discrete transactions...

The June 21, 1993 issue of Open Systems Today has an article entitled "Oracle TPC Scores Come Under Fire." The dispute involves Oracle's discrete transactions.

According to the article, with discrete transactions, updates are locked into memory until the transaction completes and the original versions of the records are left untouched. There are also some limitations on the functionality of discrete transactions. Isn't this just "deferred update"? If so, is the following an accurate description of the functionality provided by discrete transactions?

	Under Oracle, a transaction updates in place by default, but can
	now also defer updates if it is designated to be a discrete
	transaction.

*swfc

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Shu-Wie F Chen                               Department of Computer Science
swfc_at_cs.columbia.edu                         Columbia University