COM & .NET Component Services

Configurable Transaction Isolation Level

COM+ 1.0 handles transaction isolation very conservatively. COM+ 1.0 only allows the highest level of isolation, an isolation level called serialized. With serialized transactions, the results obtained from a set of concurrent transactions are identical to the results obtained by running each transaction serially. Such a high degree of isolation comes at the expense of overall system throughput; the resource managers involved have to hold onto both read and write locks for as long as a transaction is in progress, and all other transactions are blocked. However, you may want to trade system consistency for throughput in some situations by lowering the isolation level. Imagine, for example, a banking system. One of the requirements is to retrieve the total amount of money in all customer accounts combined. Although executing that transaction with the serialized isolation level is possible, if the bank has hundreds of thousands of accounts, it may take quite a while to complete. The transaction may time out and abort because some accounts may be accessed by other transactions at the same time. But the number of accounts could be a blessing in disguise. On average, statistically speaking, if the transaction is allowed to run at a lower isolation level, it may get the wrong balance on some accounts. However, those incorrect balances would tend to cancel each other out. The actual resulting error may be acceptable for the bank’s need.

COM+ 1.5 ...