A Critique of ANSI SQL Isolation Levels.¶
Berenson, H., Bernstein, P., Gray, J., Melton, J., O'Neil, E., & O'Neil, P. (1995). A Critique of ANSI SQL Isolation Levels. Proceedings of the 1995 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data, 1-10.
Cited by¶
3 citations across 3 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Consistency Model
- The nightly audit uses a snapshot-isolation view, reading a consistent point-in-time cut across replicas without blocking live traffic.
This sourceDefines snapshot isolation and clarifies the isolation levels used for consistent point-in-time reads.
- The nightly audit uses a snapshot-isolation view, reading a consistent point-in-time cut across replicas without blocking live traffic.
Mechanisms¶
- Snapshot-Pinned Decision
- It is also the standard database move: snapshot isolation lets a long computation see one stable view while the rest of the system writes around it.
This sourceDefines snapshot isolation as letting a transaction read from a consistent committed snapshot while concurrent transactions continue to commit changes.
- It is also the standard database move: snapshot isolation lets a long computation see one stable view while the rest of the system writes around it.
- Transaction Isolation
- It misleads when teams read the label and not the anomaly list — and the labels drift: "Repeatable Read" in one engine is snapshot isolation that still permits write skew, so picking a level by name rather than by which anomaly threatens the invariant is the standard trap.
This sourceShows that SQL isolation labels drift across implementations and should be chosen by the anomalies threatening an invariant rather than by label alone.
- It misleads when teams read the label and not the anomaly list — and the labels drift: "Repeatable Read" in one engine is snapshot isolation that still permits write skew, so picking a level by name rather than by which anomaly threatens the invariant is the standard trap.
Verification¶
Does it exist? Confirmed. This work's DOI resolves to a registered record, which fixes its identity. That is all it fixes.
Does it back the claim? Not recorded. Neither this nor any other of the 3 citations of this work carries a recorded support check.
Support is checked per citation rather than per work — the same source can be cited soundly in one article and wrongly in another. Per-citation recording began recently, so a citation with no recorded check is a gap in the record rather than evidence it went unchecked.
See how references were verified.
Registry ID ref:e2d78b4506ac · see in the full table