Let us continue our question of the day series with day five.

What is ACID?

ACID is an acronym that is used in relational databases to determine whether it meets architecture criteria.  The acronym stands for Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability.  When we evaluate the architecture or design of the relational database all four of these attributes of the acronym must be met in order for the database to be considered reliable.

Atomicity is an all-or-none proposition in regards to transaction which are a unit of work to be committed or rolled back.

Consistency will guarantee that a transaction will never remain unfinished in your database.

Isolation keeps transactions separated from the database and from each other until they are committed or rolled back.

Durability guarantees that the database will track all changes so that if any sort of termination occurs the server can recover.

Enjoy!