spring-boot-saga-pattern

Use the Saga pattern to coordinate distributed transactions across microservices by enabling local transactions with compensating actions. This approach maintains eventual consistency without requiring 2PC, breaking long-running workflows into isolated, recoverable steps.

Choreography uses an event-driven approach where services react to events independently, while orchestration uses a central coordinator to explicitly command each step. Both coordinate distributed transactions, and this supports either approach with Kafka, Axon, or Eventuate.

Implement compensating transactions to automatically undo work across services and recover from partial failures. The Saga pattern provides persistent state and idempotent compensations to safely reverse completed steps when a downstream service fails.

Yes, saga coordination works with common messaging stacks including Kafka, Axon, and Eventuate. These platforms handle the event routing and persistent saga state required to coordinate distributed transaction steps and trigger compensating actions.

You need compensating transactions when managing long-running, cross-service business workflows that require automatic recovery. If a step like payment fails after order creation, compensating actions undo prior steps to maintain eventual consistency across microservices.

Use built-in observability hooks for monitoring and recovery alongside timeout and retry mechanisms. These features track persistent saga state, alert on stalled distributed transactions, and trigger idempotent compensations to resolve failures.