DATABASES GUIDE
Database Transactions and Isolation Levels
By the HireReadyAI team · 8 min read
ACID in practice, isolation trade-offs, and keeping Node transactions short.
ACID in practice
Atomicity means multi-step writes commit together. Consistency is about valid state under rules you define. Isolation reduces concurrency surprises. Durability means committed data survives crashes (within engine guarantees).
Isolation levels
Read committed and repeatable read are common. Know dirty reads, non-repeatable reads, and phantoms at a conceptual level. Higher isolation can mean more locking and latency.
Transactions in Node
Keep transactions short. Do not hold a connection while calling external HTTP. Always commit/rollback in finally-safe flows. Long transactions are a top cause of pool exhaustion.