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From: David G. Johnston <[email protected]>
To: Bruce Momjian <[email protected]>
Cc: Kevin Grittner <[email protected]>
Cc: Peter Eisentraut <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Add a new table for Transaction Isolation?
Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2015 11:33:36 -0700
Message-ID: <CAKFQuwatuNUNKk+kTH53McEQWKs1OyDGKrPAZQ2USe+p4oSwsQ@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>
References: <CAKFQuwaoKam6T3wxGbGzCBRjp72rueU0KVY7GSSFDz00PCykUw@mail.gmail.com>
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On Sat, Apr 25, 2015 at 11:02 AM, Bruce Momjian <[email protected]> wrote:

> 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


Need to add "Serialization Anomalies" to the previous section's definitions
list.

​Pondering whether something like: "Possible (not in PG)" and avoiding the
additional rows would make reading the table easier.

David J.

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