Don’t Let Your Kids Drop ACID.
We’re heading towards graduation time.
In just a few short months, your high school kids are going to be packing up their bags and heading off to college. It’s a time of adventure and discovery, and the first time they’ll be away from your parenting and guiding influences.
Take a moment to talk to them about the risks of dropping ACID. ACID is a set of four properties that guarantee reliable processing of database transactions. It stands for:
- Atomicity – A transaction is all or nothing. If one part fails, the whole transaction is rolled back.
- Consistency – Transactions take the database from one valid state to another, maintaining all defined rules (like constraints, triggers, etc.).
- Isolation – Concurrent transactions don’t interfere with each other. It’s like each runs on its own copy of the database until committed.
- Durability – Once a transaction is committed, its changes are permanent—even if the system crashes.
Together, these four properties ensure data integrity and reliability, especially in systems like banking, inventory, or anything where correctness really matters.
I know, you take these things for granted, but you probably haven’t talked to your kids about the importance of ACID. Your kids are getting exposed to new, hip stuff – things you never saw when you were a kid. You still think their biggest risk is trying MongoDB. Trust me, there’s other stuff out there that’s much worse.
I know it’s awkward discussing this stuff with your kids, but our future depends on it. Let’s get this stuff right.
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Posts like this are why I still receive all your communications – and read them every week – seven years after changing to a different role. This stuff cracks me up.
Thanks for the smile!
Hahaha, thanks! I chuckled when the idea came to me and I was hoping other folks would get a laugh out of it too.
Just the other day, my little one asked me if Delayed Transaction Durablility was safe to use. They grow up so fast…
Not even once
xD
Tune in, Turn on, Drop Indexes.
“Timothy Leary’s dead. No, he’s outside looking in”
Love this post! I will make sure to sit the kids down and explain to them the finer points of Acid before heading off to school! Thank you for keeping the future generations in mind! LOL. 🙂
Absolutely hilarious! Thanks for sharing! Proud father of two teenages
You know, it would be funning if it wasn’t also painful. If every manager and nube who sees a bright new shiny object and says this is much better than SQL. You know, it might be good at that one thing, but it’s also bad at so many others. Asking “Why we can’t run our high transactional OLTP system on this data lake? It’s so much faster and easier to use…” Hence the screams in my head and quiet comment “If you really just asked that, you aren’t knowledgeable enough to understand the answer.” Each tool has it’s place. Well, most…
Oh man, I relate to this one pretty hard. Where I work, we have SQL Server, which admittedly is set up by a total amateur and has a pile of garbage MS Access frontend. My boss asked me to investigate MongoDB, and it took me about 10 minutes of an introductory lecture to be completely sure it was not the right move.
I sent this on to a bunch of folk I know – the only question that came back was “Methamphetamine is ok though, right?” – I said I’d seek clarification…
Have just been told Methamphetamine is acronym for: “Method of Execution That Has A Measurable, Positive and Healthy Effect That Applies to Most Items Not Excluded”… it was a reach I think…
I really great post. Made me laugh out loud. Thanks Brent
Hey, sometimes you need ACID, and sometimes you need something mellower. Gotta teach the kids to read the documentation on their (I am sure we are talking about) database technology 🙂
Thanks Brent and indeed great to refresh the meaning of ACID. A good question for an interview ! Like many others I have been following you for a long time and now my two colleagues also follow you now. Thank Brent, Derek.