Isolation Levels

• YSQL

The YSQL API supports two isolation levels - Serializable and Snapshot. PostgreSQL (and the SQL standard( have four isolation levels - Serializable, Repeatable read, Read committed and Read uncommitted. The mapping between the PostgreSQL isolation levels in YSQL, along with which transaction anomalies can occur at each isolation level are shown below.

PostgreSQL Isolation	YugabyteDB Equivalent	Dirty Read	Nonrepeatable Read	Phantom Read	Serialization Anomaly
Read uncommitted	Snapshot	Allowed, but not in YSQL	Allowed, but not in YSQL	Allowed, but not in YSQL	Possible
Read committed	Snapshot	Not possible	Allowed, but not in YSQL	Allowed, but not in YSQL	Possible
Repeatable read	Snapshot	Not possible	Not possible	Allowed, but not in YSQL	Possible
Serializable	Serializable	Not possible	Not possible	Not possible	Not possible

As seen from the table above, the most strict isolation level is Serializable, which requires that any concurrent execution of a set of Serializable transactions is guaranteed to produce the same effect as running them in some serial (one transaction at a time) order. The other levels are defined by which anomalies must not occur as a result of interactions between concurrent transactions. Due to the definition of Serializable isolation, none of these anomalies are possible at that level. For reference, the various transaction anomalies are described briefly below:

• Dirty read: A transaction reads data written by a concurrent uncommitted transaction.

• Nonrepeatable read: A transaction re-reads data it has previously read and finds that data has been modified by another transaction (that committed since the initial read).

• Phantom read: A transaction re-executes a query returning a set of rows that satisfy a search condition and finds that the set of rows satisfying the condition has changed due to another recently-committed transaction.

• Serialization anomaly: The result of successfully committing a group of transactions is inconsistent with all possible orderings of running those transactions one at a time.

Let us now look at how Serializable and Snapshot isolation works in YSQL.

Serializable Isolation

The Serializable isolation level provides the strictest transaction isolation. This level emulates serial transaction execution for all committed transactions; as if transactions had been executed one after another, serially, rather than concurrently. Serializable isolation can detect read-write conflicts in addition to write-write conflicts. This is accomplished by writing provisional records for read operations as well.

Let's use a bank overdraft protection example to illustrate this case. The hypothetical case is that there is a bank which allows depositors to withdraw money up to the total of what they have in all accounts. The bank will later automatically transfer funds as needed to close the day with a positive balance in each account. Within a single transaction they check that the total of all accounts exceeds the amount requested.

Let's say someone tries to withdraw $900 from two of their accounts simultaneously, each with $500 balances. At the REPEATABLE READ transaction isolation level, that could work; but if the SERIALIZABLE transaction isolation level is used, a read/write conflict will be detected and one of the transactions will be rejected.

The example can be set up with these statements:

session #1	session #2
Begin a transaction in session #1 with the Serializable isolation level. The account total is $1000, so a $900 withdrawal is OK. begin isolation level serializable; select type, balance from account where name = 'kevin'; type | balance ----------+--------- saving | $500.00 checking | $500.00 (2 rows)
	Begin a transaction in session #2 with the Serializable isolation level as well. Once again, the account total is $1000, so a $900 withdrawal is OK. begin isolation level serializable; select type, balance from account where name = 'kevin'; type | balance ----------+--------- saving | $500.00 checking | $500.00 (2 rows)
Withdraw $900 from the savings account, given the total is $1000 this should be OK. update account set balance = balance - 900::money where name = 'kevin' and type = 'saving';
	Simultaneously, withdrawing $900 from the checking account is going to be a problem. This cannot co-exist with the other transaction's activity. This transaction would fail immediately. update account set balance = balance - 900::money where name = 'kevin' and type = 'checking'; ERROR: 40001: Operation failed. Try again.: Transaction aborted: XXXX
This transaction can now be committed. commit; select type, balance from account where name = 'kevin'; type | balance ----------+---------- checking | $500.00 saving | -$400.00 (2 rows)

Snapshot Isolation

The Snapshot isolation level only sees data committed before the transaction began (or in other words, it works on a "snapshot" of the table). Transactions running under Snapshot isolation do not see either uncommitted data or changes committed during transaction execution by other concurrently running transactions. Note that the query does see the effects of previous updates executed within its own transaction, even though they are not yet committed. This is a stronger guarantee than is required by the SQL standard for this isolation level

Snapshot isolation detects only write-write conflicts, it does not detect read-write conflicts. In other words:

• INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE commands behave the same as SELECT in terms of searching for target rows. They will only find target rows that were committed as of the transaction start time.
• If such a target row might have already been updated (or deleted or locked) by another concurrent transaction by the time it is found. This scenario is called a transaction conflict, where the current transaction conflicts with the transaction that made (or is attempting to make) an update. In such cases, one of the two transactions get aborted, depending on priority.

Let's run through the scenario below to understand how transactions behave under the snapshot isolation level (which maps to Repeatable Read, Read Committed and Read Uncommitted in PostgreSQL).

First, create an example table with sample data.

Next, connect to the cluster using two independent ysqlsh instances called session #1 and session #2 below.

session #1	session #2
Begin a transaction in session #1. This will be snapshot isolation by default, meaning it will work against a snapshot of the database as of this point. BEGIN TRANSACTION;
Insert a row, but let's not commit the transaction. This row should be visible only to this transaction. INSERT INTO example VALUES (1); SELECT * FROM example; k --- 1 (1 row)
	Insert a different row here. Verify that the row inserted in the transaction in session #1 is not visible in this session. INSERT INTO example VALUES (2); SELECT * FROM example; k --- 2 (1 row)
The row inserted in the other session would not be visible here, because we're working against an older snapshot of the database. Let's verify that. SELECT * FROM example; k --- 1 (1 row)
Now let's commit this transaction. As long as the row(s) we're writing as a part of this transaction are not modified during the lifetime of the transaction, there would be no conflicts. Let's verify we can see all rows after the commit. COMMIT; SELECT * FROM example; k --- 1 2 (2 rows)