ACID-VS-BASE

ACID vs BASE is the comparison between ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) and BASE (Basically Available, Soft state, Eventual consistency) consistency models — a critical choice for scalable EDI gateways.

Definition

ACID is the contract of classical SQL databases (PostgreSQL, Oracle): strict transactions, rollback, strict consistency. BASE is the model of distributed NoSQL (Cassandra, DynamoDB): availability-first, eventual consistency. In EDI, ACID suits the transactional core (invoicing) and BASE suits logs/analytics.

Origin

ACID: Theo Härder & Andreas Reuter 1983. BASE: Dan Pritchett (eBay) 2008 article 'BASE: An Acid Alternative' in ACM Queue.

Use

A hybrid EDI gateway: invoicing core in PostgreSQL ACID (1 row 1 INVOIC, guaranteed audit trail); analytics logs and events in Cassandra BASE (10M ev/day, 6 regions, tolerating 5 min eventual consistency).

Related terms

• CAP theorem — theoretical foundation.
• Event sourcing — BASE-friendly model.
• Idempotency — compensates BASE.
• Audit trail — ACID requirement.