Transaction processing system and method with reduced locking

Abstract: Apparatus and method for reading data pages 33 in a transaction processing system 20 without locking the pages are disclosed. The system maintains a Global_Committed_LSN 36 identifying the oldest uncommitted transaction accessing any of the data, and Object_Committed_LSNs 38a,38b identifying the oldest uncommitted transactions accessing particular files, tables and indexes. Each data page includes a Page_LSN 35 identifying the last transaction to have updated the page. To read a page, a transaction first latches the pages, and compares the page s Page_LSN with the Global_Committed_LSN, or with the page's respective Object_Committed_LSN. If the Page_LSN is older than the Committed_LSN with which is was compared, then the transaction reads the page without locking it, since there can be no uncommitted transaction in process which might have updated the page's data. However if the Page_LSN is younger than the Committed_LSN, the page is locked before being read.

Description: This invention relates to computerized transaction processing systems. More particularly, it relates to a method for reducing locking by transactions which are executing concurrently. A transaction comprises a sequence of operations that changes recoverable data such as a database from one consistent state into another. A transaction processing system guarantees that if a transaction executes some updates against recoverable data, and if a failure occurs before the transaction reaches its normal termination or an interim point of consistency, then those updates will be undone. When a new point of consistency has been reached and all updates made by the transaction must be made permanent, the transaction is committed. To fulfil this transaction recovery guarantee, the system must be able to remember across system outages both transactions in progress and their update actions, so that their effect on recoverable data can be properly reflected when the system is restarted. The system maintains a log of each transaction's progress and changes to data in order to fulfil the transaction recovery guarantee. The log data, known as log records, can be examined to ensure that either the transaction's committed actions are reflected in the data base or were undone. When the log records include actual data, they can also be used to reconstruct data which has been damaged or lost, such as by the failure of a storage device. The log can be thought of as an ever growing sequential file. The log is permanently stored on stable storage such as a disk file (often called a "disk drive"), which remains intact and available across system failures. Log records are first written to temporary, volatile log file buffers in the computer's memory , and then transferred to stable storage at certain times (e.g., when a transaction is committed). Both stable storage (e.g., disk storage) and virtual storage (e.g., computer memory) are divided into pages. Each page typically holds the equivalent of several typewritten pages. The page may be subdivided into records, such as the names and addresses of individuals. When a transaction needs to access certain data, the page containing that data is copied from stable storage into a buffer of the same size in virtual storage. If the data is updated by the transaction the updated page is transferred back to stable storage at a later time. Locking is used to control simultaneously executing (i.e. concurrent) transactions' access to shared data, and in particular is used to prevent concurrent transactions from inconsistently modifying the same data. Appropriate use of locking can guarantee a transaction that the data that it reads is in a consistent state and that the data does not contain uncommitted updates of other transactions. Systems which use page-level locking cannot lock less than a whole page, even if the transaction obtaining the lock only needs to access one of the records on the page. Locking at a finer granularity, such as record-level locking can reduce contention between concurrent transactions, but imposes greater processing overhead. Locking is time consuming ("expensive" in technical terms), and therefore slows the processing of transactions. Storage for individual locks' information must be acquired, formatted and released, and machine instructions must be executed to acquire and release locks. In one transaction processing system, acquiring a lock and releasing it requires about 800 instructions even when there are no conflicts with other locks or requests. Lock managers typically process lock requests on a first-in-first-out (FIFO) basis in order to fairly allocate locks among competing transactions. As a result, sometimes a transaction must wait for a lock even though its requested lock can be granted, because its request is not compatible with an intervening request from another transaction. Record-level and similar fine-granularity locking can be helpful in increasing concurrency by reducing contention among transactions. It is well known in the art that locking granularity affects system throughput. Typically, finer-granularity of locking leads to higher throughput. The drawback of fine-granularity locking is that for those transactions that access large number of records, the number of locks that need to be acquired may increase dramatically. In many cases the sole purpose of locking is to ensure that a given piece of data that is about to be read is in the committed state, rather than to delay future updates. Ad hoc queries that examine large volumes of data and that generally do not perform any updates of the examined data are examples of locking to ensure that data is committed. In these situations, known prior art techniques either do not apply or are too time consuming (in terms of machine instructions). There is a significant body of prior art relating to locking reduction. U.S. 4,627,019, "Database Management System for Controlling Concurrent Access to a Database", and U.S. 4,648,036, "Method for Controlling Query and Update Processing in a Database System", disclose methods in which multiple versions of the data are maintained to avoid locking by read-only transactions. The fist, US 4627019, discloses storing an array of access blocks, each block defining the database location of a version of the data, with only one version being current. However versioning does not avoid locking for transactions which need completely current data. Versioning only helps transactions which perform no updates and which do not mind reading outdated data. Further, versioning requires extra storage to maintain the multiple versions of updated data objects. U.S. 4,698,752, avoids relocking records by maintaining a transaction list identifying locked records which were previously locked by the same transaction. Instead of avoiding locking, Kung and Robinson, "On Optimistic Methods for Concurrency Control", ACM Transactions on Database Systems, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 213-226 (June 1981), propose an approach called "optimistic locking" for reducing the cost of locking. There is a need for a transaction processing system which does not require transactions to obtain unnecessary locks. There is also a need for a method for more efficiently determining that a piece of data is in the committed state. Finally, there is a need to support fine-granularity locking in a way that is not too time consuming for transactions reading large quantitites of data. According to the invention there is provided a method of accessing a selected data unit by a selected one of two or more processes operating in a computerized data processing system having two or more data units, characterized in that each data unit is identified by an identifier which reflects an age not older than the age of the youngest modification of the data unit, the method comprising the steps performed by the data processing system of: (a) maintaining a second identifier which reflects an age at least as old as the then-oldest in-process modification of at least a subset of the data units including the selected data unit; (b) latching the selected data unit; (c) comparing the second identifier with the selected data unit's identifier; (d) obtaining access to the data unit for the selected process compatibly with other process' accesses to the data unit, wherein said obtaining access is performed according to a first procedure if the selected data unit's identifier is older than the second identifier and according to a second procedure if the selected data unit's identifier is not older than the second identifier, said second procedure including and said first procedure not including locking the selected data unit; and (e) reading the data unit by the selected process. The invention also provides a data processing system including two or more data units and including means for reading data units to which access has been obtained for a selected one of two or more processes operating in the system, characterized by each data unit being identified by identifier means which reflects an age not older than the age of the youngest modification of the data unit, and further characterized by the system including: (a) means for maintaining a second identifier which reflects an age at least as old as the then-oldest in-process modification of at least a subset of the data units including the selected data unit; (b) means for latching the selected data unit; (c) means for comparing the second identifier with the data unit identifier means; (d) means for obtaining access to the data unit for the selected process compatibly with other process' accesses to the data unit, said access obtaining means operating according to a first procedure if the selected data unit's identifier is older than the second identifier and operating according to a second procedure if the selected data unit's identifier is not older than the second identifier, said second procedure including and said first procedure not including locking the selected data unit; and (e) means for reading the data unit. In order that the invention may be fully understood a preferred embodiment thereof will now be described, by way of example only, with reference to the accompanying drawings in which, FIG.1 is a block diagram of a transaction processing system according to this invention, showing particularly the buffer pool and recovery log used by the invention. FIG.2 is a flowchart of the preferred method for initialising and maintaining a Global_Committed_LSN. FIG.3 is a flowchart of the preferred method for initialising and maintaining an Object_Committed_LSN. FIG.4 is a flowchart of the preferred method for accessing a page using a Committed_LSN. FIG.5 is a flowchart of the preferred method for obtaining a latch on a page. FIG.6 shows an example recovery log with a Global_Committed_LSN and Object_Committed_LSNs according to the invention. FIG.7 shows an example transaction table and Committed_LSNs. As shown in FIG. 1, a transaction processing system 20 according to this invention comprises a computer 22 and associated disk storage 24. The computer communicates with one or more devices such as an automated teller machine (ATM) 26 for submitting transactions to the system. The computer 22 is a general purpose programmable digital computer such an IBM Model 3090, (IBM and 3090 are trademarks of the International Business Machines Corporation) and includes a central processing unit (CPU) 28 for executing program instructions, and volatile memory 30. Data is retained in the memory 30 only until it is no longer needed, or until a system shutdown erases the memory. Data is stored permanently on stable disk storage 24, and transferred into the memory 30 when it is needed to be read or updated. The disk storage 24 is a general purpose direct access storage device such as an IBM Model 3390 Disk Storage Device. The disk 24 is divided into pages, and as data on a particular page is needed for a transaction that page is transferred into a corresponding page 33 of a buffer pool 32 in the memory 30. Once in the buffer pool 32, a page's data can be read or updated by the CPU 28 as needed for a transaction. Updated pages are transferred back from the buffer pool 32 to the disk storage 24, permanently saving the updated information. However, if the system 20 loses power or otherwise fails before an updated page is transferred back to disk storage, information on that page may be lost. A recovery log 34 is maintained in memory 30 and on the disk storage 24 in order to recover from system failures. The recovery log records page updates and other events of interest, and associates a log sequence number or LSN with each recorded event. In the method of recovery logging known as "write-ahead logging", a log record of a page update is written to the recovery log 34 on the disk 24 before the page itself is updated on the disk, thereby ensuring that the update can be undone if the transaction needs to be aborted after the updated page is written to disk. The page in the buffer pool is assigned a Page_LSN 35 which equals the log sequence number (LSN) assigned to that page update's log record. When the updated page is transferred from the buffer pool 32 back to the disk storage 24, the Page_LSN 35 is transferred with it. Then, during recovery the recovery manager need only search the recovery log back to the page's log sequence number for updates to be recovered. The system 20 insures that only committed data is made available to transactions (unless of course the uncommitted data belongs to the accessing transaction). In prior art transaction processing systems, a transaction wishing to merely read data on a page is required to obtain a lock on that page in order to insure that it reads only committed data on the page, and that no concurrently executing transaction will update the page's data while it is being read. Obtaining these locks can significantly slow long read-only transactions which are required to lock each page to be read. This invention uses fast, short duration latches on pages to be read, and then locks the pages only if they might contain uncommitted data. Obtaining such latches on pages is as much as ten times faster than obtaining locks. This allows transactions to complete significantly faster where most of the data being accessed has been committed. The system 20 maintains in the memory 30 a transaction table of the log sequence numbers (LSN) of the oldest uncommitted transactions still accessing the data. A Global_Committed_LSN 36 identifies the oldest uncommitted transaction accessing any of the data. Object_Committed_LSNs (OCLSNs) 38a,38b identify the oldest uncommitted transactions that modified particular subsets of the data (such as files, tables and indexes). When a transaction prepares to access a page in the buffer pool 32, it first latches the page and then compares that page's Page_LSN 35 with the Global_Committed_LSN 36, or with the Object_Committed_LSN 38a,38b for the object containing the page to be read if such an Object_Committed_LSN exists. If the Page_LSN 35 is older than the Committed_LSN with which is was compared, then the system can be sure that there is no uncommitted transaction in process which has updated the page's data. Knowing this, the page may be read immediately, without locking it against conflict with update transactions. Once the page has been read the latch is immediately released to allow other transactions to access the page. If the comparison shows that the Page_LSN 35 is not older than the Committed_LSN tested, then it is possible that an uncommitted transaction might have updated the page's data. In this case a lock must be obtained by the transaction before the page can be accessed. However, this happens only rarely in large database systems where only a small fraction of the data is being updated at any time. The majority of transactions may be processed much more rapidly than in prior art systems, since full scale lock resolution is not needed. Each log record is assigned a unique log sequence number (LSN) at the time the record is written to the recovery log 34. The LSNs are assigned in ascending sequence. The LSNs are the logical addresses of the corresponding log records, although version numbers or timestamps may also used. When a transaction begins, it places an initial log record on the recovery log 34, and this record is assigned a LSN known as the transaction's Begin_LSN. On finishing the logging of an update to a page 33, the LSN of the log record corresponding to the latest update to the page is placed in a field 35 in the page header. Hence, knowing the Page_LSN 35 allows the system to correlate the contents of the page 33 with the logged updates relating to that page. During recovery the Page_LSN 35 and the log record's LSN can be compared to determine whether or not that log record's update is already reflected in that page 33. The crucial fact that makes the invention accomplish its objectives is that no page 33 with a Page_LSN 35 that is less than the LSN of the first log record of the oldest update transaction still executing can have any uncommitted data. As described above, locks may be obtained at different granularities such as record (tuple, row), table (relation) and file (tablespace, segment, dbspace). And at each granularity, locks may be obtained in different lock modes such as S (Shared), X (eXclusive), IX (Intention eXclusive), IS (Intention Shared), and SIX (Shared Intention eXclusive). S and X locks are most common. An S lock permits the transaction to read the locked data, while an X lock permits the transaction to both read and update the data. Locks on a given object can be held simultaneously by different transactions only if those locks' modes are compatible. X is compatible with none of the modes. S is compatible with S and IS only. IX is compatible with IX and IS only. IS is compatible with IX, IS, S, and SIX only. SIX is compatible with IS only. Intention locks (IX, IS, and SIX) are obtained on the higher levels of the data object hierarchy (e.g., file and table), and S and X locks are obtained on the lower level objects (e.g., record) to be accessed. The nonintention mode locks (S or X), when obtained on an object at a certain level of the data object hierarchy, implicitly grant locks of the corresponding mode on the lower level objects of that higher level object. The intention mode locks, on the other hand, only give the privilege of requesting the corresponding nonintention mode locks on the lower level objects (e.g., SIX on a table implicitly grants S on all the records of that table, and it allows X to be requested explicitly on the records). Lock requests may be made conditionally or unconditionally. A conditional request means that the requestor is not willing to wait if the lock is not grantable immediately at the time the request is processed. An unconditional request means that the requestor is willing to wait until the lock becomes grantable. Locks may be held for different durations. An unconditional request for an instant duration lock means that the lock is not to be actually granted, but the lock manager has to delay returning the lock call with the success status until the lock becomes grantable. Manual duration locks are released some time after they are acquired, typically long before the transaction terminates. Commit duration locks are released only at the time of termination of the transaction, i.e., after commit or abort is completed. The lock manager chains together all the locks acquired by a transaction. When the transaction terminates, all the commit and manual duration locks still held are released via a single call to the lock manager. All transactions are assumed to get at least an intention lock (e.g., in the IS mode) on the higher level object (e.g., the table) which they wish to access. Even when the page is the smallest granularity of locking, an exclusive (X) latch is used by update transactions to let other nonlocking transactions (i.e., readers of the page) know that an update is in progress. This permits uncommitted data to be read, when desired, with physical consistency of the data and the validity of pointers being guaranteed by making such transactions acquire a share (S) mode latch before examining a page. With finer than page locking, all updaters and readers are in any case required to do latching in the appropriate mode before examining the page. An update transaction writes a Begin_UR (UR means "unit of recovery") record just before performing its first update. Read-only transactions do not do any logging. The LSN of the Begin_UR log record is termed the Begin_LSN of the transaction. Typically, in transaction systems, a component of the system called the recovery manager or the transaction manager maintains a transaction table which contains one entry for each active transaction. The entry associated with an update transaction stores that transaction's Begin_LSN. These Begin_LSNs are used to compute the Global_Committed_LSN 36 and Object_Committed_LSNs 38a,38b. Figure 2 shows the preferred method for maintaining the Global_Committed_LSN 36. The description which follows also references the pseudocode below. However, the flowchart of FIG. 2 corresponds closely to the pseudocode, and reference numerals in FIG. 2 correspond to pseudocode line numbers. The Global_Committed_LSN 36 must be calculated whenever the system restarts, as well as during normal processing of update transactions. Lines 301-305 calculate the Global_Committed_LSN 36 at system restart. If on completion of system restart there is an active transaction (line 301), then the Begin_LSN of all the active transactions is obtained from the system's recovery manager (line 302). The Global_Committed_LSN 36 is equal to the minimum, i.e., the lowest or oldest value, of the Begin_LSNs of the restarted active transactions (line 303). If there are no active transactions at system restart (line 304), then the Global_Committed_LSN 36 is simply equal to the recovery log's End_of_Log_LSN (line 305). Every transaction commenced after system restart will have a Begin_LSN higher (i.e., younger) than the End_of_Log_LSN stored as the Global_Committed_LSN 36 at restart. Whenever an update transaction terminates, the Global_Committed_LSN 36 must be checked, and if necessary recomputed. However the recomputation must only be done if the terminating transaction is the oldest transaction then executing, i.e., if its Begin_LSN is the one which determined the then existing Global_Committed_LSN 36. If this is true (line 311), then if there are other active update transactions (line 312) the Global_Committed_LSN 36 is computed as the minimum (i.e., the oldest) of the Begin_LSNs of the remaining active update transactions (lines 313-314). If there are no other active update transactions (line 315), then the Global_Committed_LSN 36 is set equal to the End_of_Log_LSN, the current log sequence number of the recovery log 34. The Global_Committed_LSN 36 is preferably kept in shared storage and modified by the recovery manager using Compare & Double Swap logic. In this way transactions which need to know the value of the Global_Committed_LSN 36 can obtain it directly from the recovery manager's shared storage. The Global_Committed_LSN 36 guarantees that all updates logged prior to that point in the log have already been committed. It is possible that some additional updates logged after the Global_Committed_LSN will have also been committed. If the transaction wishes to determine which of those later updates (i.e., updates with LSNs greater than or equal to the Global_Committed_LSN) have been committed, additional processing will be required. Pseudocode corresponding to Fig. 2 is as follows: At End of System Restart: At Termination of Normal Processing of an Update Transaction: Instead of having one Global_Committed_LSN 36, transactions can benefit further by computing a specific Object_Committed_LSN 38a,38b for the object to be accessed. In this way, a long-running update transaction that accesses some other objects and keeps the Global_Committed_LSN 36 quite a bit in the past will not unduly restrict the applicability of this invention to particular data objects of interest. The preferred method for maintaining such an Object_Committed_LSN 38a,38b is shown in Figure 3. Pseudocode corresponding to Figure 3 is also shown below. As with figure 2, reference numerals for the flowchart of FIG. 3 correspond to the pseudocode line numbers. A higher level lock on the object for which the Object_Committed_LSN 38a,38b is to be computed must be obtained as the first step. This is typically done using an IS lock on the higher level object (line 501). Then, the current End_of_Log_LSN is stored to prevent new transactions updating the object from distorting the calculated Object_Committed_LSN 38a,38b. If there are active update transactions accessing the object for which the Object_Committed_LSN 38a,38b is being calculated (line 503), then their Begin_LSNs are obtained from the recovery manager (line 504) and the minimum (i.e., the oldest) Begin_LSN is calculated (line 505). Otherwise, if there are no updates in process for the object, the value of 'infinity' is stored (line 507). The Object_Committed_LSN 38a,38b is calculated as the minimum (i. e., the older) of the stored current End_of_Log_LSN, and the Begin_LSN of the object's active update transactions. If there are no such active transactions, the Object_Committed_LSN 38a,38b is thus set to the End_of_Log_LSN of the recovery log 34. Pseudocode corresponding to Figure 3 is as follows: Traditionally, locks are used to determine whether a data page 33 that needs to be accessed by a transaction is currently in the committed state or not. By latching a particular page and comparing its Page_LSN 35 to a Committed_LSN of this invention a transaction can determine, without locking, whether that particular page to be accessed is in fact committed. If the page is committed, the transaction can immediately access its data and release the latch. Typically, latches are used to guarantee physical consistency of data, while locks are used to assure logical consistency of data. The deadlock detector is not informed about latch waits, so latches must be requested so as to avoid deadlocks involving latches alone, or involving latches and locks. Latches are usually held for a much shorter period of time than are locks. Basically, locks and latches are implemented the same way (e.g., by using the IBM/370 compare and swap type instructions). The major difference comes in the way storage management is done for them. Space for the data structures representing latches is allocated statically since the number of latches is significantly fewer than the number of lockable objects in the data base. As a result, the data structure for a given latch is directly addressable (e.g., for page latches, the latch data structure is part of the buffer control block describing the buffer version of the page). Acquiring a latch is cheaper than acquiring a lock (in the no-conflict case, 10s of instructions versus 100s of instructions), because the latch control information is always in virtual memory in a fixed place, and direct addressability to the latch information is possible given the latch name. Since each transaction holds at most 2 or 3 latches simultaneously, the latch request blocks can be permanently allocated to each transaction and initialized with transaction ID, etc. right at the start of that transaction, rather than being allocated dynamically. This minimizes tile overhead associated with obtaining a latch. In contrast, lock request blocks cannot reasonably be permanently allocated, and must be dynamically allocated since the number of locks held simultaneously by different transactions may vary widely. It is for these reasons that latching is much faster than locking. Latches can be obtained in S and X modes, can be conditional, and can have varying duration (except that commit duration is not allowed). These options have the same meanings as they do for the full-scale locks described above. The preferred method for obtaining a latch on a data page as used in this invention is shown in Figure 5, in which reference numerals for the flow chart of FIG. 5 correspond to the pseudocode line numbers of below. When a transaction wishes to latch a page, it must first fix the page in the buffer pool (line 901) and read the latch control block for that page (line 902). If another transaction already holds a latch on the page, the "Existing_Mode" field of the latch control block will equal the value 'Held' (line 907). If this is not the case, the latch can be granted immediately (line 915). If one or more latches are currently held on the page by other transactions, then the requesting transaction must first check to see whether other transactions besides the current latch holder are waiting for their own latches (line 908). If there are such waiting transactions, then the requesting transaction adds itself to the list of waiting transactions (line 913). If there are no other transactions waiting for latches on the page, then if the latch which the requesting transaction desires is compatible with the latch currently held on the page (line 909), then the requesting transaction's latch can be granted immediately (line 915). If the requesting transaction's desired latch is not compatible with the existing latch on the page, and there are no other waiting transactions, then the requesting transaction must create a list of waiting transactions (line 912), with itself as the first and only entry on the list (line 913). Once the requesting transaction has added itself to the list of waiting transactions, it must wait until its requested latch can be granted (line 914). Waiting transactions are notified by existing latch holders when the latches for which they are waiting can be granted. At that point, the waiting transaction is woken up and the latch is granted (line 915). Pseudocode corresponding to Figure 5 is as follows: The preferred method for accessing data pages 33 using the Committed_LSNs 36,38a,38b of this invention is shown in Figure 4 and the pseudocode below. First, the page to be read must be fixed in the buffer pool (line 701), so that it cannot be moved while the transaction is preparing to read it. The page's address in the buffer pool is stored (line 702), and the page is latched in shared 'S' mode (line 703). If an Object_Committed_LSN 38a,38b exists for the page (line 704), then it is used as the Committed_LSN (line 705) to be compared to the page's Page_LSN. Otherwise, the Global_Committed_LSN 36 is used (lines 706-707). If the page's Page_LSN is greater (i.e., younger) than or equal to the Committed_LSN used in the comparison (line 709), then some of the page's data may be uncommitted and the page must be locked (line 710). Otherwise no lock is needed (lines 711-712). The page is then read (line 713), unlocked if necessary (line 714) and the latch is released (line 715). Pseudocode corresponding to Figure 4 is as follows: Example An example of recovery log 34, a Global_Committed_LSN 36, and Object_Committed_LSNs 38a,38b are shown in FIG.6 , while FIG. 7 shows an example transaction table. The values shown in these examples correspond to the values shown in the system diagram of FIG. 1. The example shows two data objects such as files, identified as P and S, and having pages P1-P4 and S1-S4, respectively, in the buffer pool 32. The example shows the state of the system 20 at the time when the End_of_Log_LSN of the recovery log 34 is equal to 160. At that time, update transactions T2 and T3 remain active, while the updates of transactions T1 and T4 have been committed. Transaction T1 updated page P1 at time LSN 20, page P2 at LSN 30, and page P3 at LSN 60. These updates were logged to the recovery log 34, and the updates' LSNs were stored as the page's Page_LSN 35 in the buffer pool 32. Transaction T1 committed and was terminated at LSN 70. Transaction T2 began at LSN 40, updated page S1 at LSN 50, and continues to run as of the current LSN 160. Because this transaction T2 is the oldest still uncommitted transaction, the Global_Committed_LSN 36 for the system at this moment is equal to the Begin_LSN of transaction T2, which is 40. Transaction T2's update to page S1 at LSN 50 is reflected in page S1's Page_LSN. However, transaction T2's update to page S2 at LSN 80 has been superceded by transaction T4's update to page S2 at LSN 150, so that page S2's Page_LSN is equal to 150. Transaction T2's updates to pages S3 and S4 are reflected in those pages' Page_LSNs of 90 and 120, respectively. Transaction T2's update to page S5 was logged at LSN 140. The Object_Committed_LSN 38a,38b for data object S is determined by the oldest still uncommitted transaction updating object S, in this case transaction T2. Transaction T3, updating data object P, similarly determines the Object_Committed_LSN 38a,38b for that object, which in this example is equal to 100, the Begin_LSN of transaction T3, since as of the current End_of_Log_LSN 160 transaction T3 is not yet committed. Transaction T4, which updated pages P4 and S2, committed at LSN 160. Its update of page S2, which occurred after transaction T2's update to that page, determines the Page_LSN of page S2, shown here as 150. The transaction IDs and Begin_LSNs of all still-uncommitted transactions, here T2 and T3, is shown in FIG. 7. FIG. 7 also shows the system's Global_Committed_LSN 36, which is equal to LSN 40, and the system's Object_Committed_LSN table 38a,38b. As shown in FIG. 1, these tables are stored in computer memory 30, and are preferably maintained by the system's recovery manager. In multisystem transaction processing systems, data can be shared between the individual database management systems (this is call a data sharing or DS system), or data can be partitioned between the systems (known as a non-data sharing or NDS system). In data sharing systems, the disks are shared by the multiple instances of the data base management system (DBMS), but each DBMS instance has its own buffer pool and global locks, and buffer coherency protocols are required to preserve consistency of the data, in spite of the ability of all the systems to read and modify any of the data in the data base. In non-data sharing systems, each system can read or modify directly only a portion of the data in the data base. Non-data sharing (NDS) systems stand to benefit greatly from this invention since there is only, at most, one copy of the data in the buffer pool with NDS. The Committed_LSN 36,38a,38b can be determined by each system independently of the other systems. In data sharing (DS) systems, conceptually each system needs to periodically poll the other systems to determine the minimum Committed_LSN across all the systems (various alternatives are possible for implementing this efficiently). However it is acceptable to use an out of date Committed_LSN. At worst this can only cause unnecessary locking - uncommitted data will never be read. In DS, since there can be more than one copy of each page in the different buffer pools, unless a given system is already known to have the latest version of a given page, the utility of the invention is reduced. DS is penalized the most when page locking is done compared to NDS, but it is still better compared to DS in which the current invention is not adopted. It will be appreciated that, although specific embodiments of the invention have been described herein for purposes of illustration, various modifications may be made without departing from the scope of the invention. In particular, in maintaining a Global_Committed_LSN it may be more cost effective to compute it only when it is needed, if it is not needed very often. Various possibilities exist for implementing the continuous tracking of Global_Committed_LSN. The recovery manager could use a priority queue to keep track of the Begin_LSNs of the currently active update transactions. Alternatively, the recovery manager could compute the Global_Committed_LSN at regular intervals based on elapsed time, number of update transaction terminations, amount of logging, ddetc. An alternative method of maintaining the Object_Committed_LSN is to track, for each transaction and for each object that it updates, a lower bound on the LSN of the log record of the first update that the transaction makes to that object. This information can be kept in the virtual storage descriptor information associated with the object. A transaction needing the Object_Committed_LSN can then use the minimum of the tracked LSN values and the End_of_Log_LSN as the Committed_LSN. The Committed_LSN computed in this fashion will be greater than or equal to the value derived from the preferred embodiment described above. This invention can also be extended to work in transaction systems which do not log changes to all the pages of the data base and which do not store the Page_LSN in the page header. In such systems, we require the systems to keep track of the youngest transaction to have updated each page and use this information in the same fashion as the Page_LSN in the comparison with the Global_Committed_LSN or Object_Committed_LSN described above to reduce or avoid locking. This invention is not only useful in page-locking transaction processing systems, but is equally useful (or may even be more so) where lower-granularity locking is used, such as in record-level locking systems. And the invention is also useful in systems which do not use write-ahead logging, such as systems which use shadow paging and logging. Accordingly, the scope of protection of this invention is limited only by the following claims and their equivalents.

Claims: A method of accessing a selected data unit by a selected one of two or more processes operating in a computerized data processing system (20) having two or more data units (33), characterized in that each data unit is identified by an identifier (35) which reflects an age not older than the age of the youngest modification of the data unit, the method comprising the steps performed by the data processing system of: (a) maintaining a second identifier (36,38a,38b) which reflects an age at least as old as the then-oldest in-process modification of at least a subset of the data units including the selected data unit; (b) latching the selected data unit; (c) comparing the second identifier (36,38a,38b) with the selected data unit's identifier (35); (d) obtaining access to the data unit for the selected process compatibly with other process' accesses to the data unit, wherein said obtaining access is performed according to a first procedure if the selected data unit's identifier is older than the second identifier and according to a second procedure if the selected data unit's identifier is not older than the second identifier, said second procedure including and said first procedure not including locking the selected data unit; and (e) reading the data unit by the selected process. A method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the second identifier (36) identifies the then-oldest in-process modification across all of the data units. A method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the second identifier (38a,38b) identifies the then-oldest in-process modification of a subset of the data units, the subset including the selected data unit. A method as claimed in any preceding claim, wherein the data units comprise data pages (33); each page comprises data records, multiple such records being included in a single data page; and the selected data unit's identifier comprises a recovery log (34) sequence number. A method as claimed in any preceding claim, wherein the data units are modified by processes which either perform all attempted modifications or perform no modifications. A method as claimed in claim 5, wherein the second identifier is updated in response to every modifying process. A data processing system (20) including two or more data units (33) and including means for reading data units to which access has been obtained for a selected one of two or more processes operating in the system, characterized by each data unit being identified by identifier means (35) which reflects an age not older than the age of the youngest modification of the data unit, and further characterized by the system including: (a) means for maintaining a second identifier (36,38a,38b) which reflects an age at least as old as the then-oldest in-process modification of at least a subset of the data units including the selected data unit; (b) means for latching the selected data unit; (c) means for comparing the second identifier with the data unit identifier means; (d) means for obtaining access to the data unit for the selected process compatibly with other process' accesses to the data unit, said access obtaining means operating according to a first procedure if the selected data unit's identifier is older than the second identifier and operating according to a second procedure if the selected data unit's identifier is not older than the second identifier, said second procedure including and said first procedure not including locking the selected data unit; and (e) means for reading the data unit. A data processing system as claimed in claim 7, wherein the data unit identifier means comprises a recovery log (34) sequence number.

Inventors: MOHAN CHANDRASEKARAN, MOHAN, CHANDRASEKARAN
Applicants: IBM, INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION
Application year: 1991
Main classification: G06F17
IPC codes: G06F17, G06F15, G06F12, G06F9