Path: news.easynews.com!core-easynews!newsfeed1.easynews.com!easynews.com!easynews!cyclone1.gnilink.net!news.stealth.net news.stealth.net!news.stealth.net!204.127.161.156.MISMATCH!wn12feed!worldnet.att.net!204.127.198.203!attbi_feed3!attbi_feed4!attbi.com!sccrnsc02.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Marshall Spight" Newsgroups: comp.databases.theory Subject: Transactions: good or bad? Lines: 17 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 12.236.48.146 X-Complaints-To: abuse@attbi.com X-Trace: sccrnsc02 1051596053 12.236.48.146 (Tue, 29 Apr 2003 06:00:53 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2003 06:00:53 GMT Organization: AT&T Broadband Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2003 06:00:53 GMT Xref: core-easynews comp.databases.theory:26030 X-Received-Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2003 23:00:33 MST (news.easynews.com) I've always thought of transactions as being a good thing. It seems to me that there are various synchronization mechanisms out there: mutexes, semaphores, Java synchronization, etc., but that transactions are actually the highest level synchronization mechanism I've encountered. But recently I read that "transactions ... are not compatible with the 'arrow of time'. They let you freeze time and that is not a good model of reality." Any comments? Marshall