RisingWave Community - What is the role of timestamp or epoch in maintaining a consistent view of data on top of MVCC?

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What is the role of timestamp or epoch in maintaining a consistent view of data on top of MVCC?

In the discussion, Gopher mentioned the usage of timestamp or epoch for maintaining a consistent view of data on top of MVCC. Tianyi Zhuang added that epoch is a coarse-grained version. Can you explain the role of timestamp or epoch in this context?

Gopher

Asked on Dec 30, 2022

Timestamp or epoch is used in MVCC (Multi-Version Concurrency Control) systems to provide a consistent view of data.
Timestamps or epochs help in determining the order of transactions and versions of data.
Epochs are considered as a coarse-grained version of timestamps in this context.

Example:

# Using timestamp for MVCC
timestamp = get_current_timestamp()
# Using epoch for MVCC
epoch = get_current_epoch()

Jan 03, 2023Edited by