Transaction

Intro

A transaction is a sub‑process coordinating activities across independent, loosely coupled systems under a defined business agreement. It achieves a consistent, verifiable outcome among participants.

Key points:

• Ensures agreement on success or failure across parties.
• Supports rollback or compensation when issues occur.
• Common use cases across EA/BPM/Data/App/Tech include order payment flows, interbank transfers, and cross‑system updates.
• Pitfall: assuming ACID semantics across distributed services without compensation design.

Examples:

• Payment authorization and order reservation across retailers and gateways.
• Inventory allocation and shipping confirmation across partners.
• Contracted B2B exchanges that require auditability.

In practice:

Design for compensation or sagas when strong consistency is impractical in distributed systems.

Related terms: Compensation; Process; Service Oriented Architecture

FAQs:

Q: Are transactions only technical?
A: No; they reflect business agreements implemented in systems.

Q: Do all steps commit at once?
<strong*A: In distributed cases, use coordination or compensation to reach consistency.

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