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If you’re running an operational and transactional system, then you need a database with all of the ACID properties (atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability). These properties ensure that your enterprise-grade system never encounters issues like data corruption, stale reads, and inconsistent data. When it comes to mission-critical applications, ACID properties are not a “nice-to-have,” they are an absolute requirement for transactional consistency.

ACID compliance is a standard in relational databases, but MarkLogic is unique among almost all NoSQL databases because we support transactions that are 100% ACID compliant, whereas others have relaxed or even non-existent standards. MarkLogic’s ACID properties also apply to multi-document, multi-statement, and XA transactions (transactions between clusters), providing the unique reliability to run large-scale, operational systems for mission-critical use cases.

Dig Into the Specifics

What Does ACID Stand For?

ACID is an acronym representing four key properties that guarantee your database transactions are reliably processed.

Diagram Product Feature Acid Transactions Acronym
  • A is for Atomicity: The database must execute the whole transaction and not just part of it – all or nothing.
  • C is for Consistency: The database must enforce the system rules, for example, you can’t put a value in a field, if that value is not allowed.
  • I is for Isolation: If multiple transactions are running at the same time they’ll run independently and the end result will be as if they were executed one after the other.
  • D is for Durability: Once a transaction is done, it stays done (even if the system crashes thereafter).

Customer Highlights

Abn Amro 420 240

ABN AMRO needed to respond quickly to changing regulatory requirements. MarkLogic’s multi-model database and associated features such as security and ACID transactions were compelling.

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Healthcare Gov 420 240

CMS launched HealthCare.gov on MarkLogic within 18 months, achieving over 5,500 transactions per second and enabling over 8 million people to sign up for health insurance in its first year of operation.

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Investment Bank 420 240

A Top Five Investment Bank runs its operational trade store on MarkLogic, processing over 100,000 complex trades each day that typically result in about 32 million live deals in the system at any one time.

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Features That Make ACID Transactions Possible

Document locks to protect data during updates and keep transactions from conflicting with one another

Timestamps on documents that ensure a query only sees copies of documents that are valid at the time the query is run (also known as Multi-Version Concurrency Control)

Journaling of updates before they are committed to ensure transactions can be replayed in the face of system failures

A commit process to ensure changed data is changed all at once or not at all, even across multiple hosts

View of a car windshield with wiper running on a stormy day

Where Other NoSQL Databases Fall Short

The promise of NoSQL is speed and scale. But, in order to achieve speed and scale, most distributed databases sacrifice transactional consistency. Or, they only maintain transactional consistency using single-document locks. This means that if a transaction involves multiple documents, then you can forget about transactional consistency. That’s like saying your brakes always work… except when you’re on the highway.

Read the Blog Post

Related Resources

DOCUMENTATION
Guide to Understanding Transactions in MarkLogic

View Resource

Developer Blog Post
How MarkLogic Supports ACID Transactions

View Resource

BLOG POST
MarkLogic CTO on Why You Need ACID Transactions

View Resource

2017-12-08

Understanding Key Features and Benefits

Forget everything you think you know about NoSQL databases and learn what makes MarkLogic unique. View a comprehensive list of features and start reaping the benefits now.

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