Back to Glossary

PostgreSQL Glossary

Isolation

The ACID property that ensures concurrent transactions don't interfere with each other. Example: PostgreSQL's MVCC provides isolation by showing each tran…

Definition

The ACID property that ensures concurrent transactions don't interfere with each other.

What Isolation Means in PostgreSQL

The ACID property that ensures concurrent transactions don't interfere with each other.

Isolation appears frequently in production operations, architecture decisions, and troubleshooting workflows. Understanding this term helps teams reason about reliability, performance, and safe change management.

Why Isolation Matters

Teams that understand Isolation can make better decisions on database design, incident response, and release safety.

In modern PostgreSQL environments, this concept often connects directly to backup strategy, performance tuning, and operational confidence.

  • Improves decision quality for production operations
  • Reduces avoidable troubleshooting time
  • Strengthens reliability and recovery planning

Practical Example

PostgreSQL's MVCC provides isolation by showing each transaction a consistent snapshot of the database.

Where To Learn More

You can explore deeper implementation patterns in the Vela articles library, review platform workflows in How Vela Works, and compare approaches in our PostgreSQL comparisons.

Related Glossary Topics

Index ACID Atomicity Archiving (WAL Archiving) archive_command archive_mode BYOC (Bring Your Own Cloud) B-tree Index

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Isolation in PostgreSQL?
The ACID property that ensures concurrent transactions don't interfere with each other.
Why is Isolation important?
Isolation matters because it directly affects how teams build, operate, and recover PostgreSQL systems in production.
Can you give a practical Isolation example?
PostgreSQL's MVCC provides isolation by showing each transaction a consistent snapshot of the database.
How does Isolation relate to backup, recovery, or performance?
In most production deployments, Isolation influences one or more of these areas: data safety, restore behavior, and performance under load.
What should teams check first when implementing Isolation?
Start with clear operational goals, test in a non-production environment, and validate behavior with repeatable runbooks before relying on it in production.