ACID is an acronym for Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability. ACID is also a mnemonic used to remember the four primary attributes to support any transaction by a transaction manager. Transactions are single units of a process that has the ability to access and modify the contents of any database as per requirements. These measures serve as the key properties of any transaction of such kind. These guiding principles ensure that database transactions can be processed reliably. This set of instructions also helps to ensure that changes in the database can be performed carefully and that the loss of necessary data may be avoided. Thus assuring the reliability and accuracy of a database.
Atomicity
Consistency
Isolation
Durability
Atomicity tries to define that each transaction element (considered as an atom here) must be carefully dealt with. That means that a transaction can happen in multiple steps, but the whole transaction is considered as one unit itself. So, either all the steps happen together or none gets executed.
Consistency is a characteristic to ensure consistency or clarity to any changes in the data. This also shows that a transaction should always create a new valid data set (which should be received in an account). This concept is to ensure that if there occurs a debit in one account, a corresponding credit should happen in another account. If a failure occurs in this stage, the data should return to its older state, which means that the amount of data should have a piece of trackable information and should not be lost anywhere.
Isolation stresses that any transaction and its processes must be isolated from other concurrent transactions. This makes it necessary that each transaction is a single process and cannot be clubbed with other simultaneous transactions, And, thus it ensures that if multiple transactions are made simultaneously, the effect is still the same as they are performed one by one.
Durability means that all information regarding the history of the data must be available at any time. This is to save the data robust enough that the data of all or any transactions is available correctly even if the system fails and restarts. This ensures that successful changes will survive permanently.
ACID helps to support data security and data integrity.
The ACID model is used in maintaining integrity in banking applications and business data.
Atomicity in ACID during fund transfers ensure that a corresponding credit occurs in another account if money debits from one account.
Consistency in ACID during fund transfer ensures that the fund debited from one account equals the fund credited to the secondary account.
Durability in ACID during fund transfer, using an application, ensures that the status corresponding to the fund transferred stays the same and does not reverse back or change later.