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ACID Properties

General/Othereasy0.3 min readPremium

**ACID**: Atomicity (all or nothing), Consistency (valid state), Isolation (concurrent transactions), Durability (persisted). **Why in data**: Traditional lakes lacked ACID—concurrent writes corrupted data. Delta Lake, Iceberg provide ACID via transaction logs: concurrent...

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Frequency
Low
Asked at 1 company
Category
243
questions in General/Other
Difficulty Split
151E|43M|49H
in this category
Total Bank
1,863
across 7 categories
Asked at these companies
Presidio
Interview Pro Tip

Pro-Move: 'We use Delta for our curated layer—MERGE for upserts, time travel for incident recovery; Iceberg for cross-engine.' Red Flag: Saying 'we don't need ACID' for financial or compliance data—you do.

Why This Question Matters

This easy-level General/Other question appears frequently in data engineering interviews at companies like Presidio. While less common, it tests deeper understanding that distinguishes strong candidates.

How to Approach This

Start by clearly defining the core concept being asked about. Interviewers want to see that you understand the fundamentals before diving into implementation details. Structure your answer with a definition, then explain the practical application with a concise example.

Expert Answer
67 words

ACID: Atomicity (all or nothing), Consistency (valid state), Isolation (concurrent transactions), Durability (persisted). Why in data: Traditional lakes lacked ACID—concurrent writes corrupted data. Delta Lake, Iceberg provide ACID via transaction logs: concurrent writes, time travel, schema evolution. Use cases: Exactly-once processing, compliance, financial. Trade-off: ACID adds metadata overhead; traditional append-only is simpler but can't update/merge. Best practice: Use Delta or Iceberg when you need updates, deletes, merges.

The complete answer continues with detailed implementation patterns, architectural trade-offs, and production-grade considerations covering performance optimization and real-world examples.

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