Saga Pattern
The Saga Pattern is a design pattern used in distributed systems to manage data consistency across multiple services or microservices without relying on traditional two-phase commit transactions. It breaks down a long-running business transaction into a series of smaller, independent local transactions, each with compensating actions to roll back changes if a failure occurs. This approach ensures eventual consistency and fault tolerance in complex, asynchronous workflows.
Developers should learn and use the Saga Pattern when building microservices architectures or distributed applications where maintaining ACID transactions across services is impractical due to performance, scalability, or network reliability issues. It is particularly useful for e-commerce order processing, financial systems, and booking platforms that involve multiple steps like inventory checks, payments, and notifications, as it handles failures gracefully and avoids data locks.