(Cockroach Labs CTO) CockroachDB provides two transaction isolation levels: SERIALIZABLE, which is our default and the highest of the four standard SQL isolatio

(Cockroach Labs CTO) CockroachDB provides two transaction isolation levels: SERIALIZABLE, which is our default and the highest of the four standard SQL isolation levels, and SNAPSHOT, which is a slightly weaker mode similar to (but not quite the same as) REPEATABLE READ. Unlike most databases which default to lower isolation modes like REPEATABLE READ or READ COMMITTED, we default to our highest setting because we don't think you should have to think about which anomalies are allowed by different modes, and we don't want to trade consistency for performance unless the application opts in. All transaction interactions are localized to particular keys, so other transactions can proceed normally while there is contention in an unrelated part of the database. (as for the acronym, we prefer CRDB instead of CDB)