{"id":10528,"date":"2021-02-24T04:24:41","date_gmt":"2021-02-24T12:24:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.couchbase.com\/blog\/?p=10528"},"modified":"2025-06-13T23:42:26","modified_gmt":"2025-06-14T06:42:26","slug":"use-cases-and-best-practices-to-use-distributed-transactions-in-n1ql","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.couchbase.com\/blog\/use-cases-and-best-practices-to-use-distributed-transactions-in-n1ql\/","title":{"rendered":"Use cases and Best Practices for Distributed Transactions through N1QL"},"content":{"rendered":"

Does Couchbase support transactions?<\/b><\/p>\n

Yes! <\/b>With 6.5, we introduced the ACID transaction<\/a> support in Couchbase through the SDKs. The 1<\/span>st<\/span> question we got at the time from the customers that heard about it was:<\/span><\/p>\n

Is transaction support available through N1QL?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Yes! <\/b>With 7.0, we have started supporting transactions through N1QL as well!N1QL transactions are multi-everything. Multi-documents that can span multiple collections from multiple scopes within multiple buckets. You can have multiple transactions running on a single query node and you can have multiple query nodes. There is NO central coordinator thereby eliminating a single point of failure or contention and making way for infinite scalability!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

What is N1QL? and Why is it so important for Couchbase?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Just like SQL is to RDBMS, N1QL is to Couchbase!<\/span><\/p>\n

N1QL<\/span><\/a> is a declarative language-almost identical to SQL and it is used to insert\/retrieve and manipulate the data stored in the form of JSON documents.<\/span>Learn more about N1QL <\/span>here<\/span><\/a> .<\/span><\/p>\n

If N1QL is like SQL, then why did it not have ACID before?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

N1QL always had ACID within a single document. What we did not have before 7.0 was Multi-document Transaction support through N1QL.<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, let\u2019s think first about why many people believe they need multi-document transactions. The first principle of relational data modeling is normalizing your data across tables. This means that many common database operations, like account creation, require atomic updates across many rows and columns.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Couchbase, the data model is fundamentally different. The document model encourages users to store related data together in a single document. N1QL has always supported ACID transactions in a single document and, when leveraging the document model appropriately, many applications don\u2019t need ACID guarantees across multiple documents. As shown below, data that needs to be stored in 3 different tables tied by PK-FK, gets stored in a single document in Couchbase.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

For e.g. Adding an item to a shopping cart <\/span>does not need transactions in Couchbase as you are updating just a single document<\/span><\/p>\n

However, transactions are not just a check box. Transactions, like every Couchbase feature, aim to make developers\u2019 lives easier. ACID guarantees across documents simplify the application logic needed to satisfy complex applications.<\/span><\/p>\n

What are the Use Cases for Multi-Document transactions?<\/i><\/b>:<\/i><\/b><\/h4>\n

There are use cases where transactional ACID guarantees need to be applied to a set of operations that span multiple documents.\u00a0 \u201cSystem of Record\u201d applications are the typical class of workload where multi-document transactions are useful. Examples include:<\/span><\/p>\n