Efficient execution of read-only transactions in replicated multiversion databases

Multiple versions of data are used in database systems to increase concurrency. The higher concurrency results since read-only transactions can be executed without any concurrency control overhead and, therefore, read-only transactions do not interfere with the execution of update transactions. Availability of data in a distributed environment is improved by data replication. We propose a protocol for managing data in a replicated multiversion environment, where execution of read-only transactions or queries becomes completely independent of the underlying concurrency control and replica control mechanisms, and the data availability for read-only transactions increases significantly since they can be executed as long as any one copy of the object is available in the system. In order to validate the feasibility of our approach, we developed a simple prototype to measure the performance improvement in the response times of queries. The results clearly establish the viability of the approach as a useful paradigm for the design of efficient and fault-tolerant distributed database systems