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Software Engineering vocabulary · Databases and Persistence

Phantom read

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

nounAdvanced term

In software engineering, phantom read means: A transaction anomaly where repeating a query finds a changed set of matching rows because another transaction changed the data.

In Turkish: hayalet okuma

How it is used

Used in isolation discussions. It concerns the matching set, rather than simply a changed value in one previously read row.

Example sentences

  1. A phantom read occurred when the second range query included a newly inserted reservation.

    Another transaction introduced a row satisfying the same search condition.

  2. The inventory test checks for a phantom read when another session removes a matching item.

    A changed result set can lose a row as well as gain one.

Common collocations

  • prevent a phantom read
  • phantom read anomaly
  • isolation levelA setting that controls how much one transaction can see of other transactions' changes, trading data safety against speed and concurrency.
  • queryA request sent to a database to read or change data, usually written in SQL. As a verb, to query means to ask a database for data.

More terms: Databases and Persistence

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