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Encyclopedia > Database transaction

A database transaction is a unit of interaction with a database management system or similar system that is treated in a coherent and reliable way independent of other transactions. In general, a database transaction must be atomic, meaning that it must be either entirely completed or aborted. Ideally, a database system will guarantee the properties of Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation and Durability (ACID) for each transaction. In practice, these properties are often relaxed somewhat to provide better performance. A database management system (DBMS) is computer software designed for the purpose of managing databases. ... In computing, an atomic transaction is a database transaction or a hardware transaction which either completely occurs, or completely fails to occur. ... A database management system (DBMS) is a computer program (or more typically, a suite of them) designed to manage a database, a large set of structured data, and run operations on the data requested by numerous users. ... For other uses, see Acid (disambiguation). ...


In some systems, transactions are also called LUWs for Logical Units of Work.

Contents

Purpose of transaction

In database products the ability to handle transactions allows the user to ensure that integrity of a database is maintained. This article is about computing. ... In computer science and telecommunications, the term data integrity has the following meanings: The condition in which data is identically maintained during any operation, such as transfer, storage, and retrieval. ...


A single transaction might require several queries, each reading and/or writing information in the database. When this happens it is usually important to be sure that the database is not left with only some of the queries carried out. For example, when doing a money transfer, if the money was debited from one account, it is important that it also be credited to the depositing account. Also, transactions should not interfere with each other. For more information about desirable transaction properties, see ACID. This article is about computing. ... For other uses, see Acid (disambiguation). ...


A simple transaction is usually issued to the database system in a language like SQL in this form: A database management system (DBMS) is a computer program (or more typically, a suite of them) designed to manage a database, a large set of structured data, and run operations on the data requested by numerous users. ... Structured Query Language (SQL) is the most popular computer language used to create, modify and query databases. ...

  1. Begin the transaction
  2. Execute several queries (although any updates to the database aren't actually visible to the outside world yet)
  3. Commit the transaction (updates become visible if the transaction is successful)

If one of the queries fails the database system may rollback either the entire transaction or just the failed query. This behaviour is dependent on the DBMS in use and how it is set up. The transaction can also be rolled back manually at any time before the commit. In database technologies, a rollback is an operation which returns the database to some previous state. ... A database management system (DBMS) is a computer program (or more typically, a suite of them) designed to manage a database, a large set of structured data, and run operations on the data requested by numerous users. ...


Transactional databases

Databases that support transactions are called transactional databases. Most modern relational database management systems fall into this category. A relational database management system (RDBMS) is a database management system (DBMS) that is based on the relational model as introduced by E. F. Codd. ...


Transactional filesystems

The Namesys Reiser4 filesystem for Linux [1] and the newest version of the Microsoft NTFS filesystem both support transactions [2], but file system transactions are rarely used in practice due to lack of compatibility with older systems. Reiser4 is a computer file system, a new from scratch successor to the ReiserFS file system, developed by Namesys and sponsored by DARPA as well as Linspire. ... This article is about operating systems that use the Linux kernel. ... NTFS is the standard file system of Windows NT, including its later versions Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Vista. ...


See also

A distributed transaction is an operations bundle, in which two or more network hosts are involved. ... A nested transaction occurs when a new transaction is started by an instruction that is already inside an existing transaction. ... For other uses, see Acid (disambiguation). ... In computing, an atomic transaction is a database transaction or a hardware transaction which either completely occurs, or completely fails to occur. ... In computer science, software transactional memory (STM) is a concurrency control mechanism analogous to database transactions for controlling access to shared memory in concurrent computing. ... Long-running transactions are computer database transactions that avoid locks on non-local resources, use compensation to handle failures, potentially aggregate smaller ACID transactions (also referred to as atomic transactions), and typically use a coordinator to complete or abort the transaction. ... In computer science, transaction processing is information processing that is divided into individual, indivisible operations, called Each transaction must succeed or fail as a complete unit; it cannot remain in an intermediate state. ...

External links

  • Transaction Processing

  Results from FactBites:
 
Transaction Logging Concepts (5515 words)
When an error occurs during a transaction, these log records are used to roll back the transaction, removing all of its effects on the database (restoring all data items to their previous values).
Transactions can be rolled back explicitly at the request of the application or the user, or automatically by the database manager when an error occurs and the application is no longer able to communicate with the database.
To recover the database, the roll-forward process combines a backup copy of the database with the records in the after-image log to redo all the changes that were made since the backup was created.
Database transaction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (364 words)
A database transaction is a unit of interaction with a database management system or similar system that is treated in a coherent and reliable way independent of other transactions that must be either entirely completed or aborted.
In database products the ability to handle transactions allows the user to ensure that integrity of a database is maintained.
When this happens it is usually important to be sure that the database is not left with only some of the queries carried out.
  More results at FactBites »


 

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