ACID

ACID Properties
The ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability) properties are a core requirement for SQL Server and other transactional, reliable database products.
Atomicity
A transaction must be an atomic unit of work; either all of its data modifications are performed or none of them are performed.
Consistency
When completed, a transaction must leave all data in a consistent state. In a relational database, all rules must be applied to the transaction's modifications to maintain data integrity. All internal data structures, such as B-tree indexes or doubly linked lists, must be correct at the end of the transaction.
Isolation
Modifications made by concurrent transactions must be isolated from modifications made by all other concurrent transactions. A transaction either sees the data in the state it was in before another concurrent transaction modified it, or it sees the data after the second transaction has completed, but it does not see an intermediate state. This is referred to as serializability because it provides the system with the capability to reload the starting data and replay a series of transactions to end up with the data in the same state it was in after the original transactions were performed.
Durability
After a transaction has completed, its effects are permanently in place in the system. The modifications persist even in the event of a system failure.
Write-Ahead Logging (WAL) Protocol
Write-Ahead Logging is a key technique for providing the ACID properties. Briefly, WAL requires that all the transaction log records associated with a particular data page be flushed to stable media before the data page itself can be flushed to stable media.

Reference : Technet