---
title: Consensus on Transaction Commit
url: https://www.emergentmind.com/papers/0408036
type: paper
arxiv_id: '0408036'
arxiv_url: https://arxiv.org/abs/0408036
published: '2004-08-14'
categories:
- cs.DC
- cs.DB
---

# Consensus on Transaction Commit

## Abstract

The distributed transaction commit problem requires reaching agreement on whether a transaction is committed or aborted. The classic Two-Phase Commit protocol blocks if the coordinator fails. Fault-tolerant consensus algorithms also reach agreement, but do not block whenever any majority of the processes are working. Running a Paxos consensus algorithm on the commit/abort decision of each participant yields a transaction commit protocol that uses 2F +1 coordinators and makes progress if at least F +1 of them are working. In the fault-free case, this algorithm requires one extra message delay but has the same stable-storage write delay as Two-Phase Commit. The classic Two-Phase Commit algorithm is obtained as the special F = 0 case of the general Paxos Commit algorithm.