A transaction is a unit of work in which a series of operations occur between the BEGIN TRANSACTION and END TRANSACTION statements of an application. A transaction executes exactly once and is atomic ?

all the work is done or none of it is.

Operations associated with a transaction usually share a common intent and are interdependent.

By performing only a subset of these operations, the system could compromise the overall intent of the

transaction. Atomicity eliminates the chance of processing a subset of operations.