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Distributed snapshot isolation: global transactions pay globally, local transactions pay locally

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Abstract

Modern database systems employ Snapshot Isolation to implement concurrency control and isolationbecause it promises superior query performance compared to lock-based alternatives. Furthermore, Snapshot Isolation never blocks readers, which is an important property for modern information systems, which have mixed workloads of heavy OLAP queries and short update transactions. This paper revisits the problem of implementing Snapshot Isolation in a distributed database system and makes three important contributions. First, a complete definition of Distributed Snapshot Isolation is given, thereby extending existing definitions from the literature. Based on this definition, a set of criteria is proposed to efficiently implement Snapshot Isolation in a distributed system. Second, the design space of alternative methods to implement Distributed Snapshot Isolation is presented based on this set of criteria. Third, a new approach to implement Distributed Snapshot Isolation is devised; we refer to this approach as Incremental. The results of comprehensive performance experiments with the TPC-C benchmark show that the Incremental approach significantly outperforms any other known method from the literature. Furthermore, the Incremental approach requires no a priori knowledge of which nodes of a distributed system are involved in executing a transaction. Also, the Incremental approach can execute transactions that involve data from a single node only with the same efficiency as a centralized database system. This way, the Incremental approach takes advantage of sharding or other ways to improve data locality. The cost for synchronizing transactions in a distributed system is only paid by transactions that actually involve data from several nodes. All these properties make the Incremental approach more practical than related methods proposed in the literature.

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Notes

  1. For all figures in this section, we skip the node information on the actions since it is clear on which node an action is executed. Moreover, all transactions shown in any schedule are committed transactions (i.e., the begin is shown as rhombus while the commit is shown as a circle).

    Fig. 4
    figure 4

    Serial-concurrent-phenomenon. a Local schedules, b Global schedule G1, c SSG(G1), d Global schedule G2, e SSG(G2)

    Full size image

  2. Replication is not considered in this paper, but support of eager replication is straight-forward.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. DHBW Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany

    Carsten Binnig

  2. Systems Group, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Stefan Hildenbrand & Donald Kossmann

  3. SAP AG, Walldorf, Germany

    Franz Färber, Juchang Lee & Norman May

Authors
  1. Carsten Binnig
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  2. Stefan Hildenbrand
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  3. Franz Färber
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  4. Donald Kossmann
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  5. Juchang Lee
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  6. Norman May
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Correspondence to Carsten Binnig.

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Binnig, C., Hildenbrand, S., Färber, F. et al. Distributed snapshot isolation: global transactions pay globally, local transactions pay locally. The VLDB Journal 23, 987–1011 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00778-014-0359-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00778-014-0359-9

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