Patent ID: 7487160

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for determining a plurality of participants, who are participating in a distributed transaction and have registered their intention to commit their part of the transaction with a transaction manager, the method comprising the steps of: using a pass-through agent to identify at least one participant for processing a transaction; using the pass-through agent to generate a character sequence for assigning to the at least one identified participant participating in the transaction, the character sequence identifying the participant and a part of the transaction which the at least one participant is processing; receiving a message on a transaction manager from at least one of the identified participants, the message comprising the character sequence identifying the participant and the part of the transaction which the participant is processing; analyzing the character sequence on the transaction manager to determine whether the character sequence further comprises an identifier for identifying whether a subsequent message is to be received by one of the participants, wherein the transaction manager receives the message from the at least one identified participant but does not receive a message from the pass-through agent; and in dependence on the identifier, identifying that there are no further subsequent messages to be received and informing each of the participants to commit their part of the transaction, wherein no further subsequent messages are to be received when a total number of messages received is equal to a total number of participants, wherein the pass-through agent is not a participant.