Re: Add a new table for Transaction Isolation?

On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 08:40:40PM +0000, Kevin Grittner wrote:
> And, for reasons given above, I really question whether such a
> table doesn't do more harm than good. Even those citing the paper
> by Berenson, et al., often miss the text in *that* paper about what
> the actual definition of serializable transactions in the standard
> is, and instead focus on the quick-to-read tables of how the
> misinterpretation of serializable transactions based on the
> standard's table of phenomena (which the paper dubs "ANOMALY
> SERIALIZABLE") differs from truly serializable behavior.
>
> People do love tables like this, which makes providing them
> tempting; but when a short, clean table is available they often
> seem less inclined to take the trouble to read the real information
> the table summarizes -- and they come away with distorted and
> incorrect ideas about the subject matter.

I don't think we can abandon the table --- people have enough trouble
figuring this out, including me, and without the table, it will be even
harder.

What I have done is to add two rows and one column to the table, and
changed the surrounding text to more clearly reference the table. You
can see the output here, and the SGML patch is attached:

http://momjian.us/expire/transaction-iso.html

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com

+ Everyone has their own god. +