Eswaran, Gray, Lorie and Traiger: consistency through two-phase and predicate locks

What changed

Scientific scope

The paper formalized schedule consistency and proved two-phase locking guarantees under well-formed transaction assumptions, then proposed predicate locks to protect logical sets including phantom records. The serial-equivalence result assumes well-formed two-phase transactions and a specified tuple/predicate access model. Predicate locks must cover matching tuples and changed old/new values. Necessity is against arbitrary companion transactions; some restricted non-two-phase executions can still be safe. Predicate overlap may be expensive or undecidable in a general language. Deadlock policy, crash recovery and production database correctness are separate.

Evidence

Source-linked, scoped account of the original work. The published scope states the scientific assumptions and remaining verification limits. WRS has not independently certified the full proof, experimental result or system benchmark.

Contributors

K. P. Eswaran · SCIENCE: Original source-listed scientific author of this scoped work; byline does not determine effort fractions.
J. N. Gray · SCIENCE: Original source-listed scientific author of this scoped work; byline does not determine effort fractions.
R. A. Lorie · SCIENCE: Original source-listed scientific author of this scoped work; byline does not determine effort fractions.
I. L. Traiger · SCIENCE: Original source-listed scientific author of this scoped work; byline does not determine effort fractions.

Provisional WRS assessment, edition 2026-10-16.1. Independent expert calibration is pending. This grade does not certify correctness or assign ownership.

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