To perform XA transactions in MySQL, use the following statements:

XA {START|BEGIN} xid [JOIN|RESUME]

XA END xid [SUSPEND [FOR MIGRATE]]

XA PREPARE xid

XA COMMIT xid [ONE PHASE]

XA ROLLBACK xid

XA RECOVER

For XA START, the JOIN and RESUME clauses are not supported.

For XA END the SUSPEND [FOR MIGRATE] clause is not supported.

Each XA statement begins with the XA keyword, and most of them require an xid value. An xid is an XA transaction identifier. It indicates which transaction the statement applies to. xid values are supplied by the client, or generated by the MySQL server. An xid value has from one to three parts:

xid: gtrid [, bqual [, formatID ]]

gtrid is a global transaction identifier, bqual is a branch qualifier, and formatID is a number that identifies the format used by the gtrid and bqual values. As indicated by the syntax, bqual and formatID are optional. The default bqual value is '' if not given. The default formatID value is 1 if not given.

gtrid and bqual must be string literals, each up to 64 bytes (not characters) long. gtrid and bqual can be specified in several ways. You can use a quoted string ('ab'), hex string (0x6162, X'ab'), or bit value (b'nnnn').

formatID is an unsigned integer.

The gtrid and bqual values are interpreted in bytes by the MySQL server's underlying XA support routines. However, while an SQL statement containing an XA statement is being parsed, the server works with some specific character set. To be safe, write gtrid and bqual as hex strings.

xid values typically are generated by the Transaction Manager. Values generated by one TM must be different from values generated by other TMs. A given TM must be able to recognize its own xid values in a list of values returned by the XA RECOVER statement.

XA START xid starts an XA transaction with the given xid value. Each XA transaction must have a unique xid value, so the value must not currently be used by another XA transaction. Uniqueness is assessed using the gtrid and bqual values. All following XA statements for the XA transaction must be specified using the same xid value as that given in the XA START statement. If you use any of those statements but specify an xid value that does not correspond to some existing XA transaction, an error occurs.

One or more XA transactions can be part of the same global transaction. All XA transactions within a given global transaction must use the same gtrid value in the xid value. For this reason, gtrid values must be globally unique so that there is no ambiguity about which global transaction a given XA transaction is part of. The bqual part of the xid value must be different for each XA transaction within a global transaction. (The requirement that bqual values be different is a limitation of the current MySQL XA implementation. It is not part of the XA specification.)

The XA RECOVER statement returns information for those XA transactions on the MySQL server that are in the PREPARED state. (See Section 12.3.7.2, “XA Transaction States”.) The output includes a row for each such XA transaction on the server, regardless of which client started it.

XA RECOVER output rows look like this (for an example xid value consisting of the parts 'abc', 'def', and 7):

mysql> XA RECOVER;
+----------+--------------+--------------+--------+
| formatID | gtrid_length | bqual_length | data   |
+----------+--------------+--------------+--------+
|        7 |            3 |            3 | abcdef |
+----------+--------------+--------------+--------+

The output columns have the following meanings: