DatabasesIntermediate
Isolation Level
PronunciationEYE-suh-LAY-shun LEV-ul
Definition
Isolation level is a database setting that determines how transaction integrity is visible to other concurrent operations. It balances the trade-off between data consistency and system performance.
Where you hear it
In database configuration, performance tuning discussions, or when troubleshooting data consistency issues.
Examples
We set the isolation level to Serializable to prevent phantom reads in our financial reports.
Changing the isolation level to Read Committed can improve performance by reducing lock contention.
Common mistake
Assuming that a higher isolation level is always better, ignoring that it can significantly decrease concurrency and cause performance bottlenecks.