Microsoft® SQL Server 2012 Unleashed

Autonomy, Timing, and Latency of Data

Distributed data implementations can be accomplished using a few different facilities in Microsoft: Integration Services (IS), Distributed Transaction Coordinator (DTC), and Data Replication. The trick is to match the right facility to the type of data distribution you need to get done.

In some applications, such as online transaction processing and inventory control systems, data must be synchronized at all times. This requirement, called immediate transactional consistency, was known as tight consistency in previous versions of SQL Server.

SQL Server implements immediate transactional consistency data distribution in the form of two-phase commit processing. A two-phase commit, sometimes known as 2PC, ensures ...