Transactions

In the previous post, I looked into running transactions in a layered architecture. Now, let’s consider transactions that need to span more than one service. If you work with microservices, a time may come when you need a transaction running across them. Especially if the way they are split was an afterthought (the unfortunate but likely scenario). Service A calls service B, which calls service C, and if something goes wrong at the end, the system becomes inconsistent.

As I join a new company, I often feel like an impostor. After all the interviews, they really seem to know what they’re doing. I’m humbled and ready to learn from the best. On one such occasion, a few days in, I dealt with a production outage and asked the most senior engineer for help. They came to the rescue and casually flipped a value in the database with a manual update.