Exploring 6 Open-Source Distributed Transaction Frameworks for Microservices

Seata

Seata is an open-source distributed transaction solution jointly released by Ant Financial and Alibaba, aiming to provide high performance and easy-to-use transaction services.

Official site: http://seata.io

XA mode : Strong consistency two‑phase commit, sacrifices availability, no business intrusion.

TCC mode : Eventually consistent two‑phase commit, requires business involvement.

AT mode : Eventually consistent two‑phase commit, no business intrusion, default mode.

SAGA mode : Long‑running transactions, requires business involvement.

Seata defines three core components:

TC (Transaction Coordinator) : Coordinates global and branch transactions and maintains their state.

TM (Transaction Manager) : Initiates transactions, typically a microservice.

RM (Resource Manager) : The participant that accesses the actual resources.

The TC runs as a Seata server, while TM and RM are integrated as Seata clients within microservices.

Overall workflow:

ByteTCC

ByteTCC is an open-source distributed transaction framework from Meituan Dianping, based on the TCC compensation mechanism, offering high performance, high availability, and rich API support.

Nacos-AT

Nacos-AT is an Alibaba open-source distributed transaction framework built on the TCC compensation mechanism, seamlessly integrating with Nacos and Spring Cloud.

SkyWalking-Tx

SkyWalking-Tx, from the Apache SkyWalking community, supports TCC and Saga transaction modes and provides comprehensive monitoring and tracing capabilities.

TCC-Transaction

TCC-Transaction is Huawei’s open-source TCC-based distributed transaction framework, delivering high performance and easy-to-use APIs.

Atomikos

Atomikos is an open-source Java transaction manager that supports the XA protocol, enabling control and management of distributed transactions.