Well, the interviewer did not complain about getting answer partially wrong, they complained about getting a blank stare back. The interviews are not like schoo

Well, the interviewer did not complain about getting answer partially wrong, they complained about getting a blank stare back. The interviews are not like school exams, they are not graded by the number of exactly correct answer. I don't remember what each letter of acronym means either. But if I was interviewee in this situation, I'd just start talking about transactions from user perspective -- how they either completeley pass or completely fail, and how even with power failure, you are not going to see partial data. If I were interviewer, I'd accept this answer. No one cares about hearing exact words (0), "user will never see only a part of transaction" is good enough even if person never said the word "atomicity" (0) According to some sources, Google runs scripted interviews where interviewer is non-technical, and grades answers against a checklist.