The race condition that led to Flexcoin bankruptcy
Introduction It’s hard to imagine that a race condition bug could lead to the bankruptcy of a given online service, isn’t it? In this article, I’m going to show you how a race condition led to the bankruptcy of Flexcoin in 2014.
A beginner’s guide to Serializability
Introduction In this article, we are going to see what Serializability means and what guarantees does it offer. Relational database systems provide a Serializable isolation level that’s supposed to provide transaction Serializability. However, as you will soon see, some databases even provide Strict Serializability, which is a combination of Serializability and Linearizability.
A beginner’s guide to Phantom Read anomaly
Introduction Database transactions are defined by the four properties known as ACID. The Isolation Level (I in ACID) allows you to trade off data integrity for performance. The weaker the isolation level, the more anomalies can occur, and in this article, we are going to describe the Phantom Read phenomenon.
A beginner’s guide to Non-Repeatable Read anomaly
Introduction Database transactions are defined by the four properties known as ACID. The Isolation Level (I in ACID) allows you to trade off data integrity for performance. The weaker the isolation level, the more anomalies can occur, and in this article, we are going to describe the Non-Repeatable Read phenomenon.
A beginner’s guide to Dirty Read anomaly
Introduction Database transactions are defined by the four properties known as ACID. The Isolation Level (I in ACID) allows you to trade off data integrity for performance. The weaker the isolation level, the more anomalies can occur, and in this article, we are going to describe the Dirty Read phenomenon.
MySQL metadata locking and database transaction ending
Introduction As previously explained, every SQL statement must be executed in the context of a database transaction. For modifying statements (e.g. INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE), row-level locks must be taken to ensure recoverability and avoid the data anomalies. Next, I’ll demonstrate what can happen when a database transaction is not properly ended.
A beginner’s guide to Read and Write Skew phenomena
Introduction In my article about ACID and database transactions, I introduced the three phenomena described by the SQL standard: dirty read non-repeatable read phantom read While these are good to differentiate the four isolation levels (Read Uncommitted, Read Committed, Repeatable Read and Serializable), in reality, there are more phenomena to take into consideration as well. The 1995 paper (A Critique of ANSI SQL Isolation Levels) introduces the other phenomena that are omitted from the standard specification. In my High-Performance Java Persistence book, I decided to insist on the Transaction chapter as it… Read More
The data knowledge stack
Concurrency is not for the faint-hearted We all know concurrency programming is difficult to get it right. That’s why threading tasks are followed by extensive design and code review sessions. You never assign concurrent issues to inexperienced developers. The problem space is carefully analyzed, a design emerges and the solution is both documented and reviewed. That’s how threading related tasks are usually addressed. You will naturally choose a higher level abstraction since you don’t want to get tangled up in low-level details. That’s why the java.util.concurrent is usually better (unless you build… Read More
A beginner’s guide to ACID and database transactions
Introduction Transactions are omnipresent in today’s enterprise systems, providing data integrity even in highly concurrent environments. So let’s get started by first defining the term and the context where you might usually employ it. A transaction is a collection of read/write operations succeeding only if all contained operations succeed. Inherently a transaction is characterized by four properties (commonly referred as ACID): Atomicity Consistency Isolation Durability
