Hybrid concurrency control

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11080261-B2
Application number	US-201616072055-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jan 29, 2016
Priority date	Jan 29, 2016
Publication date	Aug 3, 2021
Grant date	Aug 3, 2021

Abstract

Hybrid concurrency control in a database transaction is disclosed. A contention value associated with a database object is read. The contention value is dynamically updated based on access patterns of the database object. If the contention value indicates the database object is under high contention, a pessimistic concurrency control mechanism is applied to the database object. An optimistic concurrency control mechanism is applied to the database object if the contention value does not indicate the database object is under high contention.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A computer-implemented method of hybrid concurrency control for database transactions, the method comprising:
accessing a database object stored in a database, wherein the database comprises a plurality of database objects including the database object and a contention value, and wherein the contention value is dynamically updated based on at least one database transaction of the database transactions;
initiating an attempted transaction to read the contention value associated with the database object stored in the database;
when the contention value indicates the database object is under high contention, applying a pessimistic concurrency control mechanism to the database object, wherein the pessimistic concurrency control mechanism initially applies a lock to the database object to prevent a concurrent update with the attempted transaction to the database object and releases the lock to the database object upon committing the database transaction, and wherein the pessimistic concurrency control mechanism includes a two-phase locking protocol, the two-phase locking protocol comprising an expanding phase and a shrinking phase; and
when the contention value indicates the database object is not under high contention, applying an optimistic concurrency control mechanism to the database object.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein the database object is initialized with a contention value to indicate the database object is not under high contention.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein the contention value is dynamically updated based on aborts of transactions accessing the database object under the optimistic concurrency control mechanism.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 3 wherein the contention value is dynamically updated based on frequency of aborts of transactions.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 where the contention value is dynamically updated based on an amount of time under the pessimistic concurrency control mechanism.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 5 wherein the contention value is reset to indicate the database object is not under high contention after a selected amount of time under high contention.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein the pessimistic concurrency control mechanism include acquiring locks prior to the database transaction performing operations on the database object.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 7 wherein the pessimistic concurrency control mechanism includes a two-phase locking protocol.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein the expanding phase acquires locks without releasing the locks, and wherein the shrinking phase releases the locks without acquiring the locks.

10. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein the lock to the database object is configured to block the attempted transaction from acquiring a conflicting lock on the database object.

11. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , further comprising:
upon exceeding an elapsed period of time, reevaluating the contention value for the database object; and
when a frequency of the database transactions have exceeded a contention threshold amount, update the contention value for the database object from not under high contention to under high contention.

12. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , further comprising:
identifying the database transaction corresponding with an abort operation for the database object; and
dynamically incrementing a counter associated with the database object.

13. A non-transitory computer readable medium for storing computer executable instructions for controlling a computing device to perform a method of hybrid concurrency control for database transactions, the method comprising:
accessing a database object stored in a database, wherein the database comprises a plurality of database objects including the database object and a contention value, and wherein the contention value is dynamically updated based on at least one database transaction of the database transactions;
initiating an attempted transaction to read the contention value associated with the database object stored in the database;
when the contention value indicates the database object is under high contention, applying a pessimistic concurrency control mechanism to the database object, wherein the pessimistic concurrency control mechanism initially applies a lock to the database object to prevent a concurrent update with the attempted transaction to the database object and releases the lock to the database object upon committing the database transaction, and wherein the pessimistic concurrency control mechanism includes a two-phase locking protocol, the two-phase locking protocol comprising an expanding phase and a shrinking phase; and
when the contention value indicates the database object is not under high contention, applying an optimistic concurrency control mechanism to the database object.

14. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 13 wherein the contention value is an integer.

15. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 14 wherein the contention value is incremented based on an access patterns of the database object including an amount of abort transactions accessing the database object.

16. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 13 wherein the contention value is dynamically updated based on a probability.

17. A system to apply hybrid concurrency control for database transactions, the system comprising:
a processor; and
a memory comprising instructions executable by the processor to:
access a database object stored in a database, wherein the database comprises a plurality of database objects including the database object and a contention value, and wherein the contention value is dynamically updated based on at least one database transaction of the database transactions;
initiate an attempted transaction to read the contention value stored with the database object stored in the database;
when the contention value indicates the database object is under high contention, apply a pessimistic concurrency control mechanism to the database object, wherein the pessimistic concurrency control mechanism initially applies a lock to the database object to prevent a concurrent update with the attempted transaction to the database object and releases the lock to the database object upon committing the database transaction, and wherein the pessimistic concurrency control mechanism includes a two-phase locking protocol, the two-phase locking protocol comprising an expanding phase and a shrinking phase; and
when the contention value indicates the database object is not under high contention, apply an optimistic concurrency control mechanism to the database object.

18. The system of claim 17 including an updater to dynamically track access patterns based on an amount of aborts of transactions accessing the database object.

19. The system of claim 18 wherein the contention value is dynamically updated based on a probability determined with the updater.

Assignees

• Hewlett Packard Entpr Dev Lp

Inventors

• Wang Tianzheng
• Kimura Hideaki

Classifications

• G06F16/2308 Primary

  Concurrency control (transaction processing G06F9/466) · CPC title

• G06F16/00

  Information retrieval; Database structures therefor; File system structures therefor · CPC title

• G06F16/2315

  Optimistic concurrency control · CPC title

• G06F9/466

  Transaction processing · CPC title

• G06F16/2358

  Change logging, detection, and notification (replication G06F16/27) · CPC title