Two-Phase Commit (2PC): Coordinator, Participants, Failure Modes

This generated surface maps a learner-facing curriculum unit to its canonical source routes.

Curriculum surface

• Open learner-facing unit
• Curriculum path: content/curriculum/architecture/semester-06-databases-distributed/module-04-transactions-consistency/concepts/cluster-04-distributed-transactions/10-two-phase-commit-2pc-coordinator-participants-failure-modes-primary.md
• App: architecture
• Semester: semester-06-databases-distributed
• Module: module-04-transactions-consistency
• Unit kind: concept
• Curation level: module_curated

Learning objectives

• Explain Two-Phase Commit (2PC): Coordinator, Participants, Failure Modes using the language of guarantees, anomalies, and implementation costs rather than vague “strong vs weak” intuition.
• Use Two-Phase Commit (2PC): Coordinator, Participants, Failure Modes to reason about what a database actually promises under concurrency and failure.
• Use database-internals, database-system-concepts, ddia, distributed-systems-concepts-and-design to connect the learner-facing model to isolation, recovery, distributed coordination, and real failure modes.

Prerequisites

• Comfort with relational data modeling and the basic mechanics of storage engines and replication.

Source books

• database-internals
• database-system-concepts
• ddia
• distributed-systems-concepts-and-design

Source routes

Database Internals

• /books/database-internals/chapter-12-anti-entropy-and-dissemination via Database Internals: Cohort failures in 2PC, Database Internals: Two-phase commit

Database System Concepts

• /books/database-system-concepts/chapter-23-parallel-and-distributed-transaction-processing via Database System Concepts: Commit protocols (part 1)

Ddia

• /books/ddia/chapter-02-data-models-and-query-languages via DDIA: Atomic commit and two-phase commit (part 2)
• /books/ddia/chapter-09-consistency-and-consensus via DDIA: Atomic commit and two-phase commit (part 1), DDIA: Distributed transactions in practice (part 1)

Distributed Systems Concepts And Design

• /books/distributed-systems-concepts-and-design via Distributed Systems: Atomic commit protocols (part 1)

Supporting curriculum routes

No supporting curriculum routes linked yet.

External enrichment

• PostgreSQL Documentation: Transaction Isolation (official_docs_companion) - Anchors anomaly and isolation discussions in a concrete implementation instead of abstract labels alone.
• CockroachDB: Transaction Layer Architecture (optional_deep_dive) - Useful when the learner wants to see how transactional guarantees change under a distributed SQL architecture.

AI companion modes

• Explain simply
• Socratic tutor
• Challenge my understanding
• Diagnose my confusion
• Connect forward / backward

Source-of-truth note

This teaching unit is learner-facing guidance assembled from multiple canonical book routes. Use the listed source books as the primary conceptual spine for Two-Phase Commit (2PC): Coordinator, Participants, Failure Modes, and treat outside material as supporting enrichment only.