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<h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a id="transapp_inc"></a>Isolation</h2>
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<p>
The third reason listed for using transactions was
<span class="emphasis"><em>isolation</em></span>. Consider an application
suite in which multiple threads of control (multiple processes
or threads in one or more processes) are changing the values
associated with a key in one or more databases. Specifically,
they are taking the current value, incrementing it, and then
storing it back into the database.
</p>
<p>
Such an application requires isolation. Because we want to
change a value in the database, we must make sure that after
we read it, no other thread of control modifies it. For
example, assume that both thread #1 and thread #2 are doing
similar operations in the database, where thread #1 is
incrementing records by 3, and thread #2 is incrementing
records by 5. We want to increment the record by a total of 8.
If the operations interleave in the right (well, wrong) order,
that is not what will happen:
</p>
<pre class="programlisting">thread #1 <span class="bold"><strong>read</strong></span> record: the value is 2
thread #2 <span class="bold"><strong>read</strong></span> record: the value is 2
thread #2 <span class="bold"><strong>write</strong></span> record + 5 back into the database (new value 7)
thread #1 <span class="bold"><strong>write</strong></span> record + 3 back into the database (new value 5)</pre>
<p>
As you can see, instead of incrementing the record by a
total of 8, we've incremented it only by 3 because thread #1
overwrote thread #2's change. By wrapping the operations in
transactions, we ensure that this cannot happen. In a
transaction, when the first thread reads the record, locks are
acquired that will not be released until the transaction
finishes, guaranteeing that all writers will block, waiting
for the first thread's transaction to complete (or to be
aborted).
</p>
<p>
Here is an example function that does transaction-protected
increments on database records to ensure isolation:
</p>
<pre class="programlisting">int
main(int argc, char *argv)
{
extern int optind;
DB *db_cats, *db_color, *db_fruit;
DB_ENV *dbenv;
int ch;
while ((ch = getopt(argc, argv, "")) != EOF)
switch (ch) {
case '?':
default:
usage();
}
argc -= optind;
argv += optind;
env_dir_create();
env_open(&dbenv);
/* Open database: Key is fruit class; Data is specific type. */
db_open(dbenv, &db_fruit, "fruit", 0);
/* Open database: Key is a color; Data is an integer. */
db_open(dbenv, &db_color, "color", 0);
/*
* Open database:
* Key is a name; Data is: company name, cat breeds.
*/
db_open(dbenv, &db_cats, "cats", 1);
add_fruit(dbenv, db_fruit, "apple", "yellow delicious");
<span class="bold"><strong> add_color(dbenv, db_color, "blue", 0);
add_color(dbenv, db_color, "blue", 3);</strong></span>
return (0);
}
<span class="bold"><strong>int
add_color(DB_ENV *dbenv, DB *dbp, char *color, int increment)
{
DBT key, data;
DB_TXN *tid;
int fail, original, ret, t_ret;
char buf[64];
/* Initialization. */
memset(&key, 0, sizeof(key));
key.data = color;
key.size = strlen(color);
memset(&data, 0, sizeof(data));
data.flags = DB_DBT_MALLOC;
for (fail = 0;;) {
/* Begin the transaction. */
if ((ret = dbenv->txn_begin(dbenv, NULL, &tid, 0)) != 0) {
dbenv->err(dbenv, ret, "DB_ENV->txn_begin");
exit (1);
}
/*
* Get the key. If it exists, we increment the value. If it
* doesn't exist, we create it.
*/
switch (ret = dbp->get(dbp, tid, &key, &data, DB_RMW)) {
case 0:
original = atoi(data.data);
break;
case DB_LOCK_DEADLOCK:
default:
/* Retry the operation. */
if ((t_ret = tid->abort(tid)) != 0) {
dbenv->err(dbenv, t_ret, "DB_TXN->abort");
exit (1);
}
if (fail++ == MAXIMUM_RETRY)
return (ret);
continue;
case DB_NOTFOUND:
original = 0;
break;
}
if (data.data != NULL)
free(data.data);
/* Create the new data item. */
(void)snprintf(buf, sizeof(buf), "%d", original + increment);
data.data = buf;
data.size = strlen(buf) + 1;
/* Store the new value. */
switch (ret = dbp->put(dbp, tid, &key, &data, 0)) {
case 0:
/* Success: commit the change. */
if ((ret = tid->commit(tid, 0)) != 0) {
dbenv->err(dbenv, ret, "DB_TXN->commit");
exit (1);
}
return (0);
case DB_LOCK_DEADLOCK:
default:
/* Retry the operation. */
if ((t_ret = tid->abort(tid)) != 0) {
dbenv->err(dbenv, t_ret, "DB_TXN->abort");
exit (1);
}
if (fail++ == MAXIMUM_RETRY)
return (ret);
break;
}
}
}</strong></span></pre>
<p>
The <a href="../api_reference/C/dbcget.html#dbcget_DB_RMW" class="olink">DB_RMW</a> flag in the <a href="../api_reference/C/dbget.html" class="olink">DB->get()</a> call specifies a write lock
should be acquired on the key/data pair, instead of the more
obvious read lock. We do this because the application expects
to write the key/data pair in a subsequent operation, and the
transaction is much more likely to deadlock if we first obtain
a read lock and subsequently a write lock, than if we obtain
the write lock initially.
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