Serializability

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses the serializability of relational databases and the use of locks to assure it, noting that the definition of serializability involves a sequence (or schedule) of reads and writes and these correspond to two or more transactions. The basic assumption made in this paper, is that each transaction must preserve database consistency and so the serial execution of a set of transactions must preserve database consistency.

From the Paper:

"The concept of serializability emerges from the needs of the database and of accessing the database. The definition of serializability involves a sequence (or schedule) of reads and writes and these correspond to two or more transactions. It is stated that "the sequence must be computationally equivalent to executing the complete transactions in some serial order. Various restricted sequences--known as protocols -have been identified as guaranteeing serializability" (Copeland 100). The basic assumption made is that each transaction must preserve database consistency and so the serial execution of a set of transactions must preserve database consistency. The idea of schedule equivalence is addressed by programmers, with different types of serializability possible. Programmers may ignore operations other than read and write operations. The idea of serializability has served as the accepted correctness criterion in database systems, though with multi-database systems (MDBSs) ensuring global serializability can be difficult.

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