What is a transactional data system?

Rather than being the object of transactions like the product being purchased or the identity of the customer, it is more of a reference data describing the time, place, prices, payment methods, discount values, and quantities related to that particular transaction, usually at the point of sale.

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Techopedia Explains Transactional Data

Transactional data describes an internal or external event which takes place as the organization conducts business and can be financial, logistical or any business-related process involving activities such as purchases, requests, insurance claims, deposits, withdraws, etc.

Transactional data support ongoing business operations and are included in the information and application systems that are used to automate an organization’s key business processes such as online transaction processing (OLTP) systems.

It is grouped with its associated and references master data such as product information and billing sources.

Transactional data, in the context of data management, is the information recorded from transactions. 

A transaction, in this context, is a sequence of information exchange and related work (such as database updating) that is treated as a unit for the purposes of satisfying a request. Transactional data can be financial, logistical or work-related, involving everything from a purchase order to shipping status to employee hours worked to insurance costs and claims.

As a part of transactional records, transactional data is grouped with associated master data and reference data. Transactional data records a time and relevant reference data needed for a particular transaction record. 

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Single document operations have always been atomic in MongoDB. MongoDB added support for multi-document ACID transactions in version 4.0, and MongoDB expanded that support to include distributed transactions in version 4.2.

You can implement a transaction in a variety of programming languages using any of MongoDB's official drivers. See the MongoDB Drivers documentation for more information on how to implement transactions in a specific programming language.

Transaction example code

Let's continue with the online book store example from the previous section. Below is a code snippet that updates the inventory and records the order when a user purchases a book. The database operations happen inside of a transaction.

await session.withTransaction(async () => {
           // Update the inventory to reflect the book has been sold
           const updateInventoryResults = await inventoryCollection.updateOne(
               { _id: bookId },
               { $inc: { numberInStock: quantity * -1 } },
               { session });
           if (updateInventoryResults.modifiedCount !== 1) {
               await session.abortTransaction();
               return;
           }
 
           // Record the order in the orders collection
           const insertOrderResults = await ordersCollection.insertOne(
               { "userId": userId , bookId: bookId, quantity: quantity, status: status },
               { session });
       }, transactionOptions);

Code snippet that shows how to implement a MongoDB transaction in Node.js.

The first line of the code snippet calls session.withTransaction(). withTransaction() starts the transaction, executes the callback function, and commits or aborts the transactions appropriately.

The callback function includes the database operations that are part of the transaction. In this case, the transaction includes operations to update the book's inventory and record the order in the orders collection.

To view the full Node.js script and try the code yourself, visit the Quick Start: Node.js and MongoDB GitHub Repo.

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