A method for determining whether a plurality of participants who are participating in a distributed transaction have registered their intention to commit their part of the transaction with a transaction manager, the method comprising the steps of: receiving a message from a participant, the message comprising a character sequence identifying the participant and the part of the transaction which the participant is processing; analysing the character sequence to determine whether the character sequence further comprises an identifier for identifying whether a subsequent message is to be received by a second participant; and in dependence on the identifier identifying that there are no further subsequent messages to be received, informing each of the participants to commit their part of the transaction.
