CODEWITHSUNDEEP
databasetransactionspayment-processing
jkerak
jkerak

Reputation: 317

Payment Transactions vs Database Transactions

So in payments processing, you have this concept of payment transaction. As payments or messages come in from various internal and external interfaces, payment transactions get created, probably in some main base transaction table in some relational database (at least for the sake of this question). Then the transactions have some state that changes through a series of edits until one of several final states (paid or unpaid, approved or declined, etc) is reached.

When dealing with databases, you of course have the database transaction, and my question is really, are there any rules of thumb about processing payments transactions within database transactions? The transaction is often an aggregate root to many other tables for information on the customer or cardholder or merchant or velocity settings that participate in that transaction.

I could see a rule saying, "never process more than one payment transaction in a database transaction". But I could also see a database transaction being correct when performing batch type operations, when you must consider the whole batch of transactions successful or failed, so you have the option of rollback.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1683

Answers (1)

usr
usr

Reputation: 171246

The normal design pattern is to stick to the following rule: Use database transactions to transition the database from one valid state to another.

In the context of payment transactions that probably means that adding a transaction is one db transaction. Then, each processing step on the transaction (like validation, fulfillment, ...) would be another db transaction.

I could see a rule saying, "never process more than one payment transaction in a database transaction"

You can put multiple logical transactions into one physical transactions for performance reasons or for architectural reasons. That's not necessarily a problem. You need to make sure that work is not lost, though, because a failure will abort an entire batch.

Upvotes: 2

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