Atomicity

Atomicity may refer to:

Atomic transaction, in database systems, one of the ACID properties for transactions. Either all steps in a transaction succeed, or the entire transaction is rolled back.

Linearizability, in computer science, especially parallel algorithms. An operation appears to occur at a single instant between its invocation and its response.

In a symbolic language like Lisp, an S-expression is made of atoms and lists of S-expressions. S-expressions are then "atomic" if they are atoms, for example, numerics or symbols.

In the context of component-based paradigms, "atomicity" is an element of orthogonality. Possibly guaranteeing hermetic interfaces among components of a component-based system. Malfunctions in one component would result in side-effects in another component . In addition atomicity guarantees that services provided by a component are either offered as a whole, or not at all. Systems built according to this design principle localise the side-effects of changes within the package.

In other areas of computer science, "atomic" can mean the smallest addressable unit of memory. The byte is typically atomic in this sense.