addinsert

Addinsert is a term used in software engineering to describe a composite operation that adds a new item to a dataset and simultaneously inserts a related record, all as a single atomic action. The goal is to maintain consistency between the primary data and its associated metadata or indexes.

Origin and scope: The term is a portmanteau of add and insert and is encountered in discussions of transactional write patterns, event sourcing, and data synchronization. It is not a formal standard and its exact behavior depends on the platform and implementation; some systems treat it as a true multi-resource transaction, while others implement a best-effort sequence with compensating steps.

Semantics and examples: In a content management system, an addinsert might create a new article record and simultaneously create a search index entry for that article. In event-sourced architectures, a single operation might append a new event and update the corresponding in-memory view in one logical step. Variants differ in atomicity guarantees and error handling.

Implementation considerations: Realizing addinsert typically relies on transactional support (for example, a single database transaction or a cross-store transaction) or on carefully designed idempotent operations with compensating actions. Developers must consider failure modes, performance impact, and the need for rollback when one part of the operation fails.

See also: upsert, atomic operation, transactional write, event sourcing, idempotency.