Heterogeneous commit protocol

Used in the context of HCL® OneDB® database servers, the term heterogeneous environment is a group of database servers in which at least one of the database servers is a different database server. Heterogeneous commit ensures the all-or-nothing basis of distributed transactions in a heterogeneous environment.

Unlike the two-phase commit protocol, the heterogeneous commit protocol supports the participation of a participant that is not HCL OneDB. The other participant, called a gateway participant, must communicate with the coordinator through the HCL OneDB gateway.

The database server uses heterogeneous commit protocol when the following criteria are met:

  • Heterogeneous commit is enabled. (That is, the HETERO_COMMIT configuration parameter is set to 1.)
  • The coordinator of the commit is a version 7.2 or later HCL OneDB.
  • The gateway participant communicates with the HCL OneDB database server through the HCL OneDB gateway.
  • At most, one gateway participant performs an update within a single transaction.
The following figure illustrates this scenario.
Figure 1: Configuration that requires heterogeneous commit for distributed transactions

The paragraphs that precede this figure describe the content of the figure.