Wikipedia defines transactionality as “the degree to which a database or other system is transactional”. A subtle concept that this definition implies is that there is an entire spectrum between being non-transactional and fully transactional and that being transactional is not a simple either-or situation. i.e. A system doesn’t just either support transactions or not support transactions; rather, there can be systems that are “sorta” transactional.
I talked a lot in the past about what transactions are and why transaction support is important for network automation. When it comes to actually implementing a network based on what is actually available, understanding how transactional a network device is and finding a solution to make your “sorta” transactional device fully transactional is beneficial to producing an optimal automation solution.
In our latest application note “Device Transactionality”, we take a look at what device transactionality is and provide an example of how it can be achieved using an adapter based on ConfD.