Transaction processing
In computer science, a atomicity, and is one of the desirable ACID transaction properties.
For many years transaction processing was the domain of the database management system, making sure that any changes to the database were complete. This worked well for most applications, many users could all run on top of a single client-server database.
In more recent years this model has become considerably more difficult to maintain. As the number of transactions grew in response to various online services, a single database was no longer a practical solution. In addition most online systems consist of a whole suite of programs operating together, as opposed to a strict client-server model where the single server could handle the transaction processing. Today a number of transaction processing systems are available that work at the inter-program level.
See also: Database transaction
