Computer Science · Distributed Systems
A topic within Distributed Systems, itself one of 13 topics in that field and part of Computer Science.
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
Life beyond Distributed Transactions: an Apostate's Opinion
Pat Helland · 2007
Argues large-scale systems should abandon ACID distributed transactions in favour of idempotent operations and business-level compensation, because…
Primary sources and full treatments.
Spanner: Google's Globally-Distributed Database
James C. Corbett et al. · 2012
Uses synchronised clocks with bounded uncertainty to offer externally consistent distributed transactions across datacentres.
+2 more at this level
4 works
Pat Helland
Argues large-scale systems should abandon ACID distributed transactions in favour of idempotent operations and business-level compensation, because coordination across machines does not scale.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Notes on this copyJames C. Corbett et al.
Uses synchronised clocks with bounded uncertainty to offer externally consistent distributed transactions across datacentres.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Notes on this copyAlexander Thomson et al.
Shows that deciding a global transaction order in advance, before execution, removes the need for an expensive distributed commit protocol at commit time.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Notes on this copyPeter Bailis et al.
Identifies exactly which transactional guarantees are compatible with high availability, showing most applications need far less isolation than full ACID promises.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Notes on this copy