Defining Stability
Explore the fundamental concepts of system stability in distributed systems. Understand transactions, mixed workloads, and how systems remain robust under impulses and stress. Discover how stability ensures continuous processing of work despite disruptions, helping you design systems that last across deployment cycles.
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What is Stability?
To talk about stability, we need to define some terms.
Transaction
A transaction is an abstract unit of work processed by the system. This is not the same as a database transaction. A single unit of work might encompass many database transactions.
In an e-commerce site, for example, one common type of transaction is “customer places order.” This transaction spans several pages, often including external integrations such as credit card verification.
A single system can process just one type of transaction, making it a dedicated system.