TRANSACTION Isolation Levels in SQL Server

SQL Server 2005 has some unique features to deal with the Transaction system in the database world.
It has some unique sets to take care of every possibility of transactions or types of transaction.
Technically, it will give us discrete ways to isolate the transactions from occurrence of deadlocks or
crashes.
Before going deeper to the Isolation level that SQL Server provides to distinguish types of transaction,
lets have a look on the definition of the TRANSACTION. What does transaction means in real world
and in a database scenario?

Transaction: When you give something to me, and I take it; then its a transaction. When you
withdraw money from an ATM machine, and you receive the money; then it is also a kind of
transaction. Here, what I am trying to reflect is a simple question that, Is the transaction above is
valid or consistent. What if I deny accepting that you havent given me anything, may be you have
given to someone else instead of me? What if after withdrawing of money from your account, your
account balance still shows the same amount as before. (Oh! For this case you have to be lucky
enough
). And what will happen if you and your partner are withdrawing all your money from the
joint account at the same time from different ATMs.
So there must be some methodology to keep track of all these things and to manage them perfectly
even in such natural disaster conditions, the database and the information regarding any transaction
must be in a consistent form.
To achieve the above thought in the database system, we have Locking mechanism. It acts like this,
suppose there is a room and that is electronically locked and only the person who knows the password
can enter, provided the room is empty or he has to wait till the room is evacuated by the other person.
But here we have a little controversy, like the person who is waiting outside may have some different
task than the person who is already inside. And it may be possible that both of the tasks may not
interfere to each other or may interfere slightly that may be manageable. So at the end of the
discussion, we may conclude that the security system must provide different types of security code or
passwords to the corresponding person. Lets have a deeper look on this.
Suppose you are doing a transaction for withdrawing money from the ATM machine and at the same
time the bank manager is doing a routine checkup of your transaction which is totally a different
operation and suppose at the same time the bank teller is checking your account for the remaining
balance. All these operations are different but accessing the same entity or resource and that is your
account information that is kept inside the database. Out of these operations only you are doing write
operation in the database as you are withdrawing money and the remaining balance has to be updated
in the database. So a proper security mechanism must be implemented here to ensure non-conflict or
smooth going of these operations. Here the security can be ensured by putting locks (and of course
the type of locks) for each type of operations, which means you are isolating the resources from other
transactions that may hamper its consistency. Here comes the role of Isolation levels.
The Isolation levels are categorized depending on the type of locks it uses for a particular level. At
lower level of isolation more users can access the same resource without any confliction, but they may
face concurrency related issues such as dirty-reads and data inaccuracy (described below). At higher

Isolation level, these types of issues can be eliminated but here only a limited no. of users can access
the resource.
Lets have a look on Locks and type of Locks. Locks can be treated as a policy which will prevent you
or a process to perform any action (that may conflict with other actions) on an object or resource if
that object or resource is already occupied by any other process or user. Its something like you are
going to propose someone who is already with someone else. But situation matters (may be you are
lucky enough for this). Like it depends on what you are going to do and on what the other person is
doing. So for such type of situations, we have types of locks.
Types of Locks:

Shared Locks(S): This lock is useful when you are doing some read operations and no
manipulations like write operations (update/delete/insert). This is compatible with other shared locks,
update locks and Intent shared locks. It can prevent users from performing dirty reads (described
below).

Exclusive Locks(X): These locks are big possessive types. They are not compatible with any
other locks. Like these locks will not work if any other locks are already there with the resource
neither it will let other locks to be created on the resource until it finishes its job. This lock used for
data-modification operations, such as INSERT, UPDATE or DELETE.

Update Locks (U): This can be treated as a mixture and perfect collaboration of the above
two locks (Shared and Exclusive). Lets take an example. You are going to perform an update
operation on a table at row number 23. So here you are doing two types of operation, one is searching
the record 23 which can be achieved by implementing shared lock and the other is updating the record
after it has found which will be achieved by Exclusive lock. So, here the shared lock transforms to
exclusive lock when it finds the target or else it will be remain as shared lock only. This prevents
deadlocks to a great extent. This lock is compatible with Intent shared and shared locks.

Intent locks (also called as Demand Locks): These are used to establish a lock hierarchy.
Here it will protect placing a shared (S) lock or exclusive (X) lock on a resource lower in the lock
hierarchy. For example, suppose you are performing a read operation on a piece of data with shared
lock. At the same time another user wants to modify data with exclusive lock, but the shared lock is
compatible with other shared locks as a result any number of shared locks can be obtained on a piece
of data and hence the user with exclusive has to wait indefinitely till the completion of all shared lock
operations. So to avoid this type of starving situation, Intent locks are very useful. Here if the second
user comes with Intent Exclusive lock, then no other transaction can grab a shared lock. Here it can
claim the use of exclusive lock after the first transaction completes.
There are basically three types of Intent Locks that are most popular:
a) Intent Shared Lock (IS)
b) Intent exclusive (IX)
c) Shared with intent exclusive (SIX)

Schema Locks: These locks protect the schema of the database. This deals with the DDL
(Data Definition Language) commands like adding or dropping column information for a table, rename
table, drop table, blocking any DDL operation during the execution of the query. There are two types
of Schema Locks:

a) Schema modification (Sch-M): This lock is applied only when the SQL Server engine is modifying
the structure of the schema like adding or dropping the columns of a table. During this period if any
other transaction tries to access that object then that will be denied or delayed.
b) Schema stability (Sch-S): This indicates a query using this table being compiled. Here it will not
block any transactional locks like shared locks or exclusive locks to perform any operation on the data.
But if the query is in running condition, it will prevent execution of any DDL commands on that table.

Bulk Update Locks: This lock is useful while performing BULK operation on the TABLE like
BULK INSERT. It will prevent any other types of normal T-SQL operations to be executed on the table
except BULK processing of the data.

Now let us explore some buzzwords in Isolation Level:

Lost updates: It generally occurs when more than one transaction tries to update any specific record
at a time i.e. when one update is successfully written to the database, but accidently a second update
from different transaction overwrites the previous update information. This is called Lost Updates.
Non-repeatable reads (also called Inconsistent analysis): Dealing with inconsistent data i.e.
suppose you read one value from a table and started working on it but meanwhile some other process
modifies the value in the source resulting a false output in your transaction, then it is called Nonrepeatable reads. Lets have a more practical example, suppose before withdrawing money from your
account, you always perform a balance check and you find 90$ as a balance in your account. Then you
perform withdraw operation and try to withdraw 60$ from your account but meanwhile the bank
manager debits 50$ from your account as a penalty of minimum balance (100$), as a result you have
only 40$ in your account now. So your transaction either fails as the demanded amount (60$) is not
there in your account or it may show (-20$) (which is quite impossible as of banking constraints
).
More simply we can say Non-repeatable reads take place if a transaction is able to read the same row
several times and gets a different value for each time.
Repeatable Reads: This specifies that transactions cannot read data that has been modified by other
transactions but not yet committed and if the current transaction is reading some data then no other
transactions can modify that data until the current transaction completes.
Phantom reads: Dont be afraid, we are not talking about ghosts or phantom in opera. Here Phantom
means unexpected or unrealistic. It occurs basically when two identical queries are executed, and the
set of rows returned by the second query is different from the first. Lets have a simple example;
suppose your banking policy got changed and according to that the minimum balance should be 150$
instead of 100$ for each account type, anyways this is not a big deal for a data base administrator. He
will perform an update statement for each account type where the minimum balance is less than 150$
and updates the value to 150$. But unfortunately when the manager checks the database, he got one
record with minimum balance less than 150$ in the same table. The DBA got surprised, how come this
is possible as he performed the update statement on the whole table.
This is called Phantom read. The occurrence of Phantom reads are very rare as it needs proper
circumstances and timing for such type of events as in the above example, someone may have
inserted one new record with the minimum balance less than 150$ at the very same time when the
DBA executed the UPDATE statement. And as it is a new record, it didnt interfere with the UPDATE
transaction and executed successfully. This type of Phantom reads can be avoided using higher level of
isolation i.e. SERIALIZABLE (described below).

Dirty reads: This is one of the types of Non-repeatable Reads. This happens when a process tries to
read a piece of data while some other process is performing some update operations on that piece of
data and is not completed yet.
Now coming to the root point of the article i.e. the Isolation levels; we have basically five types of
Isolation level in SQL Server 2005. Each one is described below:
Here we consider a simple example for all the below cases. The data shown in the table is taken by
assumption and is only used for example purpose; the data given may or may not be right as per real
scenario. The table information is given below:
Database Name: OLAP
Table Name: dbo.car_info
Table Column Information:
Column_name

Type

Car_Sl_No

int

CarCompany

varchar

CarBodyType

varchar

CarName

varchar

EngineType

varchar

Table Data:
Car_Sl_No

CarCompany

CarBodyType

CarName

EngineType

Maruti

small

Maruti-800

petrol

Honda

sedan

City

petrol

Maruti

small

Maruti-800

petrol

Maruti

small

Waganor Duo

petrol

Honda

sedan

City

petrol

TATA

small

indica

diesel

Mahindra

SUV

Scorpio

diesel

TATA

SUV

Sumo

diesel

Maruti

sedan

SX4

petrol

10

Maruti

sedan

Swift-Dzire

diesel

11

TATA

small

Nano

petrol

Assumption: Here in all our examples, two different transactions can be considered as done by two
different users. For testing, you can achieve this by two separate Query windows or two separate
instances for SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). But you have to be careful enough to run the
queries for both the connections simultaneously or immediately.

1. READ UNCOMMITTED Isolation Level: This is very useful in case you need higher concurrency in
the transactions. Here one transaction can access the data that has been modified by the second
transaction even if the second transaction is not committed.
Syntax:
SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL READ UNCOMMITTED
Example: Suppose the User1 is trying to update the EngineType from petrol to diesel for Car_Sl_No
with value 2. And at the same time User2 is trying to read the data for the Car_Sl_No with value 2.
Under normal condition or default setting, User2 cannot read the data from that row. But if the User2
sets the transaction isolation level to Read Uncommitted, then it is possible to read that row with
updated information even if the transaction is not committed by User1.
For User1:
USE OLAP
Go
BEGIN TRAN
UPDATE [OLAP].[dbo].[car_info]
SET [EngineType] = 'diesel'
WHERE Car_Sl_No = 2
Here, note that the transaction is still running, as there is no commit statement in the above code.
Under default condition, the query ran by User2 will keep executing till the User1 commits the
transaction.

For User2:
USE OLAP
Go
SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL READ UNCOMMITTED
--Above statment is used to read the updated value even if the transation is not
committed.
SELECT [Car_Sl_No]
,[CarCompany]
,[CarBodyType]
,[CarName]
,[EngineType]
FROM [OLAP].[dbo].[car_info]
where Car_Sl_No = 2

As in the above code, we set the transaction isolation level to Read Uncommitted; User2 can access
that record with updated data.
Output:

Although it increases the concurrency of the transactions but did you notice the disadvantage behind
this. What if User1 ROLLBACK his transaction or if somehow the management studio of User1 crashed
or hanged (As the transaction is not committed yet, it will rollback itself, resulting false or inconsistent
value to User2).

Limitations:

Dirty-reads
Lost Updates
Phantom reads
Non-repeatable reads
Advantages:

Higher Concurrency
In SSIS (SQL Server Integration Service): To achieve the above norm in SSIS, select the task or
container on which you want to set the isolation level. Then go to Properties, and set the property
named IsolationLevel to ReadUncommitted.

The benefit here is that more than one task can access the same table simultaneously in case of
parallel execution of the package.
2. READ COMMITTED Isolation Level: This is the default level set in SQL Server 2005 and the
immediate higher level of READ UNCOMMITTED Isolation Level. It prevents transactions to read data
if some other transaction is doing some update operation on the data as a result eliminates Dirty
Reads. It prevents reading of uncommitted data. But is affected with other demerits like Lost
Updates.
Syntax:
SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL READ COMMITTED
Example: Considering our previous example, let the EngineType for Car_Sl_No with value 2 is
NULL and User1 is trying to update the EngineType to petrol, but at the same time User2 started a
new transaction checked the value as Null and starts updating the record to diesel before the
transaction is committed by User1. As a result User1 lost its updated value, it is overwritten by User2.
For User1:
USE OLAP
Go
BEGIN TRAN
DECLARE @EngineType varchar(20)
SELECT @EngineType = [EngineType] FROM [OLAP].[dbo].[car_info] where Car_Sl_No = 2
--The below waitfor statement is used for other opearations that User1 is doing for
this transaction.
WAITFOR DELAY '00:00:10' --For acheiving real time Concurrency in this example
IF @EngineType IS NULL
BEGIN
UPDATE [OLAP].[dbo].[car_info]

SET [EngineType] = 'petrol'

WHERE Car_Sl_No = 2
END
ELSE
BEGIN
Print 'Record is already updated'
END
COMMIT TRAN

For User2:

USE OLAP
Go
BEGIN TRAN
DECLARE @EngineType varchar(20)
SELECT @EngineType = [EngineType] FROM [OLAP].[dbo].[car_info] where Car_Sl_No = 2
--Here waitfor statement is same for User2 also
WAITFOR DELAY '00:00:10' --For acheiving real time Concurrency in this example
IF @EngineType IS NULL
BEGIN
UPDATE [OLAP].[dbo].[car_info]
SET [EngineType] = 'diesel'
WHERE Car_Sl_No = 2
END
ELSE
BEGIN
Print 'Record is already updated'
END
COMMIT TRAN

Here both the users successfully updated the value, but the value updated by User2 persists and
User1 lost its updated value.
Output: The final output for the record is

Limitations:

Lower Concurrency than ReadUncommitted

Lost Updates
Advantage:

Eliminates Dirty Reads

In SSIS (SQL Server Integration Service): Select the task or container on which you want to set
the isolation level. Then go to Properties, and set the property named IsolationLevel to
ReadCommitted.

3. REPEATABLE READ Isolation Level: It is the next higher level than the previous isolation level
and the main point here is it does not release the shared lock once the transaction starts for reading
data. In simple terms, a transaction cannot read data if it has been modified by other transaction but
not yet committed. Also no other transactions can modify data if that data has been read by the
current transaction until the current transaction completes. Here in this isolation level, the concurrency
rate is very low. As a result, eliminates Lost updates, non-repeatable reads, etc. But still has a big
problem and that is called Phantom read. Lets have an example to elaborate this.
Syntax:
SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL REPEATABLE READ
Example: Suppose the manager of a showroom declares to transfer all the cars manufactured by
Honda Company to another showroom and to maintain a proper record for this operation. We need to
add one more column called TransferredSatus to indicate whether that car is transferred or not. Here,
the DBA will check for the presence of any Honda Company cars in the record that are not yet
transferred by checking the value of the column TransferredSatus. If he found some, then
corresponding transfer operations will be performed and the record will be updated to 1 (i.e.
transferred). Here by using Repeatable Read isolation level, we can eliminate Lost Update, dirty
reads and non-repeatable reads. But what if at the time of updating the database, someone else
from the inventory system inserts one record about the new Honda Company car that just arrived to
the showroom. Lets see the effect.
For User1:

USE OLAP
Go
SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL REPEATABLE READ
BEGIN TRAN
--check the existance Honda company cars
Declare @Car_Sl_No int
Declare TransferingCarsCursor CURSOR FOR
Select Car_Sl_No from dbo.car_info where CarCompany = 'Honda' and
TransferredSatus = 0
OPEN TransferingCarsCursor
FETCH NEXT FROM TransferingCarsCursor
INTO @Car_Sl_No
WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN
---------------------------------------Car transfering operations-----------------------------------

FETCH NEXT FROM TransferingCarsCursor

INTO @Car_Sl_No
END
CLOSE TransferingCarsCursor
DEALLOCATE TransferingCarsCursor
WAITFOR DELAY '00:00:10' --For acheiving real time Concurrency in this example
-- This is the time when the other user inserts new record about new Honda
car.
Update dbo.car_info
set TransferredSatus = 1 where CarCompany = 'Honda' and
TransferredSatus = 0
COMMIT TRAN

Here it found only 2 records from Honda Company.

For User2:

USE OLAP
Go
BEGIN TRAN
INSERT INTO [OLAP].[dbo].[car_info]
([CarCompany]
,[CarBodyType]
,[CarName]
,[EngineType]
,[TransferredSatus])
VALUES
('Honda','sedan','Civic GX','petrol',0)
COMMIT TRAN

But in between the execution of the transaction by User1, User2 inserts one new record about the new
Honda Car. Assume the record is inserted before the Update statement of User1, as a result instead of
updating only 2 records; User1 updates the new record as well along with the earlier records, showing
wrong information in the chart. This is called Phantom Read. Even Repeatable Read isolation mode
cant resolve this problem. For this, you need to implement higher isolation level i.e. SERIALIZABLE.
Output for User1:
(3 row(s) affected)
Limitations:

Lower Concurrency
Phantom Reads
Advantage:

Eliminates Dirty Reads

Eliminates Lost Updates

Eliminates Non-Repeatable Reads
In SSIS (SQL Server Integration Service): Select the task or container on which you want to set
the isolation level. Then go to Properties, and set the property named IsolationLevel to
RepeatableRead.

4. SERIALIZABLE Isolation Level: It is highest level in Isolation levels as a result the concurrency
rate is low. But it eliminates all issues related to concurrency like dirty read, non repeatable reads, lost
updates and even phantom reads. According to this Isolation Level:
1.
2.
3.

Statements cannot read data if other transactions are performing update operations on the
data and is not committed yet.
Also no other transactions can perform any update operations until the current transaction
completes its read operations.
And the important point here is that it is performing a Range Lock based on the filters used to
get the data from the table i.e. it locks not only the current records but also the new records that are
falling under the current filter condition. In simple language, no other transactions can insert new rows
that are falling under the current filter condition until the transaction completes.
Considering our previous example, we will set the isolation level to Serializable.
Syntax:
SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL SERIALIZABLE
For User1:

USE OLAP
Go
SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL SERIALIZABLE
BEGIN TRAN
--check the existance Honda company cars
Declare @Car_Sl_No int
Declare TransferingCarsCursor CURSOR FOR
Select Car_Sl_No from dbo.car_info where CarCompany = 'Honda' and
TransferredSatus = 0
OPEN TransferingCarsCursor
FETCH NEXT FROM TransferingCarsCursor
INTO @Car_Sl_No
WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN
---------------------------------------Car transfering operations----------------------------------FETCH NEXT FROM TransferingCarsCursor
INTO @Car_Sl_No
END

CLOSE TransferingCarsCursor
DEALLOCATE TransferingCarsCursor
WAITFOR DELAY '00:00:10' --For acheiving real time Concurrency in this example
-- This is the time when the other user inserts new record about new Honda
car.
Update dbo.car_info
set TransferredSatus = 1 where CarCompany = 'Honda' and
TransferredSatus = 0
COMMIT TRAN

For User2:
USE OLAP
Go
BEGIN TRAN
INSERT INTO [OLAP].[dbo].[car_info]
([CarCompany]
,[CarBodyType]
,[CarName]
,[EngineType]
,[TransferredSatus])
VALUES
('Honda','sedan','Civic GX','petrol',0)
COMMIT TRAN

Output for User1:

(2 row(s) affected)
Here User2 transaction will wait till the User1 transaction completed avoiding Phantom reads.
Limitations:

Lower Concurrency
Advantage:

Eliminates
Eliminates
Eliminates
Eliminates

Dirty Reads
Lost Updates
Non-Repeatable Reads
Phantom Reads

In SSIS (SQL Server Integration Service): Select the task or container on which you want to set
the isolation level. Then go to Properties, and set the property named IsolationLevel to
Serializable.

5. SNAPSHOT Isolation Level: It specifies that the data accessed by any transaction is consistent
and valid for that particular transaction and the data will be same throughout the whole transaction. It
implements Row Versioning to isolate data for each transaction i.e. it will keep separate version of
each modified row in the transaction in the tempdb database totally dedicated to that transaction.
Any update of data in the original row will not affect the current transaction.
The ALLOW_SNAPSHOT_ISOLATION database option must be set to ON before you can start a
transaction that uses the SNAPSHOT isolation level. It is by default kept asOFF because of
performance issues.
To enable SNAPSHOT isolation level, use the below alter database command.
ALTER DATABASE OLAP SET ALLOW_SNAPSHOT_ISOLATION ON
We will consider a small example to illustrate the above condition.
Syntax:
SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL SNAPSHOT
Example: We will try to insert a new record in the [car_info] table by User1 and at the same time we
will try to fetch the records by User2.
For User1:

USE OLAP
Go
BEGIN TRAN
INSERT INTO [OLAP].[dbo].[car_info]
([CarCompany]
,[CarBodyType]
,[CarName]
,[EngineType]
,[TransferredSatus])
VALUES
('Honda','sedan','Civic Hybrid','petrol',0)

Note: The above transaction is not committed yet.

For User2:

USE OLAP
Go
SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL SNAPSHOT
BEGIN TRAN
Select * from dbo.car_info where CarCompany = 'Honda'
COMMIT TRAN

Output for User1:

(1 row(s) affected)
Output for User2:

One record is successfully inserted by User1, but a consisted version of the previous data is kept in
Version store (in tempdb) before the starting of the transaction. So User2 is accessing the data from
the version store and is unable to show the newly inserted record.
Now commit the transaction for User1 by COMMIT TRAN command, and again run the transaction
for User2, the output will be as below:

You can check the version store for the current transaction along with other information regarding the
current transaction by running the below DMVs (Dynamic Management Views) before committing
User1 transaction.
select * from sys.dm_tran_active_snapshot_database_transactions
Output:

Limitations:

Low performance due to versioning in tempdb

Advantage:

Eliminates Dirty Reads

Eliminates Lost Updates
Eliminates Non-Repeatable Reads
Allows multiple updates by versioning
In SSIS (SQL Server Integration Service): Select the task or container on which you want to set
the isolation level. Then go to Properties, and set the property named IsolationLevel to
Snapshot.

Other Isolation Levels in SSIS:

Chaos Isolation Level: Behaves the same way as ReadUncommitted, with additional
features as stated below:

1.
2.

3.

It permits viewing uncommitted changes by other transactions.

It checks any other uncompleted update transactions with higher restrictive isolation levels to
ensure not to raise any conflicts i.e. any pending changes from more highly isolated transactions
cannot be overwritten.
Rollback is not supported in this Isolation level.
If you want to perform read operations over the data once per transaction, then go for the Chaos
isolation level.
In SSIS (SQL Server Integration Service): Select the task or container on which you want to set
the isolation level. Then go to Properties, and set the property named IsolationLevel to Chaos.

Unspecified Isolation Level: When the Isolation level of any transaction cannot be
determined, then it comes under Unspecified Isolation Level i.e. a different isolation level than the
ones above are used. For example performing custom transaction operation likeODBCtransaction, if
the transaction level does not set by the user then it will execute according to the isolation level
associated by the ODBC driver.
In SSIS (SQL Server Integration Service): Select the task or container on which you want to set
the isolation level. Then go to Properties, and set the property named IsolationLevel to
Unspecified.

Optimistic Vs Pessimistic:
Optimistic concurrency: Here SQL Server assumes that the occurrence of resource conflicts
between different transactions are very rare but not impossible. So it allows transactions to execute
without locking any resources. Only in case of any modifications in the data, it will check for any
conflicts, if it finds any then it will perform the locking operations accordingly. In simple terms, we are
assuming that every transaction will carry on without any problem except some exceptional cases.
Pessimistic Concurrency: Here it will lock resources irrespective of the type of transaction to ensure
successful completion of transaction without deadlocks. Here, we are assuming that the conflicts are
likely and some major steps have to be taken to avoid those conflicts.
Lets have an example on this:

Suppose in a car showroom, a customer wants to go for a test drive, but before the manager say
something, it has to be clear that the car is empty and is ready for driving. What if another customer
is already requested for the test drive for the same car? If the manager allows both of them to drive
the car simultaneously, considering mutual understanding between the customers then we call it as
an Optimistic concurrency. But if the manager wants to be sure about non-conflicts of the customer,
then he allows the customers for test driving one-by-one. This is what we call as Pessimistic
Concurrency.