atomic

jargon (From Greek "atomos", indivisible) Indivisible;

cannot be split up.

For example, an instruction may be said to do several things

"atomically", i.e. all the things are done immediately, and

there is no chance of the instruction being half-completed or

of another being interspersed. Used especially to convey that

an operation cannot be interrupted.

An atomic data type has no internal structure visible to the

program. It can be represented by a flat domain (all

elements are equally defined). Machine integers and

Booleans are two examples.

An atomic database transaction is one which is guaranteed to

complete successfully or not at all. If an error prevents a

partially-performed transaction from proceeding to completion,

it must be "backed out" to prevent the database being left in

an inconsistent state.

[Jargon File]

(2000-04-03)