Distributed Transactions and Two Phase Commit — A Deep Dive

Two Phase Commit is one of those protocols every distributed systems engineer eventually has to understand — not because you'll always use it, but because everything built after it (Paxos, Saga, distributed transactions in Spanner, CockroachDB) is a response to its tradeoffs.

In this video, I break down 2PC from first principles using three services you'll recognise from any e-commerce system: Order, Inventory, and Payment. We go through the protocol in precise detail — what the coordinator does, what participants must guarantee in each phase, what happens under partial failures, and why 2PC is inherently blocking.

This is part of the Designing Systems series — structured, in-depth content for engineers who want to build real mental models, not just memorise definitions.

If you're interviewing at top tech companies or architecting distributed systems at work, this one belongs in your library.

Full series at https://designingsystems.dev

#systemdesign #distributedsystems #twophasecommit #softwareengineering #systemdesigninterview

Видео Distributed Transactions and Two Phase Commit — A Deep Dive канала Kartikeya Sharma