What is an ACID transaction?

An ACID transaction is defined by the principles of Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability, which collectively ensure that a series of database operations are treated as a single logical unit of work. This means that either all the operations in the transaction are completed successfully, or none of them are applied, maintaining data integrity.

Choosing the correct answer highlights that ACID transactions guarantee this all-or-nothing approach, which is crucial for applications where data integrity is paramount, such as financial systems or inventory management. If any part of the transaction fails, the entire transaction is aborted, leaving the database in a consistent state.

In contrast, a sequence of commands that can be executed independently does not capture the essence of ACID transactions, as it does not guarantee that operations are connected or that they must all succeed together. Optimizing database performance is a separate concern that may involve various strategies but does not specifically pertain to the properties of a transaction. Accessing data asynchronously refers to how data is retrieved or manipulated without blocking the execution of other operations, which is unrelated to the definition of ACID transactions.