An optimistic locking technique for concurrency control in distributed databases

A method called optimistic method with dummy locks (ODL) is suggested for concurrency control in distributed databases. It is shown that by using long-term dummy locks, the need for the information about the write sets of validated transactions is eliminated and, during the validation test, only the related sites are checked. The transactions to be aborted are immediately recognized before the validation test, reducing the costs of restarts. Usual read and write locks are used as short-term locks during the validation test. The use of short-term locks in the optimistic approach eliminates the need for the system-wide critical section and results in a distributed and parallel validation test. The performance of ODL is compared with strict two-phase locking (2PL) through simulation, and it is found out that for the low conflict cases they perform almost the same, but for the high conflicting cases, ODL performs better than strict 2PL