3.Exception conditions detected by the transaction:
– Certain conditions forces cancellation of the transaction.
For example, data for the transaction may not be found.
such as insufficient account balance in a banking database,
may cause a transaction, such as a fund withdrawal from
that account, to be canceled.
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.
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, overwriting disks
or tapes by mistake

15
 2. Transaction and System Concepts
• 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 -indicates the beginning of a transaction
execution
– Partially committed state shows the end of read/write
operation but this will not ensure permanent modification
on the data base
– Committed state -ensures that all the changes done on a
record by a transition were done persistently
– Failed state happens when a transaction is aborted
during its active state or if one of the rechecking is fails
– Terminated State -corresponds to the transaction leaving
the system
16
State transition diagram illustrating the states for
transaction execution

17
• 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.
– 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 be18
undone.
• 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.
• 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.
19
– 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.

20
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 described in
Chapter three.
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.
21
• Redoing transactions:
– Redoing transaction operations is needed if all its
updates are recorded on the Log but a failure occurs
before we can be sure that all the new items have been
written permanently on the data base on the disk.
– 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. 22
 3. Desirable Properties of Transactions
ACID properties:
• Atomicity: A transaction is an atomic unit of processing;
it is either performed in its entirety or not performed at
all. (transaction recovery subsystem)
• 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 (concurrency control subsystem)
• Durability or permanency: Once a transaction changes
the database and the changes are committed, these
changes must never be lost because of subsequent
failure. (transaction recovery subsystem)
23
4.Characterizing Schedules based on 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 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 Ti.
– Note, however, that operations from other
transactions Tj can be interleaved with the operations
of Ti in S. Eg. Consider fig 2 on slide 12
Sa : r1(X);w1(X);r2(X);w2(X);r1(Y);a1;
24
• Two operations in a schedule are side to be conflict if they
satisfy all the three of the following conditions.
 They belongs to different transaction
 They access the same data item X
 At least one of the operation is a write_Item(X)
Eg. Sa: r1(X); r2(x); w1(X); r1(Y); W2(X); W1(Y);
 r1(X) and w2(X)
 r2(X) and w1(X); Conflict operations
 W1(X) and w2(X)

 r1(X) and r2(X) No Conflict

 W2(X) and w1(Y)

25
A schedule S of n transactions T1, T2, ..., Tn is said to be a
complete schedule if the following conditions hold:
1. The operations in S are exactly those operations in T1,
T2, ..., Tn, including a commit or abort operation as the
last operation for each transaction in the schedule.
2. For any pair of operations from the same transaction Ti,
their relative order of appearance in S is the same as
their order of appearance in Ti.
3. For any two conflicting operations, one of the two must
occur before the other in the schedule.

26
 Characterizing Schedules Based on Recoverability

• First, we would like to ensure that, once a transaction

T is committed, it should never be necessary to roll
back T.
• A schedule S is recoverable if no transaction T in S
commits until all transactions T’ that have written some
item X that T reads have committed.
• A transaction T reads from transaction T in a schedule
S if some item X is first written by T and later read by
T. In addition, T should not have been aborted before
T reads item X, and there should be no transactions
that write X after T writes it and before T reads it
27
Schedules classified on recoverability: Four Types
• Recoverable schedule:
– One where no committed 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. Examples,
• Sc: r1(X); w1(X); r2(X); r1(Y);w2(x);c2;a1; not recoverable
• Sd: r1(X); w1(X); r2(X); r1(Y); w2(X);w1(Y); c1; c2;
• Se: r1(X); w1(X); r2(X); r1(Y); w2(x) ; w1(Y); a1; a2;
• Cascaded rollback (or cascading abort):
– A schedule in which uncommitted transactions that read an item
from a failed transaction must be rolled back.
• Se: r1(X); w1(X); r2(X); r1(Y); w2(x) ; w1(Y); a1; a2;
• Cascadeless schedule:
– One where every transaction reads only the items that are
written by committed transactions. Eg.
• Sf: r1(X); w1(X); r1(Y); c1; r2(X); w2(X);w1(Y); c2;
• 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/aborted.
28
– Eg. Sg: w1(X,5) ; c1; w2(x,8);
5. Characterizing Schedules based on Serializability
– The concept of Serializable of schedule is used to identify which
schedules are correct when concurrent transactions executions have
interleaving of their operations in the schedule
• 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: that concurrency has added no effect
– a schedule whose effect on any consistent database
instance is identical to that of some complete serial
schedule over the set of committed transactions in S.
– A nonserial schedule S is serializable is equivalent to say that it is
correct to the result of one of the serial schedule .Example,

29
Fig 4:

30
• Result equivalent:
– Two schedules are called result equivalent if they
produce the same final state of the database
– Two types of equivalent schedule: Conflict and view
i. Conflict equivalent:
– Two schedules are said to be conflict equivalent if
the order of any two conflicting operations is the
same in both schedules. Eg
• S1: r1(x); w2(x) & S2: w2(x); r1(x) Not conflict equivalent

• S1: w1(x); w2(x); & S2: w2(x); w1(x);

• Conflict serializable:
– A schedule S is said to be conflict serializable if it is
conflict equivalent to some serial schedule S’.
– Every conflict serializable schedule is serializable .
31
 Conflict Equivalence
• If you can transform an interleaved schedule by
swapping consecutive non-conflicting operations of
different transactions into a serial schedule, then the
original schedule is conflict serializable.
• Example:

R(A) W(A) R(B) W(B)

R(A) W(A) R(B) W(B)

R(A) W(A) R(B)R(B)

W(B)R(B)
W(B)W(B)
R(A) R(A)
W(A)R(A)
W(A)W(A) R(B) W(B) 32
 • 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.

• Serializability is hard to check

– Difficult to determine beforehand how the operations
in a schedule will be interleaved.

33
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, reducing 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

• View equivalence:
– A less restrictive definition of equivalence of schedules
• An initial read of both schedules must be the same. (initial read)
• In schedule S1, if Ti is reading A which is updated by Tj then in
S2 also, Ti should read A which is updated by Tj. (update read)
• A final write must be the same between both the schedules. (final
write)
• View serializability:
– A schedule is view serializable if it is view equivalent to a serial
schedule. 34
• 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. If Ti reads a value A written by Tj in S1 , it must also
read the value of A written by Tj in S2
3. for each data object A, the transaction that perform
the final write on x in S1 must also perform the final
write on A in S2

S’ S
T1: R(A) W(A) T1: R(A),W(A)
T2: W(A) view T2: W(A)
T3: W(A) T3: W(A)

35
• 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.

36
 – 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.
37
 Testing for conflict serializability: Algorithm

1. For each transaction Ti participating in schedule S, create a node

labeled Ti in the precedence graph.
2. For each case in S where Tj executes a read_item(X) after Ti
executes a write_item(X), create an edge (Ti→ Tj) in the
precedence graph.
3. For each case in S where Tj executes a write_item(X) after Ti
executes a read_item(X), create an edge (Ti→Tj) in the
precedence graph.
4. For each case in S where Tj executes a write_item(X) after Ti
executes a write_item(X), create an edge (Ti→ Tj) in the
precedence graph.
5. The schedule S is serializable if and only if the precedence graph
has no cycles.

38
• Since the graph is cyclic, we can conclude that it is not
conflict serializable to any schedule serial schedule.
39
• Since the graph is acyclic, the schedule is
conflict serializable.
40
 6 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.
• Every transaction has three characteristics: Access mode,
Diagnostic size and isolation
i. Access mode:
• READ ONLY or READ WRITE
– If the access mode is Read ONLY , INSERT, DELET ,
UPDATE & CREATE commands cannot be executed on
the database
– The default is READ WRITE unless the isolation level of
READ UNCOMITTED is specified, in which case READ
ONLY is assumed.
ii. Diagnostic size n, specifies an integer value n, indicating the
number of error conditions that can be held simultaneously in
the diagnostic area.
iii. Isolation level can be
» READ UNCOMMITTED,
» READ COMMITTED,
» REPEATABLE READ or 41
» SERIALIZABLE. The default is SERIALIZABLE.
• 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: ...

• With SERIALIZABLE: the interleaved execution of

transactions will adhere to the notion of serializability.
• However, if any transaction executes at a lower level, then
serializability may be violated. 42
  Potential problem with lower isolation levels:
i. Unrepeatable Reads: RW Conflicts
• a transaction T2 could change the value of an object A that has been
read by a transaction T1, while T1 is still in progress.
• If T1 tries to read the value a again it will get a different value
T1: R(A), R(A), W(A), C
T2: R(A), W(A), C
ii. Reading Uncommitted Data ( “dirty reads”): WR Conflicts
•a transaction T2 could read a database object A that has been
modified by another transaction T1, which has not yet committed.

T1: R(A), W(A), R(B), W(B), Abort

T2: R(A), W(A), C

43
iii. Overwriting Uncommitted Data: WW Conflicts
• A transaction T2 could overwrite the value of an object A,
which has already been modified by a transaction T1,
while T1 is still in progress.
T1: W(A), W(B), C
T2: W(A), W(B), C
iv. 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
44
not exist, called a phantom.
• Possible violation of serializabilty:
Type of Violation
Isolation Dirty nonrepeatable
level read read phantom
_______________________________________________________
READ UNCOMMITTED yes yes yes
READ COMMITTED no yes yes
REPEATABLE READ no no yes
SERIALIZABLE no no no

45