Concurrency Control in Distributed Transactions (1)

Concurrency Control
in Distributed
Transactions
Pessimistic Concurrency Control
(PCC)
• The Pessimistic Concurrency Control Mechanisms
proceeds on assumption that, most of the transactions
will try to access the same resource simultaneously.
• It’s basically used to prevent concurrent access to a

shared resource and provide a system of acquiring a
Lock on the data item before performing any operation.
Optimistic Concurrency Control
(OCC)
• The problem with pessimistic concurrency control systems is
that, if a transaction acquires a lock on a resource so that no
other transactions can access it. This will result in reducing
concurrency of the overall system.
• The Optimistic Concurrency control techniques proceeds on the

basis of assumption that, 0 or very few transactions will try to
access a certain resource simultaneously. We can describe a
system as FULLY OPTIMISTIC, if it uses No-Locks at all & checks
for conflicts at commit time. It has following 4-phases of
operation:
OCC
• Read Phase: When a transaction begins, it reads the data while also
logging the time-stamp at which data is read to verify for conflicts
during the validation phase.
• Execution Phase: In this phase, the transaction executes all its
operation like create, read, update or delete etc.
• Validation Phase: Before committing a transaction, a validation
check is performed to ensure consistency by checking the
last_updated timestamp with the one recorded at read_phase. If the
timestamp matches, then the transaction will be allowed to be
committed and hence proceed with the commit phase.
• Commit phase: During this phase, the transactions will either be
committed or aborted, depending on the validation check performed
during previous phase. If the timestamp matches, then transactions
are committed else they’re aborted.
Pessimistic Concurrency Control
Methods
• Isolation Level
• Two-Phase Locking Protocol
• Distributed Lock Manager
• Multiple Granularity Lock
Isolation Level
• The isolation levels are defined as a degree to which the

data residing in Database must be isolated by
transactions for modification. Because, if some
transactions are operating on some data let’s say
transaction – T1 & there comes another transaction – T2
and modifies it further while it was under operation by
transaction T1 this will cause unwanted inconsistency
problems.
Two-Phase Locking Protocol
• The two-phase locking protocol is a concurrency technique used to manage

locks on data items in database. This technique consists of 2 phases:
• Growing Phase: The transaction acquires all the locks on the data items
that’ll be required to execute the transaction successfully. No locks will be
realease in this phase.
• Shrinking Phase: All the locks acquired in previous phase will be released
one by one and No New locks will be acquired in this phase.
Distributed Lock Manager
A distributed lock a
critical component in the
distributed transaction
system, which co-
ordinates the lock
acquiring, and releasing
operations in the
transactions. It helps in
synchronizing the
transaction and their
operation so that data
integrity is maintained.
Multiple Granularity Lock
• A lock can be acquired at various granular level like: table

level, row/record level, page level or any other resource’s
level. In transaction system a transaction can lock a whole
table, or a specific row while performing some changes on
it.
• This lock acquiring when done by various transactions

simultaneously, this phenomena is called as multiple
granularity locking.
Optimistic Concurrency Control
Methods
• Timestamp Based (OCC)
• Multi-Version Concurrency Control (MVCC)
• Snapshot Isolation
• Conflict Free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs)
Timestamp Based (OCC)
• In a timestamp based concurrency technique, each

transaction in the system is assigned a unique timestamp
which is taken as soon as the transaction begins, and its
verified again during the commit phase.
• If there’s new updated timestamp from a different
transaction then based on some policy defined by the
System Adminstrator the transaction will either be
restarted or aborted.
• But if the times stamp is same & never modified by any
other transaction then it will be committed.
Example
• Let’s say we have two transaction T1 and T2, they operate on
data item – A. The Timestamp concurrency technique will keep
track of the timestamp when the data was accessed by
transaction T1 first time.
Data item and Most_recent_Timesta Initial_timestamp of
Transaction
operation mp data item (A)
T1 Read(A) 12:00PM 12:00PM
T2 Write(A) 12:15PM 12:00PM
T1 Write(A) 12:30PM 12:00PM
Now, let’s say this transaction T1 is if(Initial_timestamp == Most_recent_timesta

about to commit, before committing, it then ‘Commit’
will check the initial timestamp with the else
most recent timestamp. In our case, the ‘Abort’
transaction T1 won’t be committed
because a write operations by
Multi-Version Concurrency Control
(MVCC)
• In MVCC, every data item has multiple versions of itself. When a
transaction starts, it reads the version that is valid at the start of the
transaction. And when the transaction writes, it creates a new version of
that specific data item. That way, every transaction can concurrently
perform their operations.
• Example: In a banking system two or more user can transfer money

without blocking each other simultaneously.
• A similar technique to this is : Immutable Data Structures. Every time a

transaction performs a new operation, new data item will be created so
that way transactions do not have to worry about consistency issues.
Snapshot Isolation
• Snapshot isolation is basically a snapshot stored in an
isolated manner when our database system was purely
consistent. And this snapshot is read by the transactions
at the beginning. Transaction ensures that the data item
is not changed while it was executing operations on it.
Snapshot isolation is achieved through OCC & MVCC
techniques.
Conflict Free Replicated Data Types
(CRDTs)
• CRDTs is a data structure technique which allows a
transaction to perform all its operation and replicate the
data to some other node or current node. After all the
operations are performed, this technique offers us with
merging methods that allows us to merge the data
across distributed nodes (conflict-free) and eventually
achieving consistent state.

Concurrency Control in Distributed Transactions (1)

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Concurrency Control in Distributed Transactions (1)

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Concurrency Control

• It’s basically used to prevent concurrent access to a

• The Optimistic Concurrency control techniques proceeds on the

• The isolation levels are defined as a degree to which the

• The two-phase locking protocol is a concurrency technique used to manage

• A lock can be acquired at various granular level like: table

• This lock acquiring when done by various transactions

• In a timestamp based concurrency technique, each

T1 Read(A) 12:00PM 12:00PM

T2 Write(A) 12:15PM 12:00PM

T1 Write(A) 12:30PM 12:00PM

Now, let’s say this transaction T1 is if(Initial_timestamp == Most_recent_timesta

• Example: In a banking system two or more user can transfer money

• A similar technique to this is : Immutable Data Structures. Every time a

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