Re: XA

On Tue, 2005-09-27 at 23:10 -0400, Chris Browne wrote:
> josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com (Josh Berkus) writes:
> > Chris,
> >
> >> Two phase commit is a prerequisite for doing distributed transactions,
> >> and XA is a particular standard to which the 2PC support does not, at
> >> this point, conform.
> >
> > Eh? I was under the impression that XA was implemented in the JDBC
> > layer, not in the backend.
>
> There was an JDBC-based *attempt* at an XA handler; it wasn't fully
> functional, which essentially means it wasn't really XA.
>
> When the 2PC discussion was going on, it definitely came up in the
> discussion that this was a prerequisite to doing XA properly. It
> might not be forcibly necessary in the strictest sense, but 2PC is
> certainly one of the normal means for synchronizing distributed
> transactions...

I didn't realise that the 2PC we have implemented was not XA.

That's bad news. To most people they are the same thing, so I foresee
some fairly poor feedback.

It is my understanding that an XA interface was required to interface
correctly with transaction managers. AFAIK XA is an interface that
JDBC/JTA provides a mapping for, but they are different things.

Who knows the full info on this?

Best Regards, Simon Riggs