How does Rails handle large-scale distributed transaction management without two-phase commit?

Rails uses the Saga pattern with compensating transactions instead of distributed two-phase commit.

Distributed transactions across microservices cannot rely on traditional ACID guarantees. Instead, Rails systems implement the Saga pattern where each step is a local transaction followed by an event. If a later step fails, compensating actions are triggered to undo previous steps. This ensures eventual consistency while avoiding global locks and coordination overhead.