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Software Engineering vocabulary · Databases and Persistence

Lost update

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

nounCommon term

In software engineering, lost update means: A concurrency error where a write based on older data overwrites another update without preserving its effect.

In Turkish: kayıp güncelleme

How it is used

Used in concurrent editing and read-modify-write logic. The final value may look valid while hiding a missing change.

Example sentences

  1. A lost update left the counter at eleven after two workers both incremented ten.

    Both workers used the same old value, so one increment did not survive.

  2. The editor warned about a possible lost update before replacing the document with my older copy.

    Saving the stale copy could erase a colleague's more recent edits.

Common collocations

  • prevent a lost update
  • lost update problem
  • race conditionA situation in which a program's result depends on the timing or ordering of operations that may run concurrently.
  • transactionA group of database operations that are treated as one unit: either all of them succeed together or none of them is applied.

More terms: Databases and Persistence

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