db-concurrency

db-concurrency (M14)

Correctness under concurrent writes is a Performance & Scale (axis performance) concern: it governs both throughput and whether data stays consistent under load. Feeds relational Concurrencia w12 (and the Idempotencia category in KV/document/wide-column profiles).

What it checks

1. Isolation level — is the workload's chosen isolation (READ COMMITTED default vs REPEATABLE READ/SERIALIZABLE) appropriate for its invariants? Money/inventory updates under READ COMMITTED without locking are exposed to anomalies.
2. Lost update / read-modify-write — SELECT balance; …app math…; UPDATE balance=$new without SELECT … FOR UPDATE, atomic UPDATE … SET x = x - $n, or optimistic version check. Classic double-spend race.
3. Queue contention — worker pollers using SELECT … FOR UPDATE without SKIP LOCKED serialize all workers onto one row; recommend FOR UPDATE SKIP LOCKED.
4. Idempotency (KV/doc/WC) — writes to non-transactional stores (Redis, DynamoDB, Cassandra, Mongo without a session) lacking an idempotency key / conditional write, so a retry double-applies.
5. Advisory locks — when a critical section has no row to lock, recommend Postgres advisory locks to serialize it: pg_advisory_xact_lock() (transaction-scoped, auto-released at commit/rollback) for leader election, single-runner cron jobs, and migration guards. Prefer the _xact_ variant over session-scoped pg_advisory_lock() so the lock can't leak on a dropped connection. Note (cross-ref M15): session-scoped advisory locks break transaction-mode pooling (PgBouncer) — the lock can land on a different backend than the unlock; transaction-scoped advisory locks are pooling-safe.

Score / axis

Feeds performance only (relational Concurrencia w12; Idempotencia in KV w18 / document / wide-column profiles).

Tier-0 (static)

Grep ORM/transaction source for isolation settings, read-then-write update sequences without locking, FOR UPDATE lacking SKIP LOCKED, and missing conditional-write / idempotency keys on KV/doc/WC writes. Static findings are directional — actual contention is runtime (needs_api / Tier-2).

Tier-1/2 (verification)

Default isolation (Tier-1): SHOW transaction_isolation; (method connection_introspect). Live contention (Tier-2):

SELECT wait_event_type, wait_event, count(*)
FROM pg_stat_activity WHERE state='active' GROUP BY 1,2 ORDER BY 3 DESC;
-- and deadlock/serialization rollback counts:
SELECT datname, deadlocks FROM pg_stat_database WHERE datname = current_database();

Method query_stat. Lock-wait / deadlock counts confirm a contention finding as established; without sustained stats it stays directional.

Findings

Emit findings per schema/finding.schema.json. Examples:

• M14.accounts.lost_update_balance — read-modify-write without locking/atomic update (severity:4, fail, axis performance, confidence directional, fixable: proposed — atomic UPDATE or FOR UPDATE).
• M14.jobs.no_skip_locked — worker poll without SKIP LOCKED (severity:3, warn, directional, fixable: proposed).
• M14.payments.non_idempotent_write — KV/doc write with no idempotency key (severity:3, warn, directional, fixable: advisory).

Each finding: evidence.observed quotes the transaction/update code verbatim (secrets redacted); verification.reproduce is the isolation/stat query above referencing $DATABASE_URL; expected_impact is banded + confidence-tagged (no naked %).

Honesty

• Anomaly exposure is not proof of an occurring race — without live deadlock/serialization stats these are directional and never cap.
• READ COMMITTED is correct for the majority of workloads; flag it only against an invariant that demands stronger isolation, not as a blanket defect.
• Concurrency fixes are app-logic changes (locking, atomic ops, idempotency keys) → proposed/ advisory, never auto.