---
type: concept
x-llmwiki:
  schemaVersion: "0.1"
  contentHash: 84a21e95ac14b7b0c0e94151297a9561a7cf12234d6dcd2868e6c134e486400f
  pageDirectory: concepts
  sources:
    - delta-lake-api-reference-databricks-on-aws.md
  confidence: 0.95
  provenanceState: extracted
  freshnessStatus: unverified
  aliases:
    - acid-transactions-in-data-lakes
    - ATIDL
    - ACID Transactions in Delta Lake
    - Transaction isolation in Delta Lake
    - acid-transactions-on-data-lakes
    - ATODL
  citations:
    - file: delta-lake-api-reference-databricks-on-aws.md
title: ACID Transactions in Data Lakes
description: The capability of Delta Lake to provide ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) transaction guarantees on data stored in data lakes.
tags:
  - acid
  - transactions
  - data-lake
  - reliability
timestamp: "2026-06-18T15:15:15.569Z"
---

# ACID Transactions in Data Lakes

**ACID Transactions in Data Lakes** refer to the ability to perform transactional operations on data stored in a data lake while guaranteeing Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability (ACID) properties. This capability, traditionally associated with relational databases, addresses the reliability challenges of earlier data lake architectures that lacked transactional guarantees.

## Overview

Data lakes are centralized repositories that store large volumes of structured and unstructured data in its native format. However, without transactional support, data lakes can suffer from issues such as partial writes, concurrent read inconsistencies, and data corruption during failures. ACID transactions bring database-like reliability to data lakes, enabling safe concurrent reads and writes, rollback on failures, and consistent snapshots for analytics. ^[delta-lake-api-reference-databricks-on-aws.md]

## Delta Lake Implementation

[Delta Lake](/concepts/delta-lake.md) is an open source storage layer that provides ACID transactions on top of an existing data lake. It runs fully compatible with Apache Spark APIs. Delta Lake achieves ACID properties through a transaction log that records every operation performed on the data, allowing for atomic commits, isolation between concurrent operations, and durable storage of modifications. ^[delta-lake-api-reference-databricks-on-aws.md]

### Key Features

- **ACID Transactions**: Ensures atomic, consistent, isolated, and durable writes to the data lake.
- **Scalable Metadata Handling**: Manages metadata efficiently even for large-scale datasets.
- **Unified Streaming and Batch Processing**: Supports both streaming and batch workloads under the same transactional guarantees.

These features make Delta Lake a foundational component for building reliable data pipelines on data lakes. ^[delta-lake-api-reference-databricks-on-aws.md]

## Related Concepts

- [Delta Lake](/concepts/delta-lake.md) – The open source storage layer that implements ACID transactions.
- Apache Spark – The distributed processing engine that Delta Lake integrates with.
- Data Lake – The underlying storage architecture that Delta Lake enhances with transactional guarantees.
- ACID – The set of properties (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) that guarantee reliable data processing.

## Sources

- delta-lake-api-reference-databricks-on-aws.md

# Citations

1. [delta-lake-api-reference-databricks-on-aws.md](/references/delta-lake-api-reference-databricks-on-aws-4e26d809.md)
