DBMS ACID properties

To ensure the integrity of data during a transaction (A transaction is a unit of program that updates various data items, read more about it here), the database system maintains the following properties. These properties are widely known as ACID properties:

Atomicity: This property ensures that either all the operations of a transaction reflect in database or none. Let's take an example of banking system to understand this: Suppose Account A has a balance of 400$ & B has 700$. Account A is transferring 100$ to Account B. This is a transaction that has two operations a) Debiting 100$ from A's balance b) Creating 100$ to B's balance. Let's say first operation passed successfully while second failed, in this case A's balance would be 300$ while B would be having 700$ instead of 800$. This is unacceptable in a banking system. Either the transaction should fail without executing any of the operation or it should process both the operations. The Atomicity property ensures that.

Consistency: To preserve the consistency of database, the execution of transaction should take place in isolation (that means no other transaction should run concurrently when there is a transaction already running). For example account A is having a balance of 400$ and it is transferring 100$ to account B & C both. So we have two transactions here. Let's say these transactions run concurrently and both the transactions read 400$ balance, in that case the final balance of A would be 300$ instead of 200$. This is wrong. If the transaction were to run in isolation then the second transaction would have read the correct balance 300$ (before debiting 100$) once the first transaction went successful.

Isolation: For every pair of transactions, one transaction should start execution only when the other finished execution. I have already discussed the example of Isolation in the Consistency property above.

Durability: Once a transaction completes successfully, the changes it has made into the database should be permanent even if there is a system failure. The recovery-management component of database systems ensures the durability of transaction.