TiDB Transaction Isolation Levels

Transaction isolation is one of the foundations of database transaction processing. Isolation is one of the four key properties of a transaction (commonly referred as ACID).

The SQL-92 standard defines four levels of transaction isolation: Read Uncommitted, Read Committed, Repeatable Read, and Serializable. See the following table for details:

Isolation Level	Dirty Write	Dirty Read	Fuzzy Read	Phantom
READ UNCOMMITTED	Not Possible	Possible	Possible	Possible
READ COMMITTED	Not Possible	Not possible	Possible	Possible
REPEATABLE READ	Not Possible	Not possible	Not possible	Possible
SERIALIZABLE	Not Possible	Not possible	Not possible	Not possible

TiDB implements Snapshot Isolation (SI) consistency, which it advertises as REPEATABLE-READ for compatibility with MySQL. This differs from the ANSI Repeatable Read isolation level and the MySQL Repeatable Read level.

Note

Starting from TiDB v3.0, the automatic retry of transactions is disabled by default. It is not recommended to enable the automatic retry because it might break the transaction isolation level. Refer to Transaction Retry for details.

Starting from TiDB v3.0.8, newly created TiDB clusters use the pessimistic transaction mode by default. The current read (for update read) is non-repeatable read. Refer to pessimistic transaction mode for details.

Repeatable Read isolation level

The Repeatable Read isolation level only sees data committed before the transaction begins, and it never sees either uncommitted data or changes committed during transaction execution by concurrent transactions. However, the transaction statement does see the effects of previous updates executed within its own transaction, even though they are not yet committed.

For transactions running on different nodes, the start and commit order depends on the order that the timestamp is obtained from PD.

Transactions of the Repeatable Read isolation level cannot concurrently update a same row. When committing, if the transaction finds that the row has been updated by another transaction after it starts, then the transaction rolls back. For example:

create table t1(id int);
insert into t1 values(0);

start transaction;              |               start transaction;
select * from t1;               |               select * from t1;
update t1 set id=id+1;          |               update t1 set id=id+1; -- In pessimistic transactions, the `update` statement executed later waits for the lock until the transaction holding the lock commits or rolls back and releases the row lock.
commit;                         |
                                |               commit; -- The transaction commit fails and rolls back. Pessimistic transactions can commit successfully.

Difference between TiDB and ANSI Repeatable Read

The Repeatable Read isolation level in TiDB differs from ANSI Repeatable Read isolation level, though they sharing the same name. According to the standard described in the A Critique of ANSI SQL Isolation Levels paper, TiDB implements the Snapshot Isolation level. This isolation level does not allow strict phantoms (A3) but allows broad phantoms (P3) and write skews. In contrast, the ANSI Repeatable Read isolation level allows phantom reads but does not allow write skews.

Difference between TiDB and MySQL Repeatable Read

The Repeatable Read isolation level in TiDB differs from that in MySQL. The MySQL Repeatable Read isolation level does not check whether the current version is visible when updating, which means it can continue to update even if the row has been updated after the transaction starts. In contrast, if the row has been updated after the transaction starts, the TiDB optimistic transaction is rolled back and retried. Transaction retries in TiDB's optimistic concurrency control might fail, leading to a final failure of the transaction, while in TiDB's pessimistic concurrency control and MySQL, the updating transaction can be successful.

Read Committed isolation level

Starting from TiDB v4.0.0-beta, TiDB supports the Read Committed isolation level.

For historical reasons, the Read Committed isolation level of current mainstream databases is essentially the Consistent Read isolation level defined by Oracle. In order to adapt to this situation, the Read Committed isolation level in TiDB pessimistic transactions is also a consistent read behavior in essence.

Note

The Read Committed isolation level only takes effect in the pessimistic transaction mode. In the optimistic transaction mode, setting the transaction isolation level to Read Committed does not take effect and transactions still use the Repeatable Read isolation level.

Starting from v6.0.0, TiDB supports using the tidb_rc_read_check_ts system variable to optimize the timestamp acquisition in scenarios where read-write conflicts are rare. After enabling this variable, TiDB will try to use the previous valid timestamp to read data when SELECT is executed. The initial value of this variable is the start_ts of the transaction.

If TiDB does not encounter any data update during the read process, it returns the result to the client and the SELECT statement is successfully executed.
If TiDB encounters data update during the read process:
- If TiDB has not yet sent the result to the client, TiDB tries to acquire a new timestamp and retry this statement.
- If TiDB has already sent partial data to the client, TiDB reports an error to the client. The amount of data sent to the client each time is controlled by tidb_init_chunk_size and tidb_max_chunk_size.

In scenarios where the READ-COMMITTED isolation level is used, the SELECT statements are many, and read-write conflicts are rare, enabling this variable can avoid the latency and cost of getting the global timestamp.

Difference between TiDB and MySQL Read Committed

The MySQL Read Committed isolation level is in line with the Consistent Read features in most cases. There are also exceptions, such as semi-consistent read. This special behavior is not supported in TiDB.