Read Skew, Write Skew, Phantom Reads

This generated surface maps a learner-facing curriculum unit to its canonical source routes.

Curriculum surface

• Open learner-facing unit
• Curriculum path: content/curriculum/architecture/semester-06-databases-distributed/module-04-transactions-consistency/concepts/cluster-02-concurrency-anomalies/05-read-skew-write-skew-phantom-reads-primary.md
• App: architecture
• Semester: semester-06-databases-distributed
• Module: module-04-transactions-consistency
• Unit kind: concept
• Curation level: module_curated

Learning objectives

• Explain Read Skew, Write Skew, Phantom Reads using the language of guarantees, anomalies, and implementation costs rather than vague “strong vs weak” intuition.
• Use Read Skew, Write Skew, Phantom Reads to reason about what a database actually promises under concurrency and failure.
• Use database-internals, ddia to connect the learner-facing model to isolation, recovery, distributed coordination, and real failure modes.

Prerequisites

• Comfort with relational data modeling and the basic mechanics of storage engines and replication.

Source books

• database-internals
• ddia

Source routes

Database Internals

• /books/database-internals/chapter-02-b-tree-basics via Database Internals: Read and write anomalies

Ddia

• /books/ddia/chapter-07-transactions via DDIA: Snapshot Isolation and Repeatable Read (part 1), DDIA: Snapshot Isolation and Repeatable Read (part 2), DDIA: Write skew and phantoms (part 1), DDIA: Write skew and phantoms (part 2)

Supporting curriculum routes

No supporting curriculum routes linked yet.

External enrichment

• PostgreSQL Documentation: Transaction Isolation (official_docs_companion) - Anchors anomaly and isolation discussions in a concrete implementation instead of abstract labels alone.
• CockroachDB: Transaction Layer Architecture (optional_deep_dive) - Useful when the learner wants to see how transactional guarantees change under a distributed SQL architecture.

AI companion modes

• Explain simply
• Socratic tutor
• Challenge my understanding
• Diagnose my confusion
• Connect forward / backward

Source-of-truth note

This teaching unit is learner-facing guidance assembled from multiple canonical book routes. Use the listed source books as the primary conceptual spine for Read Skew, Write Skew, Phantom Reads, and treat outside material as supporting enrichment only.