Managing Transaction and

Lock

Vu Tuyet Trinh
trinhvt-fit@mail.hut.edu.vn
Hanoi University of Technology

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 Transaction
 A sequence of tasks that together constitute a logical unit
of work

 Ensuring the highest level of integrity and consistency

within a database

 Used when statements are processed

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 ACID Properties
 Atomicity
 All or none

 Consistency
 Leave data in a consistent state

 Isolation
 Don’t show data that’s ½ done

 Durability
 Modifications are permanent

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 Overview

 Transaction
 Review of Transaction Log
 Introduction to Transactions and Locks
 Managing Transactions
 SQL Server Locking & Managing Locks

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 Transaction Log Architecture

 Write-Ahead transaction log

 Flushing the page and dirty Pages

 Use of checkpoints
 Minimize what must be processed to recover

 Truncating the transaction log

 Shrinking the transaction log

 DBCC SHRINKDATABASE
 DBCC SHRINKFILE

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 Transaction Recovery and Checkpoints
Transaction Recovery Action Required

1 None

2 Roll forward

3 Roll back

4 Roll forward

5 Roll back

Checkpoint System Failure

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 Concurrency Control

 Pessimistic concurrency control

 High contention for data

 Optimistic concurrency control

 Low contention for data

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 Lockable Resources
Item Description

RID Row identifier

Key Row lock within an index

Page Data page or index page

Extent Group of pages

Table Entire table

Database Entire database

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 Types of Locks
 Basic locks
 Shared (LS)
 Exclusive (LX)
 Special situation locks
 Intent
 Update
 Schema
 Bulk update

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 Lock Compatibility

 Locks may or may not be compatible with other Locks

LS LX

LS true false

LX false false

 Examples
 Shared locks are compatible with all locks except exclusive
 Exclusive locks are not compatible with any other locks
 Update locks are compatible only with shared locks

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 Managing Locks
Session-level locking options
– READ UNCOMMITTED
– READ COMMITTED (default)
– REPEATABLE READ
– SNAPSHOT
– SERIALIZABLE

Locking timeout
– Limits time waiting for a locked resource

– SET LOCK_TIMEOUT
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 Viewing Locking Information

• Activity Monitor
• sys.dm_tran_locks Dynamic Management View
• EnumLocks
• SQL Server Profiler
• System Monitor

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 Considerations for Using Transactions

 Transaction guidelines
 Keep transactions as short as possible
 Use caution with certain Transact-SQL statements
 Avoid transactions that require user interaction

 Issues in nesting transactions

 Allowed, but not recommended
 Use @@trancount to determine nesting level

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 Transaction Types

 Explicit Transaction
 Explicitly define start and end

 Autocommit Transactions
 Every statement is committed or rolled back

 Implicit Transactions
 Statement after “Commit Transaction” or Rollback Transaction”
starts a new transaction
 SET IMPLICIT_TRANSACTIONS ON

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 Explicit Transaction

 Defining
BEGIN TRANSACTION ROLLBACK TRANSACTION

COMMIT TRANSACTION

BEGIN TRANSACTION
INSERT INTO Extensions (PrimaryExt)
VALUES ('555–1212')
INSERT INTO Extensions (VoiceMailExt)
VALUES ('5551212')
ROLLBACK TRANSACTION
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 Implicit Transaction
 Using SET IMPLICIT_TRANSACTIONS ON
 An implicit transaction starts when one of the following
statements is executed

∙ ALTER DATABASE ∙ INSERT

∙ CREATE ∙ OPEN
∙ DELETE ∙ REVOKE
∙ DROP ∙ SELECT
∙ FETCH ∙ TRUNCATE TABLE
∙ GRANT ∙ UPDATE
 Transaction must be explicitly completed with COMMIT or
ROLLBACK TRANSACTION

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 SQL Server Locking
 Concurrency Problems Prevented by Locks
 Dealing with Deadlocks

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Concurrency Problems Prevented by Locks

 Lost update
 Two simultaneous updates

 Uncommitted dependency (Dirty Read)

 Selecting data that’s being updated

 Inconsistent analysis (Nonrepeatable Read)

 Reading data that changed between multiple reads

 Phantoms reads
 Reading data that doesn’t exist on the second read

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 Concurrency Control

 Optimistic concurrency control

 Low contention for data

 Pessimistic concurrency control

 High contention for data

 Isolation level issues

 Lower isolation level: increases concurrency; increases chance
of reading bad data
 Higher isolation level: ensure data is correct; negatively affects
concurrency

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 Transaction Isolation Level

 READ COMMITTED (DEFAULT)

 Prevents SELECT statements from reading dirty, or uncommitted data

 READ UNCOMMITTED
 Allows dirty reads

 REPEATABLE READ
 No other rows can update/delete rows in the result set until released; inserting
news rows is okay

 SERIALIZABLE
 No other transaction can make any changes

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 Dynamic Locking Architecture
Dynamic
Locking

Cost

Row Page Table

Locking Cost Granularity
Concurrency Cost
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 Blocks …

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 … Deadlocks
 Occurs when two transactions are blocking each other

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 Deadlock
 How SQL server ends a deadlock

 How to minimize deadlocks

 Access objects in same order
 Keep transactions short
 Use low isolation level
 Use bound connections

 How to customize the lock time-out setting

 SET LOCK_TIMEOUT function

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 Remarks

 Keep transactions short

 Design transactions to minimize deadlocks

 Use SQL Server defaults for locking

 Be careful when use locking options

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