Distributed Transactions

The Epic Journey

When teams break apart monolithic applications into microservices, they gain independence, scalability, and agility. But they also lose something precious: the ability to wrap multiple operations in a single ACID transaction.

Welcome to the world of distributed transactions—where maintaining consistency across service boundaries becomes one of the hardest challenges in system design.

This series takes you from fundamentals to practical implementation:

What you’ll learn:

• How to break apart monolithic databases while maintaining data integrity
• The nuanced differences between ACID properties (it’s not what you think)
• Why traditional two-phase commit rarely fits modern architectures
• How sagas coordinate distributed operations through compensating transactions
• Eight distinct saga patterns and when to use each one

Whether you’re migrating from a monolith or designing a new distributed system, this series gives you the mental models and practical patterns to maintain consistency without sacrificing the benefits of microservices.

Let’s dive in.