jargon (From Greek "atomos", indivisible) Indivisible;
cannot be split up.
For example, an instruction may be said to do several things
"atomically", i.e. all the things are done immediately, and
there is no chance of the instruction being half-completed or
of another being interspersed. Used especially to convey that
an operation cannot be interrupted.
An atomic
data type has no internal structure visible to the
program. It can be represented by a flat
domain (all
elements are equally defined). Machine
integers and
complete successfully or not at all. If an error prevents a
partially-performed transaction from proceeding to completion,
it must be "backed out" to prevent the database being left in
an inconsistent state.
(2000-04-03)