What Is Transaction?
When you think of a transaction, you probably think of something like: You go to the grocery store, pick up everything on your list, and then pay for it. In databases, a transaction is a logical unit independently executed for data retrieval or updates. It's pretty much the same as when you go to the grocery store, you get stuff and then pay for it, but it's more like a "transaction" than a "trip."Transactions were initially designed to process financial data in ledger-style accounting systems. With the advent of the high availability and enterprise-level reliability of modern database systems, the scope of what can be done within a transaction has expanded significantly. In a multi-user database system, a transaction can be thought of as a sequence of operations performed on the system, which must be completed successfully or not at all. Transactions are essential for maintaining data integrity and consistency, as they offer ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) properties. Transactions are often performed as a part of a business process, like a purchase, a sale, a transfer of assets, hiring or firing of employees, etc. Transactions are a fundamental part of any database system. A transaction is a set of operations performed on data that must succeed or fail. For example, if you're transferring money from one account to another, the transfer must either happen entirely or not. You can't accidentally send half the money to one person and a half to another. Transactions are often considered "atomic," which means they are indivisible: they either happen in their entirety or not at all. It isn't true if your bank sends one-tenth of your money to each person instead of all of it going to one person, then that's not atomic because it didn't happen all at once (or not at all). Other features make up ACID transactions: consistency (which means that when the transaction is over, both sides agree on what happened), isolation (which means that other users' actions aren't affected by yours), durability (which means that when the system crashes or goes down temporarily, your changes will still be there when it comes back up)
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