Multi-Version Concurrency via Timestamp Range Conflict Management

A database supporting multiple versions of records may use the versions to support queries of the past or to increase concurrency by enabling reads and writes to be concurrent. We introduce a new concurrency control approach that enables all SQL isolation levels including serializability to utilize multiple versions to increase concurrency while also supporting transaction time database functionality. The key insight is to manage a range of possible timestamps for each transaction that captures the impact of conflicts that have occurred. Using these ranges as constraints often permits concurrent access where lock based concurrency control would block. This can also allow blocking instead of some aborts that are common in earlier multi-version concurrency techniques. Also, timestamp ranges can be used to conservatively find deadlocks without graph based cycle detection. Thus, our multi-version support can enhance performance of current time data access via improved concurrency, while supporting transaction time functionality.