The key difference with conventional RDBMS systems is that transactions are deterministic. When interacting with a traditional RDBMS a client opens a transactio

The key difference with conventional RDBMS systems is that transactions are deterministic. When interacting with a traditional RDBMS a client opens a transaction with BEGIN statement, then does reads and writes interactively at its own pace. In contrast, in Calvin-inspired systems clients send their transactions as one unit written in a severely restricted query language (disclaimer - not a FaunaDB engineer).