What Is a Global Transaction?

A global transaction is a mechanism that allows a set of programming tasks, potentially using more than one resource manager and potentially executing on multiple servers, to be treated as one logical unit.

Once a process is in transaction mode, any service requests made to servers may be processed on behalf of the current transaction. The services that are called and join the transaction are referred to as transaction participants. The value returned by a participant may affect the outcome of the transaction.

A global transaction may be composed of several local transactions, each accessing the same resource manager. The resource manager is responsible for performing concurrency control and atomicity of updates. A given local transaction may be either successful or unsuccessful in completing its access; it cannot be partially successful.

A maximum of 16 server groups can participate in a single transaction.

The BEA Tuxedo system manages a global transaction in conjunction with the participating resource managers and treats it as a specific sequence of operations that is characterized by atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability. In other words, a global transaction is a logical unit of work in which:

The BEA Tuxedo system tracks the status of each global transaction and determines whether it should be committed or rolled back.