Saga pattern
Long-running distributed transaction as a sequence of compensable steps.
Origin
Hector Garcia-Molina and Kenneth Salem, "Sagas," ACM SIGMOD 1987. Originally a long-lived database transaction technique; revived in 2014+ as the answer to "distributed transactions without 2PC."
Where it shows up in production
- Booking systems Book flight + hotel + car. Each step has a compensating cancellation if a later step fails.
- AWS Step Functions Express workflows orchestrate sagas with built-in compensation transitions.
- Temporal / Cadence Workflow engines designed around the saga shape.
Sources & further reading
Found this useful?