Dbms best practice - database

I have some questions about programming with a DBMS (no specific language needed, but I'm using Java; no specific DBMS in mind).
I open a transaction, select a row, then read a field, add 1 to the field, and update, then commit. What happens if another user runs in the same time a transaction on that field? Does it crash the transaction, or what?
Example: I'm a in a shop that has 1 kg of bread. Waiter1 has a client that needs 1 kg of bread. Waiter2 the same. If the program is:
select row "bread"
if quantity>=1 kg then quantity=quantity-1
update row
What happens if the two waiters run the transaction in the same time?
What are the best ways to implement multiuser, avoiding "collision"? Select and lock, transaction only, or what?
When to use optimistic lock, or pessimistic?
When to use lock, and when is it not needed?

Why are you handling this on the application side? Relational databases are built to handle situations like this. Just use an update statement:
UPDATE some_table
SET quantity = quantity - 1
WHERE item_name = 'bread' AND quantity >= 1

What you are looking for is Transaction Isolation. The official SQL standard would handle it like this:
If you don't lock specifically your database will generally lock either the row or even the table for you. Depending on your isolation level it will either wait or raise an error.
Serializable
The second transaction will wait for the first to complete before it can do anything.
Repeatable reads
As soon as the first transaction reads, the second will wait until the first one committed. Or the other way around, if somehow the second transaction starts reading before the first.
Read committed
If the first transaction writes before the second writes, the first will have to wait until the second has committed. Otherwise the second will have to wait until the first has committed.
Read uncommitted
Both can read without an issue, but the first to write will make the other write stall till the transaction has been committed.
If one of the transactions commits after the other reads, you could lose the data and end up with only 1 update.

Related

SQL Server 2012 - How does "Repeatable Read" isolation level work?

I feel like I should know this, but I can't find anything that specifically outlines this, so here goes.
The documentation for SQL Server describes REPEATABLE READ as:
Specifies that statements cannot read data that has been modified but
not yet committed by other transactions and that no other transactions
can modify data that has been read by the current transaction until
the current transaction completes
This makes sense, but what actually happens when one of these situation arises? If, for example, Transaction A reads row 1, and then Transaction B attempts to update row 1, what happens? Does Transaction B wait until Transaction A has finished and then try again? Or is an exception thrown?
REPEATABLE READ takes S-locks on all rows that have been read by query plan operators for the duration of the transaction. The answer to your question follows from that:
If the read comes first it S-locks the row and the write must wait.
If the write comes first the S-lock waits for the write to commit.
Under Hekaton it works differently because there are no locks.

Postgres behaviour of concurrent DELETE RETURNING queries

If I have a database transaction which goes along the lines of:
DELETE FROM table WHERE id = ANY(ARRAY[id1, id2, id3,...]) RETURNING foo, bar;
if num_rows_returned != num_rows_in_array then
rollback and return
Do stuff with deleted data...
Commit
My understanding is that the DELETE query will lock those rows, until the transaction is committed or rolled back. As according to the postgres 9.1 docs:
An exclusive row-level lock on a specific row is automatically
acquired when the row is updated or deleted. The lock is held until
the transaction commits or rolls back, just like table-level locks.
Row-level locks do not affect data querying; they block only writers
to the same row.
I am using the default read committed isolation level in postgres 9.1.13
I would take from this that I should be OK, but I want to ensure that this means the following things are true:
Only one transaction may delete and return a row from this table, unless a previous transaction was rolled back.
This means "Do stuff with deleted data" can only be done once per row.
If two transactions try to do the above at once with conflicting rows, one will always succeed (ignoring system failure), and one will always fail.
Concurrent transactions may succeed when there is no crossover of rows.
If a transaction is unable to delete and return all rows, it will rollback and thus not delete any rows. A transaction may try to delete two rows for example. One row is already deleted by another transaction, but the other is free to be returned. However since one row is already deleted, the other must not be deleted and processed. Only if all specified ids can be deleted and returned may anything take place.
Using the normal idea of concurrency, processes/transactions do not fail when they are locked out of data, they wait.
The DBMS implements execution in such a way that transactions advance but only seeing effects from other transactions according to the isolation level. (Only in the case of detected deadlock is a transaction aborted, and even then its implemented execution will begin again, and the killing is not evident to its next execution or to other transactions except per isolation level.) Under SERIALIZABLE isolation level this means that the database will change as if all transactions happened without overlap in some order. Other levels allow a transaction to see certain effects of overlapped implementation execution of other transactions.
However in the case of PostgresSQL under SERIALIZABLE when a transaction tries to commit and the DBMS sees that it would give non-serialized behaviour the tranasaction is aborted with notification but not automatically restarted. (Note that this is not failure from implementation execution attempted access to a locked resource.)
(Prior to 9.1, PostgrSQL SERIALIZABLE did not give SQL standard (serialized) behaviour: "To retain the legacy Serializable behavior, Repeatable Read should now be requested.")
The locking protocols are how actual implementation execution gets interleaved to maximize throughput while keeping that true. All locking does is prevent actual overlapped implementation execution accesses to effect the apparent serialized execution.
Explicit locking by transaction code also just causes waiting.
Your question does not reflect this. You seem to think that attempted access to a locked resource by the implementation aborts a transaction. That is not so.

Is this .NET/SQL Server transaction scenario possible?

I just realized that I fundamentally don't understand how .NET/SQL Server transactions work. I feel like I might pushing the envelop on "there's no such thing as a dumb question", but all of the documentation I've read is not easy to follow. I'm going to try to phrase this question in such a way that the answer will be pretty much yes/no.
If I have a .NET process running on one machine that is effectively doing this (not real code):
For i as Integer = 0 to 100
Using TransactionScope
Using SqlClient.SqlConnection
'Executed using SqlClient.SqlCommand'
"DELETE from TABLE_A"
Thread.Sleep(5000)
"INSERT INTO TABLE_A (Col1) VALUES ('A')"
TransactionScope.Complete()
End Using
End Using
Next i
Is there any Transaction / Isolation-Level configuration that will make 'SELECT count(*) FROM TABLE_A' always return '1' when run from other processes (i.e. even though there are 5 second chunks of time when there are no rows in the table in the context of the transaction)?
Yes, you can make other processes not see the changes you do in the transaction shown. To do that you need to alter the other processes, not the one making the modification.
Turn on snapshot isolation and use IsolationLevel.Snapshot on the other reading processes. They will see the table in the state right before you made any modifications. They won't block (wait).
SNAPSHOT isolation is what you're looking for. Assuming that the table has a row when you start your loop, a concurrent SELECT running under SNAPSHOT isolation level will always see 1 row, no matter when is run, without ever waiting.
All other isolation levels, except READ UNCOMMITTED, will also always see exactly 1 row, but will often block for up to 5 seconds. Note that I consider READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT as SNAPSHOT for this argument.
Dirty reads, ie. SELECTs running under REAd UNCOMMITTED isolation level, will 0, 1 or even 2 rows. That is no mistake, dirty reads may see 2 rows even though you never inserted 2 at a time, it is because race conditions between the scan point of the SELECT and the insert point of your transaction, see Previously committed rows might be missed if NOLOCK hint is used for a similar issue discussion.
I believe the default transaction timeout is 1 minute (see: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms172070.aspx ) so within the context of your transaction I think you're correct to expect the table to have no records before your insert (regardless of the pause), as each command will complete in sequence within the transaction and that would have been the result of the delete.
Hope that helps.

Understanding SQL Server LOCKS on SELECT queries

I'm wondering what is the benefit to use SELECT WITH (NOLOCK) on a table if the only other queries affecting that table are SELECT queries.
How is that handled by SQL Server? Would a SELECT query block another SELECT query?
I'm using SQL Server 2012 and a Linq-to-SQL DataContext.
(EDIT)
About performance :
Would a 2nd SELECT have to wait for a 1st SELECT to finish if using a locked SELECT?
Versus a SELECT WITH (NOLOCK)?
A SELECT in SQL Server will place a shared lock on a table row - and a second SELECT would also require a shared lock, and those are compatible with one another.
So no - one SELECT cannot block another SELECT.
What the WITH (NOLOCK) query hint is used for is to be able to read data that's in the process of being inserted (by another connection) and that hasn't been committed yet.
Without that query hint, a SELECT might be blocked reading a table by an ongoing INSERT (or UPDATE) statement that places an exclusive lock on rows (or possibly a whole table), until that operation's transaction has been committed (or rolled back).
Problem of the WITH (NOLOCK) hint is: you might be reading data rows that aren't going to be inserted at all, in the end (if the INSERT transaction is rolled back) - so your e.g. report might show data that's never really been committed to the database.
There's another query hint that might be useful - WITH (READPAST). This instructs the SELECT command to just skip any rows that it attempts to read and that are locked exclusively. The SELECT will not block, and it will not read any "dirty" un-committed data - but it might skip some rows, e.g. not show all your rows in the table.
On performance you keep focusing on select.
Shared does not block reads.
Shared lock blocks update.
If you have hundreds of shared locks it is going to take an update a while to get an exclusive lock as it must wait for shared locks to clear.
By default a select (read) takes a shared lock.
Shared (S) locks allow concurrent transactions to read (SELECT) a resource.
A shared lock as no effect on other selects (1 or a 1000).
The difference is how the nolock versus shared lock effects update or insert operation.
No other transactions can modify the data while shared (S) locks exist on the resource.
A shared lock blocks an update!
But nolock does not block an update.
This can have huge impacts on performance of updates. It also impact inserts.
Dirty read (nolock) just sounds dirty. You are never going to get partial data. If an update is changing John to Sally you are never going to get Jolly.
I use shared locks a lot for concurrency. Data is stale as soon as it is read. A read of John that changes to Sally the next millisecond is stale data. A read of Sally that gets rolled back John the next millisecond is stale data. That is on the millisecond level. I have a dataloader that take 20 hours to run if users are taking shared locks and 4 hours to run is users are taking no lock. Shared locks in this case cause data to be 16 hours stale.
Don't use nolocks wrong. But they do have a place. If you are going to cut a check when a byte is set to 1 and then set it to 2 when the check is cut - not a time for a nolock.
I have to add one important comment. Everyone is mentioning that NOLOCKreads only dirty data. This is not precise. It is also possible that you'll get the same row twice or the whole row is skipped during your read. The reason is that you could ask for some data at the same time when SQL Server is re-balancing b-tree.
Check another threads
https://stackoverflow.com/a/5469238/2108874
http://www.sqlmag.com/article/sql-server/quaere-verum-clustered-index-scans-part-iii.aspx)
With the NOLOCK hint (or setting the isolation level of the session to READ UNCOMMITTED) you tell SQL Server that you don't expect consistency, so there are no guarantees. Bear in mind though that "inconsistent data" does not only mean that you might see uncommitted changes that were later rolled back, or data changes in an intermediate state of the transaction. It also means that in a simple query that scans all table/index data SQL Server may lose the scan position, or you might end up getting the same row twice.
At my work, we have a very big system that runs on many PCs at the same time, with very big tables with hundreds of thousands of rows, and sometimes many millions of rows.
When you make a SELECT on a very big table, let's say you want to know every transaction a user has made in the past 10 years, and the primary key of the table is not built in an efficient way, the query might take several minutes to run.
Then, our application might me running on many user's PCs at the same time, accessing the same database. So if someone tries to insert into the table that the other SELECT is reading (in pages that SQL is trying to read), then a LOCK can occur and the two transactions block each other.
We had to add a "NO LOCK" to our SELECT statement, because it was a huge SELECT on a table that is used a lot by a lot of users at the same time and we had LOCKS all the time.
I don't know if my example is clear enough? This is a real life example.
The SELECT WITH (NOLOCK) allows reads of uncommitted data, which is equivalent to having the READ UNCOMMITTED isolation level set on your database. The NOLOCK keyword allows finer grained control than setting the isolation level on the entire database.
Wikipedia has a useful article: Wikipedia: Isolation (database systems)
It is also discussed at length in other stackoverflow articles.
select with no lock - will select records which may / may not going to be inserted. you will read a dirty data.
for example - lets say a transaction insert 1000 rows and then fails.
when you select - you will get the 1000 rows.

Minimum transaction isolation level to avoid "Lost Updates"

With SQL Server's transaction isolation levels, you can avoid certain unwanted concurrency issues, like dirty reads and so forth.
The one I'm interested in right now is lost updates - the fact two transactions can overwrite one another's updates without anyone noticing it. I see and hear conflicting statements as to which isolation level at a minimum I have to choose to avoid this.
Kalen Delaney in her "SQL Server Internals" book says (Chapter 10 - Transactions and Concurrency - Page 592):
In Read Uncommitted isolation, all the behaviors described previously, except lost updates, are possible.
On the other hand, an independent SQL Server trainer giving us a class told us that we need at least "Repeatable Read" to avoid lost updates.
So who's right?? And why??
I dont know if it is too late to answer but I am just learning about transaction isolation levels in college and as part of my research I came across this link:
Microsoft Technet
Specifically the paragraph in question is:
Lost Update
A lost update can be interpreted in one of two ways. In the first scenario, a lost update is considered to have taken place when data that has been updated by one transaction is overwritten by another transaction, before the first transaction is either committed or rolled back. This type of lost update cannot occur in SQL Server 2005 because it is not allowed under any transaction isolation level.
The other interpretation of a lost update is when one transaction (Transaction #1) reads data into its local memory, and then another transaction (Transaction #2) changes this data and commits its change. After this, Transaction #1 updates the same data based on what it read into memory before Transaction #2 was executed. In this case, the update performed by Transaction #2 can be considered a lost update.
So in essence both people are right.
Personally (and I am open to being wrong, so please correct me as I am just learning this) I take from this the following two points:
The whole point of a transaction enviorment is to prevent lost updates as described in the top paragraph. So if even the most basic transaction level cant do that then why bother using it.
When people talk about lost updates, they know the first paragraph applies, and so generally speaking mean the second type of lost update.
Again, please correct me if anything here is wrong as I would like to understand this too.
The example in the book is of Clerk A and Clerk B receiving shipments of Widgets.
They both check the current inventory, see 25 is in stock. Clerk A has 50 widgets and updates to 75, Clerk B has 20 widgets and so updates to 45 overwriting the previous update.
I assume she meant this phenomena can be avoided at all isolation levels by Clerk A doing
UPDATE Widgets
SET StockLevel = StockLevel + 50
WHERE ...
and Clerk B doing
UPDATE Widgets
SET StockLevel = StockLevel + 20
WHERE ...
Certainly if the SELECT and UPDATE are done as separate operations you would need repeatable read to avoid this so the S lock on the row is held for the duration of the transaction (which would lead to deadlock in this scenario)
Lost updates may occur even if reads and writes are in separate transactions, like when users read data into Web pages, then update. In such cases no isolation level can protect you, especially when connections are reused from a connection pool. We should use other approaches, such as rowversion. Here is my canned answer.
My experience is that with Read Uncommitted you no longer get 'lost updates', you can however still get 'lost rollbacks'. The SQL trainer was probably referring to that concurrency issue, so the answer you're likely looking for is Repeatable Read.
That said, I would be very interested if anyone has experience that goes against this.
As marked by Francis Rodgers, what you can rely on SQL Server implementation is that once a transaction updated some data, every isolation level always issue "update locks" over the data, and denying updates and writes from another transaction, whatever it's isolation level it is. You can be sure this kind of lost updates are covered.
However, if the situation is that a transaction reads some data (with an isolation level different than Repeatable Read), then another transaction is able to change this data and commits it's change, and if the first transaction then updates the same data but this time, based on the internal copy that he made, the management system cannot do anything for saving it.
Your answer in that scenario is either use Repeatable Read in the first transaction, or maybe use some read lock from the first transaction over the data (I don't really know about that in a confident way. I just know of the existence of this locks and that you can use them. Maybe this will help anyone who's interested in this approach Microsoft Designing Transactions and Optimizing Locking).
The following is quote from 70-762 Developing SQL Databases (p. 212):
Another potential problem can occur when two processes read the same
row and then update that data with different values. This might happen
if a transaction first reads a value into a variable and then uses the
variable in an update statement in a later step. When this update
executes, another transaction updates the same data. Whichever of
these transactions is committed first becomes a lost update because it
was replaced by the update in the other transaction. You cannot use
isolation levels to change this behavior, but you can write an
application that specifically allows lost updates.
So, it seems that none of the isolation levels can help you in such cases and you need to solve the issue in the code itself. For example:
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS [dbo].[Balance];
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Balance]
(
[BalanceID] TINYINT IDENTITY(1,1)
,[Balance] MONEY
,CONSTRAINT [PK_Balance] PRIMARY KEY
(
[BalanceID]
)
);
INSERT INTO [dbo].[Balance] ([Balance])
VALUES (100);
-- query window 1
BEGIN TRANSACTION;
DECLARE #CurrentBalance MONEY;
SELECT #CurrentBalance = [Balance]
FROM [dbo].[Balance]
WHERE [BalanceID] = 1;
WAITFOR DELAY '00:00:05'
UPDATE [dbo].[Balance]
SET [Balance] = #CurrentBalance + 20
WHERE [BalanceID] = 1;
COMMIT TRANSACTION;
-- query window 2
BEGIN TRANSACTION;
DECLARE #CurrentBalance MONEY;
SELECT #CurrentBalance = [Balance]
FROM [dbo].[Balance]
WHERE [BalanceID] = 1;
UPDATE [dbo].[Balance]
SET [Balance] = #CurrentBalance + 50
WHERE [BalanceID] = 1;
COMMIT TRANSACTION;
Create the table, the execute each part of the code in separate query windows. Changing the isolation level does nothing. For example, the only difference between read committed and repeatable read is that the last, blocks the second transaction while the first is finished and then overwrites the value.

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