Can I do transactions and locks in CouchDB?

Question

I need to do transactions (begin, commit or rollback), locks (select for update). How can I do it in a document model db?

Edit:

The case is this:

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Answer 1

No, CouchDB is not generally suitable for transactional applications because it doesn't support atomic operations in a clustered/replicated environment.

CouchDB sacrificed transactional capability in favor of scalability. In order to have atomic operations you need a central coordination system, which limits your scalability.

If you can guarantee you only have one CouchDB instance or that everyone modifying a particular document connects to the same CouchDB instance then you could use the conflict detection system to create a sort of atomicity using methods described above but if you later scale up to a cluster or use a hosted service like Cloudant it will break down and you'll have to redo that part of the system.

So, my suggestion would be to use something other than CouchDB for your account balances, it will be much easier that way.