Which situation best demonstrates a failure of the Atomicity property in…
2025
Which situation best demonstrates a failure of the Atomicity property in database transactions?
- A.
A transaction modifies a bank account balance, but system failure occurs before saving the update in the transaction log.
- B.
A transaction successfully performs all changes but is delayed in finalising due to disk performance.
- C.
Two separate transactions attempt to read the same data at the same time without proper locking.
- D.
A transaction accesses uncommitted changes from another transaction due to insufficient isolation.
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Correct answer: A
Atomicity is the "All-or-Nothing" rule of databases, meaning a transaction must either fully complete or not happen at all. Option A represents a failure of this property because a crash occurs after the database has made partial changes in temporary memory but before it can write a final "Commit" record to permanent storage. This leaves the transaction half-done, which violates atomicity and forces the database to perform a rollback upon recovery to wipe away the incomplete changes and restore a consistent state.