Benchmarking Transaction Patterns

Guides users through benchmarking, explaining, and comparing two formulations of the same transactional business workflow in CockroachDB: explicit multi-statement transactions versus single-statement CTE transactions. Focuses on performance under contention, fair test methodology, and result interpretation.

Complement to design skills: For general transaction design principles, see designing-application-transactions. For SQL syntax and query patterns, see cockroachdb-sql.

Core Concept

Under contention, the transaction formulation itself is a primary performance lever. The explicit model (multi-statement BEGIN/COMMIT) keeps the transaction open across round trips, widening the contention window. The CTE model (single-statement) collapses the same logic into one atomic statement, reducing transaction duration and retries.

Explicit Transaction Model