The SAGA Pattern and 2 Phase Commit (2PC) are prominent strategies for managing distributed transactions in microservices architectures. While both aim to ensure data consistency across services, they differ significantly in approach and application.

• The SAGA Pattern, a sequence of local transactions, offers high availability and fault tolerance but can be complex to implement.
• In contrast, 2PC provides strict consistency by coordinating a global commit, yet it often suffers from performance bottlenecks and single points of failure.

This article explores these differences, helping you choose the right strategy for your microservices environment.

What is the SAGA Pattern?

The SAGA pattern is a microservices design pattern that ensures data consistency across distributed services through a sequence of local transactions. Each local transaction updates the data within a single service and publishes an event or message to trigger the next transaction in the saga. If a step fails, compensating transactions are executed to undo the changes made by the preceding transactions, maintaining eventual consistency.

What is a 2-Phase Commit?

The 2 Phase Commit (2PC) protocol is a distributed algorithm that ensures atomicity and consistency across multiple services or databases. It operates in two phases: a prepare phase, where all participants vote on whether they can commit, and a commit phase, where they either commit or roll back the transaction based on the coordinator’s decision. 2PC ensures strict consistency but can introduce significant latency and complexity, especially in the face of failures.

SAGA Pattern vs. 2-Phase Commit

Below are the differences between SAGA and 2 Phase Commit: