Abstract

The problem of making several independent systems agree on a single outcome is

older than most of the technology used to solve it. Historically, one of the

first protocols able to provide this synchronization was 2PC ( two-phase commit )

that the application servers era made an ordinary feature of enterprise development.

Later lightweight frameworks, service-oriented and microservices architectures

have made the same guarantee considerably harder to obtain.

This article follows that problem from its formalization in the X/Open Distributed

Transaction Processing to the present situation. It then examines two working

implementations of an identical use case, one using XA and two-phase commit, the

other using the saga pattern, as specified by MicroProfile LRA, and compares them

on evidence rather than on preference.…