Saga

ELI5 — The Vibe Check

A saga is a series of steps where each step has an undo action. If step 3 fails, you run the undo for steps 2 and 1. It's like an epic quest with a built-in retreat plan — if the dragon is too tough, you undo your journey town by town.

Real Talk

A pattern for managing distributed transactions across multiple microservices without a global ACID transaction. Each saga step executes a local transaction and publishes an event. If a step fails, compensating transactions are executed in reverse order to undo previous steps. Sagas can use choreography (events) or orchestration (coordinator).

When You'll Hear This

"The order saga: reserve inventory, charge payment, schedule delivery — if payment fails, release the inventory." / "Use choreography for simple sagas and orchestration when you need more control over the flow."