Re: User-facing aspects of serializable transactions

From: Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com>
To: Greg Stark <stark(at)enterprisedb(dot)com>
Cc: Kevin Grittner <Kevin(dot)Grittner(at)wicourts(dot)gov>, "<Markus Wanner" <markus(at)bluegap(dot)ch>, Heikki Linnakangas <heikki(dot)linnakangas(at)enterprisedb(dot)com>, Jeff Davis <pgsql(at)j-davis(dot)com>, "<pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org>" <pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Re: User-facing aspects of serializable transactions
Date: 2009-06-01 20:17:23
Message-ID: 603c8f070906011317q337be4e4v8ee843fc68acf623@mail.gmail.com
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On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 4:08 PM, Greg Stark <stark(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 8:55 PM, Kevin Grittner
> <Kevin(dot)Grittner(at)wicourts(dot)gov> wrote:
>>
>> Whoa!  I just noticed this phrase on a re-read.  I think there might
>> be some misunderstanding here.
>>
>> You can be sure you've written your transaction safely just as soon as
>> your COMMIT returns without error.
>
> I think we have different definitions of "safely". You only know that
> you got away with it *this time* when the commit returns without
> error.
>
> I'm concerned with whether you can be sure that the 999th time you run
> it the database won't randomly decide to declare a serialization
> failure for reasons you couldn't predict were possible.

Aren't serialization failures of any sort unpredictable, or any database?

...Robert

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