Why Microsoft Transaction Server Is Used in Benefits

Benefits uses Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) in order to achieve multiple advantages. First, it ensures the integrity of the database updates. A transaction is a unit of work, with the unit defined simply by the level at which no higher transaction is open. If there is any higher-level request open, the unit of work is not committed. As soon as there is no higher level of transaction open, the entire transaction is committed. In the Benefits application, this ensures that when changing the employee address and birth-date, which are stored in two different tables, the address change will not be made unless the birth-date change is also successfully completed. Then the user is notified if the change process succeeded or failed as a unit, rather than having it partially succeed and partially fail. Second, making even non-updating components run under MTS, ensures efficient resource management on the server. MTS will control the resources such as threads, database connections, and component life-span to maximize efficiency.