Concurrent Certifications by Intervals of Timestamps in Distributed Database Systems

Abstract

This paper introduces, as an optimistic concurrency control method, a new certification method by means of intervals of timestamps, usable in a distributed database system. The main advantage of this method is that it allows a chronological commit order which differs from the serialization one (thus avoiding rejections or delays of transactions which occur in usual certification methods or in classical locking or timestamping ones). The use of the dependency graph permits both classifying this method among existing ones and proving it. The certification protocol is first presented under the hypothesis that transactions' certifications are processed in the same order on all the concerned sites; it is then extended to allow concurrent certifications of transactions.