# Distributed transactions: What, why, and how to build a distributed transactional application

DevFeed: [Distributed transactions: What, why, and how to build a distributed transactional application](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/distributed-transactions-what-why-and-how-to-build-a-distributed-transactional-application-23780.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://cockroachlabs.com/blog/distributed-transactions-what-why-and-how-to-build-a-distributed-transactional-application>)

Author: Charlie Custer

Published: 2023-02-16T00:00:00Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [Cockroach Labs](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/cockroach-labs.md>)

Topics: [Transactions](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/transactions.md>), [Databases](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/databases.md>), [distributed-systems](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/distributed-systems.md>), [Scalability](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/scalability.md>), [Availability](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/availability.md>), [Hardware](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/hardware.md>), [Network](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/network.md>)

Tags: [availability](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/availability.md>), [database](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/database.md>), [distributed](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/distributed.md>), [distributed-transaction](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/distributed-transaction.md>), [hardware](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/hardware.md>), [network](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/network.md>), [scalability](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/scalability.md>), [transactions](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/transactions.md>)

## AI overview

This tutorial explains database transactions and distributed transactions, including their all-or-nothing behavior, how they span multiple database nodes, and why workloads are distributed for horizontal scalability, availability, and fault tolerance.

## Source excerpt

Transactions make up an important part of the database workload for most modern applications. And when it comes time to scale up operations for a growing business, distributing those workloads across multiple hardware systems for horizontal scalability, high availability, and fault tolerance is often an important part of the plan.