Definition
Transaction chopping is a technique for improving the concurrent performance of a database system by reducing the time locks are held. The idea is to break up each transaction into smaller “pieces,” such that each piece executes as a transaction, but the effect is as if the original transactions are executed serializably.
Key Points
Imagine an application that locks the entire database and then accesses a few rows in a table that does not fit into memory. If one looked at the resource statistics, one would find low CPU consumption and low disk utilization, yet the throughput would be very bad. For example, if ten pages were accessed even at 1 ms per page, then throughput would be only 100 transactions per second. The point is that it is possible to slow down performance greatly just because of a poor locking strategy, even if there are plenty of resources.
One might consider a less extreme case: a transaction that processes an order. The transaction might check whether there...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Recommended Reading
Fekete A, Liarokapis D, O’Neil E, O’Neil P, Shasha D. Making snapshot isolation serializable. ACM Trans Database Syst. 2005;30(2):492–528.
Shasha D, Bonnet P. Database tuning: principles experiments and troubleshooting techniques. Morgan Kaufmann; 2002.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature
About this entry
Cite this entry
Shasha, D. (2018). Transaction Chopping. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_434
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_434
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-8266-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-8265-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceReference Module Computer Science and Engineering