IPA FE Subject A 2024 Question 7

A question IPA Japan published in 令和６年度基本情報技術者試験科目A 公開問題問7, translated into English. ITPEC is based on the same exams.

Which of the following is a description of the atomicity that should be implemented in a DBMS?

a)The same processing on the same database gives the same result, however many times it is executed.b)Even if a hardware failure occurs after a transaction is completed, the contents of the updated database are guaranteed.c)The processing in a transaction is either all executed or all canceled.d)The processing result of one transaction is not affected by the processing of other transactions.

Explanation

All of a transaction’s processing is executed, or all of it is canceled — atomicity is the A of the ACID properties that a DBMS guarantees for transactions.

A transaction is a unit of work, such as moving money from one account to another, that must not stop half done. Atomicity makes it all or nothing: when the transaction ends normally, every update is committed; when it fails partway, the DBMS rolls back every update it has already made, so the database is left as if the transaction had never run.

Answer (c)

Why not others:

•(a) — giving the same result however many times the same processing is executed is idempotence, which is not one of the ACID properties
•(b) — keeping the updates of a completed transaction through a later hardware failure is durability
•(d) — a transaction’s result not being affected by other transactions running at the same time is isolation

Key rule: ACID: atomicity (all or nothing), consistency (the data stays valid), isolation (concurrent transactions do not interfere), durability (committed updates survive failures).

Databases · AI-written, may contain errors

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This question comes from the past questions IPA Japan publishes, translated into English by ITPEC Practice. ITPEC Practice is an independent study tool and is not affiliated with IPA or ITPEC. See the original paper (PDF) or Report an issue.