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From: Siddharth Jain <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Question regarding how databases support atomicity
Date: Fri, 3 May 2024 20:02:49 -0700
Message-ID: <CAPqV3pQquw63Fv_fCJzAAnUWk86qHfg1cH=+mJ2N=4LGdDyrNw@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAPqV3pRO=u1Mno06WLCFxoyxbzkYTetiqTs7WaW=_fkjRPgYhw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAPqV3pRO=u1Mno06WLCFxoyxbzkYTetiqTs7WaW=_fkjRPgYhw@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, May 3, 2024 at 8:00 PM Siddharth Jain <[email protected]> wrote:

> I am trying to sharpen my understanding of databases. Let's say there is
> an operation foo as part of the public API that internally translates to
> more than 1 operation - I am sure there are examples like this in postgres.
> So to do foo we have to do following in order in all or none fashion:
>
> 1. Step 1
> 2. Step 2
> 3. Step 3
>
> The way I understand this is that if there is a failure in-between, we
> start undoing and reverting the previous operations one by one. But what if
> there is a failure and we are not able to revert an operation. How is that
> situation handled? e.g., something failed when we tried to do Step 3. now
> we revert Step 2 and succeed. but when we try to revert step 1 we fail.
> what happens now? To me, it seems its impossible to guarantee true
> atomicity in general.
>
> S.
>

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