Technical Glossary
Saga Pattern (Distributed Transactions)
Exact Definition
The Saga Pattern is a microservices design pattern for managing long-running distributed transactions across multiple services without using two-phase commit (2PC), coordinating rollback through compensating transactions.
Architectural Deep Dive
In a microservices ERP, creating a purchase order might involve updating inventory, creating a billing record, and notifying a supplier API — across three separate services. If the supplier API call fails, the inventory reservation must be reversed. The Saga Pattern coordinates this using either a centralized orchestrator or a choreography of events, ensuring eventual consistency without distributed locking.
The ERPStack Approach
We implement Saga orchestration using AWS Step Functions for complex multi-service ERP workflows, defining explicit compensating transactions for each step to guarantee clean rollback on partial failures.