Special Edition Using SOAP

Addressing Transaction Issues

At the time of this writing, SOAP doesn’t provide a form of native transaction support. Many developers feel this is a major concern because they’re used to using transactions for every desktop application. The first question that you should ask yourself is whether your application actually requires the use of transactions. Consider the importance of the data and the worst-case scenario if the data is either lost or damaged. In at least some cases, you’ll find that transactions aren’t required. For example, transactions aren’t necessary for applications that only allow the user to view the data in question without modification. Likewise, applications in which the user can only add or modify non-critical data can ...