Saga

Definitions

1. A pattern for managing distributed transactions across multiple services without a global two-phase commit. A saga breaks a transaction into a sequence of local transactions, each publishing an event that triggers the next step; if any step fails, compensating transactions are executed in reverse order to undo prior changes.

   In plain English: A way to coordinate a multi-step process across different services, with a plan to undo earlier steps if a later one fails.

   Example: "The order saga first reserves inventory, then charges payment, then ships — if payment fails, it runs a compensating action to release the reserved stock."

Related Terms

• CAP Theorem
• Eventual Consistency
• distributed tracing
• Read Concern
• Scatter-Gather
• Service Registry
• Shared Nothing Architecture
• Split Brain
• TLA+
• Zeromq