Foundation for other protocols, providing three pThe WS-Transaction specification identifies a means to implement two different types of transactions in web services. The first type of transaction is the ACID Transaction (AKA, atomic) and the second is the Long Running Transaction (AKA, Saga or Business Activity).

For ACID transactions, WS-Transaction supports a single participant as well as a multi-participant model (leveraging a two-phased commit). It also supports the concept automatic notification of transaction results to interested parties.

For Long Running Transactions, WS-Transaction uses a compensation scheme where participants provide an “undo” feature if the transaction opts not to go forward.

WS-Transaction relies heavily on the WS-Coordination specification to enable multiple parties to participate in a transaction.