Why are long-running transactions harmful in MVCC systems, and how do you mitigate the damage?

Problem Statement

Explanation

Long transactions hold snapshots open. The engine must keep old row versions and cannot reclaim space or freeze visibility easily. This increases table and index bloat and slows vacuum or purge cycles. It can also block truncation and keep conflict fields hot. Mitigate by breaking work into smaller commits, moving pure reads to a replica, and avoiding idle-in-transaction connections. Schedule vacuum or maintenance windows and monitor age metrics to intervene before wraparound risks.

Code Solution

SolutionRead Only

SET idle_in_transaction_session_timeout = '5min';

Practice Sets

This question appears in the following practice sets:

Transactions, Isolation & Concurrency Control

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Why are long-running transactions harmful in MVCC systems, and how do you mitigate the damage?

Problem Statement

Explanation

Code Solution

Practice Sets

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Master Interviews Anywhere, Anytime

Why are long-running transactions harmful in MVCC systems, and how do you mitigate the damage?

Problem Statement

Explanation

Code Solution

Practice Sets

Related Questions

Which SQL statement retrieves all columns and rows from a table named employees?

Which clause filters rows before aggregation and affects which rows are grouped?

What is the default sort order when ORDER BY is used without ASC or DESC?

Which construct is commonly used to paginate results in SQL engines like Postgres and MySQL?

Which predicate correctly checks for missing values in standard SQL?

More from SQL & Databases

Master Interviews
Anywhere, Anytime