The Distributed Transaction Coordinator (MSDTC) service is a component of modern versions of Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 that is responsible for coordinating transactions

Transaction processing

In computer science, transaction processing is information processing that is divided into individual, indivisible operations, called transactions. Each transaction must succeed or fail as a complete unit; it cannot remain in an intermediate state...

 that span multiple resource managers, such as databases, message queues, and file systems. MSDTC is included in Windows 2000

Windows 2000

Windows 2000 is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, business desktops, laptops, and servers. Windows 2000 was released to manufacturing on 15 December 1999 and launched to retail on 17 February 2000. It is the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and is the...

 and later operating systems, and is also available for Windows NT 4.0

Windows NT 4.0

Windows NT 4.0 is a preemptive, graphical and business-oriented operating system designed to work with either uniprocessor or symmetric multi-processor computers. It was the next release of Microsoft's Windows NT line of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on 31 July 1996...

.

MSDTC performs the transaction coordination role for components, usually with COM

Component Object Model

Component Object Model is a binary-interface standard for software componentry introduced by Microsoft in 1993. It is used to enable interprocess communication and dynamic object creation in a large range of programming languages...

 and .NET

.NET Framework

The .NET Framework is a software framework that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It includes a large library and supports several programming languages which allows language interoperability...

 architectures. In MSDTC terminology, the director is called the transaction manager.

By default, the Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (MSDTC) service is installed with Windows 2000. It cannot be uninstalled through Add/Remove Programs.

See also

• Microsoft Transaction Server
  Microsoft Transaction Server
  Microsoft Transaction Server was software that provided services to Component Object Model software components, to make it easier to create large distributed applications. The major services provided by MTS were automated transaction management, instance management and role-based security...
  
  
• List of Microsoft Windows components
• Kernel Transaction Manager
  Kernel Transaction Manager
  Kernel Transaction Manager is a component of the Windows operating system kernel in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 that enables applications to use atomic transactions on resources by making them available as kernel objects...
  
  
• Windows Vista I/O technologies
  Vista IO technologies
  Windows Vista introduced a number of new I/O functions to the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems. They are intended to shorten the time taken to boot the system, improve the responsiveness of the system, and improve the reliability of data storage....
  
  
• OASIS Business Transaction Protocol

External links

• Distributed Transaction Coordinator on the Microsoft Developer Network
• New functionality in the Distributed Transaction Coordinator service in Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 and in Windows XP Service Pack 2
• Florin Lazar's weblog; a Microsoft developer blog with extensive discussions on MSDTC and transaction processing

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/techfellow/Agsen/default.mspx; Mohsen Agsen is a Technical Fellow who formed the core transaction group, which designed and delivered the Distributed Transaction Coordinator (DTC)