Report Number: CS-TR-80-797
Institution: Stanford University, Department of Computer Science
Title: Read-only transactions in a distributed database
Author: Garcia-Molina, Hector
Author: Wiederhold, Gio
Date: April 1980
Abstract: A read-only transaction or query is a transaction which does not modify any data. Read-only transactions could be processed with general transaction processing algorithms, but in many cases it is more efficient to process read-only transactions with special algorithms which take advantage of the knowledge that the transaction only reads. This paper defines the various consistency and currency requirements that read-only transactions may have. The processing of the different classes of read-only transactions in a distributed database is discussed. The concept of R insularity is introduced to characterize both the read-only and update algorithms. Several simple update and read-only transaction processing algorithms are presented to illustrate how the query requirements and the update algorithms affect the read-only transaction processing algorithms.
http://i.stanford.edu/pub/cstr/reports/cs/tr/80/797/CS-TR-80-797.pdf