SharePass has decided to pursue the ACID certification for its databases. So what exactly is ACID, and what does it mean for us?
In digital databases, an important concept called “ACID” (acronym for Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) is crucial when performing changes to the database, also known as transactions. Let’s breakdown each one of them to have a better understanding:
Atomicity: Ensures that all changes to data are performed as if they are a single operation. That is, all or nothing
Consistency: Data is in a consistent state when a transaction starts and when it ends.
Isolation: The intermediate state of a transaction is invisible to other transactions. As a result, transactions that run concurrently appear to be serialized.
Durability: After a transaction completes successfully, changes to data persist and are not undone, even in the event of a system failure.
How does ACID compliance relate to SharePass?
Let’s take a case scenario of a user generating a one-time link with a password in it (by definition, the password contained in the link should be erased as soon as the password is retrieved). At the beginning of the process, a link is sent to the recipient who then opens the link. Let’s assume something went wrong in the process. An infrequent computational error takes place and fails to erase the password from the database. If this happens, it opens the potential for a security breach. A password has been retrieved but not deleted from the database as initially intended.
In the opposite scenario, let’s erase the password from the database before it is sent. But, what if an error occurred when the password is sent to the recipient? In this case, a password was erased from the database, but the recipient hasn’t received it (because it was erased from the database).
None of this happens with an ACID-compliant database. In this type of database, all the operations are considered as transactions end to end, preventing rare errors impacting the data integrity and validity.
Even though the ACID concept primarily applies to SQL databases (relational), it also works on Non-SQL databases (non-relational). SharePass utilizes DynamoDB, which is Non-SQL. DynamoDB can be configured to use Amazon’s DynamoDB Transactions for its most critical operations, achieving the same result as a compliant ACID database.
