Ensuring Data Consistency with the Transactional Outbox Pattern on AWS
Introduction In distributed systems, ensuring data consistency across services is crucial. When database transactions and message queues are not atomic, failures can cause inconsistencies. The Transactional Outbox Pattern ensures database writes and message publishing occur atomically, avoiding lost events. 1. The Problem: Database and Messaging Are Not Atomic Imagine an Order Service that: Writes order data to Amazon RDS (PostgreSQL/MySQL). Publishes an event (OrderPlaced) to Amazon SQS for other services (e.g., Inventory, Shipping).

Introduction
In distributed systems, ensuring data consistency across services is crucial. When database transactions and message queues are not atomic, failures can cause inconsistencies.
The Transactional Outbox Pattern ensures database writes and message publishing occur atomically, avoiding lost events.
1. The Problem: Database and Messaging Are Not Atomic
Imagine an Order Service that:
Writes order data to Amazon RDS (PostgreSQL/MySQL).
Publishes an event (OrderPlaced) to Amazon SQS for other services (e.g., Inventory, Shipping).