INFO: Components That Do Not Support Transactions

Transaction processing is only one part of the Microsoft Transaction Server programming model. Packages whose objectives do not include transaction processing can still take advantage of the Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) and the Transaction Server's process-level security system. In this case Microsoft Transaction Server is being used to manage object instances and object life times. Microsoft Transaction Server can do this even when no transactions are involved.

Applications that access transactional resource managers can, at the same time, access non-transactional resource managers. The non-transactional resources will not be rolled back if the transaction aborts. The non- transactional resource manager must have some way to cope with this if there is a requirement for data synchronization.

The work a component does is transaction protected, but only if the resource managers that the component uses are transactional. To support transactions, the resource manager engine must support logging, or some equivalent mechanism, to rollback aborted transactions. The resource manager engine must also support either the OLE Transactions or XA two- phase commit protocol. These two-phase commit protocols permit the resource manager engine to coordinate the transaction outcome with the Microsoft Transaction Server transaction manager. The "Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator Resource Manager Developer's Guide" describes how an existing resource manager can be enhanced to work with OLE Transactions.