1 Commits (dafaa3efb75ce1aae2e6dbefaf6f3a889dea0d21)

Author	SHA1	Message	Date
Heikki Linnakangas	dafaa3efb7	Implement genuine serializable isolation level. ... Until now, our Serializable mode has in fact been what's called Snapshot Isolation, which allows some anomalies that could not occur in any serialized ordering of the transactions. This patch fixes that using a method called Serializable Snapshot Isolation, based on research papers by Michael J. Cahill (see README-SSI for full references). In Serializable Snapshot Isolation, transactions run like they do in Snapshot Isolation, but a predicate lock manager observes the reads and writes performed and aborts transactions if it detects that an anomaly might occur. This method produces some false positives, ie. it sometimes aborts transactions even though there is no anomaly. To track reads we implement predicate locking, see storage/lmgr/predicate.c. Whenever a tuple is read, a predicate lock is acquired on the tuple. Shared memory is finite, so when a transaction takes many tuple-level locks on a page, the locks are promoted to a single page-level lock, and further to a single relation level lock if necessary. To lock key values with no matching tuple, a sequential scan always takes a relation-level lock, and an index scan acquires a page-level lock that covers the search key, whether or not there are any matching keys at the moment. A predicate lock doesn't conflict with any regular locks or with another predicate locks in the normal sense. They're only used by the predicate lock manager to detect the danger of anomalies. Only serializable transactions participate in predicate locking, so there should be no extra overhead for for other transactions. Predicate locks can't be released at commit, but must be remembered until all the transactions that overlapped with it have completed. That means that we need to remember an unbounded amount of predicate locks, so we apply a lossy but conservative method of tracking locks for committed transactions. If we run short of shared memory, we overflow to a new "pg_serial" SLRU pool. We don't currently allow Serializable transactions in Hot Standby mode. That would be hard, because even read-only transactions can cause anomalies that wouldn't otherwise occur. Serializable isolation mode now means the new fully serializable level. Repeatable Read gives you the old Snapshot Isolation level that we have always had. Kevin Grittner and Dan Ports, reviewed by Jeff Davis, Heikki Linnakangas and Anssi Kääriäinen	15 years ago