An approach to deadlock detection in multidatabases

In this paper we study the problem of deadlock detection in multidatabase systems. In such environments, global deadlock mechanisms perform poorly since they often detect phantom deadlocks and perform duplicate work. With this work we allow the implicit collaboration between the global and the local deadlock resolution schemes, which avoids duplicate work and we devise mechanisms which reduce the number of unnecessary transaction abortions caused by phantom deadlocks. Also, our scheme introduces smaller overhead, when compared to related work. Moreover, our scheme makes no unrealistic assumptions about the computational environment (unlike related work) and is thus of practical use. Finally, we present an empirical performance study through detailed simulations of known approaches and study MDBS deadlock detection experimentally. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.