Introduction to Transaction Processing Concepts and Theory

PART 9 

Transaction Processing, Concurrency  Control, and Recovery

Chapter 21

Introduction to Transaction Processing Concepts and Theory

_The concept of transaction provides a mechanism for describing logical units of database processing.

Transaction processing systems are systems with large databases and hundreds of concurrent users executing database transactions. Examples of such systems include airline reservations, banking, credit card processing, online retail purchasing, stock markets, supermarket checkouts, and many other applications. These systems require high availability and fast response time for hundreds of concurrent users. In this chapter we present the concepts that are needed in transaction processing systems. We define the concept of a transaction, which is used to represent a logical unit of database processing that must be completed in its entirety to ensure correctness. A transaction is typically implemented by a computer program, which includes database commands such as retrievals, insertions, deletions, and updates. We introduced some of the basic techniques for database programming in Chapters 13 and 14.

In this chapter, we focus on the basic concepts and theory that are needed to ensure the correct executions of transactions. We discuss the concurrency control problem, which occurs when multiple transactions submitted by various users interfere with one another in a way that produces incorrect results. We also discuss the problems that can occur when transactions fail, and how the database system can recover from various types of failures.

This chapter is organized as follows. Section 21.1 informally discusses why concurrency control and recovery are necessary in a database system. Section 21.2 defines the term transaction and discusses additional concepts related to transaction processing in database systems. Section 21.3 presents the important properties of atomicity, consistency preservation, isolation, and durability or permanency—called the  ACID properties—that are considered desirable in transaction processing systems. Section 21.4 introduces the concept of schedules (or histories) of executing transactions and characterizes the recoverability of schedules. Section 21.5 discusses the notion of serializability of concurrent transaction execution, which can be used to define correct execution sequences (or schedules) of concurrent transactions. In Section 21.6, we present some of the commands that support the transaction concept in SQL. Section 21.7 summarizes the chapter.

The two following chapters continue with more details on the actual methods and techniques used to support transaction processing. Chapter 22 gives an overview of the basic concurrency control protocols and Chapter 23 introduces recovery techniques.