Distributed Transactions
Distributed transactions are a mechanism for coordinating and ensuring atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability (ACID) across multiple independent systems or services in a distributed computing environment. They involve a transaction manager that orchestrates operations across different resources, such as databases or microservices, to maintain data integrity and reliability. This concept is critical in scenarios where operations span multiple nodes, ensuring that either all parts of the transaction succeed or none do, preventing partial updates.
Developers should learn and use distributed transactions when building applications that require data consistency across microservices, distributed databases, or cloud-based systems, such as in e-commerce platforms handling orders and inventory. They are essential for maintaining reliability in financial systems, supply chain management, or any scenario where operations must be coordinated across disparate services to avoid data corruption. However, they can introduce complexity and performance overhead, so alternatives like eventual consistency or saga patterns might be preferred in high-throughput environments.