Why it matters

Distributed transactions hard. Sagas enable them without 2PC. Understanding shapes complex workflows.

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The architecture

Orchestrator directs steps.

Each step: forward action + compensating action.

Saga orchestrationOrchestratorcentral coordinatorStepsforward + compensateFailurerun compensationsChoreography alternative: no central orchestrator, event-driven; harder to reason about
Orchestration model.
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How it works end to end

Forward: normal actions to complete workflow.

Compensation: rollback each completed step on failure.

Idempotency: safe retries.

Tools: AWS Step Functions, Temporal, Camunda.