Abstract: A method and system are provided for performing anticipatory changes to a resource governed by a locking mechanism. Entities (such as transactions in a database system) that want to modify a resource request permission to modify the resource. However, prior to receiving permission, they make anticipatory changes to a private version of the resource. The entities are prevented from making the anticipatory changes permanent until they receive permission to make the changes. Because they can make the changes, and proceed to other operations, before receiving permission, any delay in receiving permission has less adverse effect on their performance.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for managing locks in a database system is provided. A master node grants a lock on a first resource and a group of resources that includes the first resource to a first requester node. The requester node receives a mapping corresponding to the group of resources that may indicate that a lock already exists for a second resource in the group. If the requester node desires a lock on a resource located in the group, the requester node grants itself the lock without notifying the master node. A second requester node requests a lock for a particular resource in the group of resources. The first requester node grants the lock on the particular resource and updates the mapping to indicate that a different node holds a lock for the particular resource.

Abstract: Techniques are provided for managing caches in a system with multiple caches that may contain different copies of the same data item. Specifically, techniques are provided for coordinating the write-to-disk operations performed on such data items to ensure that older versions of the data item are not written over newer versions, and to reduce the amount of processing required to recover after a failure. Various approaches are provided in which a master is used to coordinate with the multiple caches to cause a data item to be written to persistent storage. Techniques are also provided for managing checkpoints associated with the caches, where the checkpoints are used to determine the position at which to begin processing recovery logs in the event of a failure.