Data & Transactions Book

Jeff De Luca's picture

Principles of Transaction Processing

cover of Principles of Transaction ProcessingPrinciples of Transaction Processing (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems)

author: Philip A. Bernstein
Eric Newcomer
asin: 1558604154
binding: Paperback
list price: $75.95 USD
amazon price: $55.23 USD


This book is sort-of the readers digest version of the Jim Gray TP book and it borrows heavily from that book, but of course it covers only a sliver of Gray's work. That said, this is much more accessible and contains a very good description of idempotence and reliable messaging.

Jeff De Luca's picture

Transaction Processing: Concepts and Techniques

cover of Transaction Processing: Concepts and TechniquesTransaction Processing, First Edition : Concepts and Techniques (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data

author: Jim Gray
Andreas Reuter
asin: 1558601902
binding: Hardcover
list price: $137.00 USD
amazon price: $104.00 USD


The book on the topic from the masterful Jim Gray. One of my pet rants is the complete lack of understanding and hence implementation of ACID. From Banks (big ones too) that have mainframe code with no concurrency control whatsover to silver-bullet persistence frameworks that were first published without any concurrency control whatsoever to collaborative or shared editing solutions that were shipped without any concurrency control whatsoever and... well you get the point. This stuff is well understood and well experimented and measured. Don't go try and figure out locking yourself. Don't just do ovine optimistic locking. Go read how this stuff is actually done. Start with failfast, learn the two-phase locking theorem, get on board with idempotence, be the first on your block to get this stuff right. Ok, ok, end of rant.

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