Deadlock-Freedom (and Safety) of Transactions in a Distributed Database

Abstract We analyze the problem of determining freedom from deadlock of transactions which control concurrency by locking in a distributed database. We use a graph-theoretic formalization of the problem and show that it is NP-hard even for two transactions. The problem of determining safety (serializability of all schedules) and deadlock freedom is also examined. We show that this problem can be solved in polynomial time for any fixed number of transactions.

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