A superior two-phase locking algorithm and its performance

Abstract

Concurrent transactions, during their execution, may conflict over common data entities. Such conflicts are resolved by concurrency control mechanisms by use of operations such as transaction rollback and/or transaction blocking. There are a number of mechanisms available and each applies these operations in different ways to resolve conflicts and claims some performance advantages. In this work we have analyzed the behavior of a new deadlock-free two-phase locking mechanism, called Cautious Waiting, and have compared its performance with other well-known mechanisms. The mechanism is conceptually quite simple; therefore it is not likely to be difficult to implement. We show that this mechanism performs consistently better under a wide range of parameter values than the other mechanisms investigated here. We also show that it is more robust, in the sense that it is less sensitive to load increases and other changes in parameter settings. In contrast, we show that one of the most commonly used mechanisms is not as robust and efficient under stress situations.