hardMultiple Choice
FC0-U71 Practice Question: An e-commerce application experiences a data…
An e-commerce application experiences a data anomaly where an order is partially recorded: the order header is saved but some order line items are missing due to a system crash. Which property of database transactions is violated?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse 'consistency' (which relates to data integrity rules) with the all-or-nothing requirement of atomicity, especially when the partial data appears to violate business logic rather than the transaction boundary.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Atomicity
Atomicity ensures that a transaction is treated as a single, indivisible unit of work: either all operations (e.g., saving the order header and all line items) complete successfully, or none are applied. In this scenario, the system crash caused a partial write, leaving the order header committed while line items were lost, which directly violates atomicity. The database should have rolled back the entire transaction upon crash recovery, preventing the partial state.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Consistency
Why it's wrong here
Consistency concerns enforcing declared rules and constraints before and after a transaction, not incomplete writes caused by a mid-transaction crash. Consistency would be the answer if the saved order header violated a foreign key or balance constraint.
- ✗
Isolation
Why it's wrong here
Isolation governs concurrent transaction interference, not partial writes after a crash. The stem describes an atomicity failure: the header committed while line items did not. Isolation would be the answer if two simultaneous orders corrupted each other's uncommitted reads.
- ✓
Atomicity
Why this is correct
Atomicity treats a transaction as all-or-nothing, so a crash mid-transaction must roll back the saved order header rather than leave partial data. The missing line items show the transaction was not committed as a single unit.
- ✗
Durability
Why it's wrong here
Durability guarantees committed data survives failure, but here the crash left a partial write, meaning the transaction was not treated as all-or-nothing. Durability would be correct if a committed order vanished after a power loss despite a successful commit acknowledgement.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every FC0-U71 question from scratch — 988 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This FC0-U71 practice question is part of Courseiva's free CompTIA certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the FC0-U71 exam.