Multisite Updates

Multisite update, also known as distributed unit of work (DUOW) and two-phase commit, is a function that enables your applications to update data in multiple remote database servers with guaranteed integrity. For example, a banking transaction that involves the transfer of money from one account to another in a different database server.

In such a transaction, it is critical that updates which implement debit operations on one account do not get committed unless updates required to process credits to the other account are committed as well. The multisite update considerations apply when data representing these accounts is managed by two different database servers.

DB2® products provide comprehensive support for multisite updates. This support is available for applications developed using regular SQL as well as applications that use transaction processing monitors (TP monitors) that implement the X/Open XA interface specification. Examples of such TP monitors products include IBM® TxSeries CICS®, IBM Message and Queuing Series, IBM Component Broker Series, IBM San Francisco Project as well as Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS), BEA Tuxedo and several others. There are different setup requirements depending on whether native SQL multisite update or TP monitor multisite update is used.

XA connections using IBM Data Server Driver Package against a z/OS® server are supported. However, XA connections against a System i® server are not supported. For details, see the topic about IBM data server driver restrictions.

Both the native SQL and TP monitor multisite update programs must be precompiled with the CONNECT 2 SYNCPOINT TWOPHASE options. Both can use the SQL Connect statement to indicate which database they want to be used for the SQL statements that follow. If there is no TP monitor to tell DB2 it is going to coordinate the transaction (as indicated by DB2 receiving the xa_open calls from the TP monitor to establish a database connection), then the DB2 software will be used to coordinate the transaction.

When using TP monitor multisite update, the application must request commit or rollback by using the TP monitor's API, for example CICS SYNCPOINT, MTS SetAbort(). When using native SQL multisite update, the normal SQL COMMIT and ROLLBACK must be used.

TP monitor multisite update can coordinate a transaction that accesses both DB2 and non-DB2 resource managers such as Oracle, Informix® or SQLServer. Native SQL multisite update is used with DB2 servers only.

A distributed transaction can update any mix of supported database servers. For example, your application can update several tables in a DB2 database on Windows, a DB2 for z/OS database, and a DB2 for i database, all within a single transaction.