A Critique of ANSI SQL Isolation Levels

Классика цитирования:
A Critique of ANSI SQL Isolation Levels.
Good, fairly readable discussion of transaction isolation.

Hal Berenson Microsoft Corp.
Phil Bernstein Microsoft Corp.
Jim Gray U.C. Berkeley
Jim Melton Sybase Corp.
Elizabeth O’Neil UMass/Boston
Patrick O'Neil UMass/Boston

Abstract:
ANSI SQL-92 [MS, ANSI] defines Isolation Levels in terms of phenomena: Dirty Reads, Non-Repeatable Reads, and Phantoms. This paper shows that these phenomena and the ANSI SQL definitions fail to properly characterize several popular isolation levels, including the standard locking implementations of the levels covered. Ambiguity in the statement of the phenomena is investigated and a more formal statement is arrived at; in addition new phenomena that better characterize isolation types are introduced. Finally, an important multiversion isolation type, called Snapshot Isolation, is defined.

1 . Introduction
"...which defined Degrees of Consistency in three ways: locking, data-flow graphs, and anomalies."
"The three ANSI phenomena are ambiguous, and even in their loosest interpretations do not exclude some anomalous behavior that may arise in execution histories."
"...lock-based isolation levels have different characteristics than their ANSI equivalents."
"...degrees of consistency defined in 1977 in [GLPT]."
"...Chris Date’s definitions of Cursor Stability..."