Dirty read is when a transaction reads data that has been modified by another transaction that has not yet committed. This can lead to inconsistencies if the modifying transaction later rolls back its changes, leaving the reading transaction with invalid data.

How to use it in a sentence

• "I was trying to debug this issue in our new microservices architecture, but it turned out to be a classic case of a dirty read. Guess I should have paid more attention in that 'Transactions 101' lunch and learn."

• "We thought we had a real-time analytics system, but under load testing we found a bunch of dirty reads were causing the BI dashboard to show wildly inaccurate KPIs. Yet another reason why I prefer building boring CRUD apps."

If you actually want to learn more...

• Eager Read Derivation is an alternative approach that uses separate reporting databases structured for reads, avoiding dirty reads: https://martinfowler.com/bliki/EagerReadDerivation.html

• This article walks through an example of cleaning and visualizing genomics data using tidy data principles, which can help avoid issues like dirty reads: http://varianceexplained.org/r/tidy-genomics/

• Martin Fowler has written extensively on topics like dirty reads and how to design systems to prevent them. Check out his articles tagged under "application architecture": https://martinfowler.com/tags/application%20architecture.html

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