Considerable research effort in the software engineering domain has been focused on the development of more advanced programming environments. A key aspect in this development isdistribution. Distributed computer systems have the potential for high reliability. This is primarily because resources can be provided redundantly at different sites. However, the possibility of partial system failure and the high level of parallel activity in distributed systems make it difficult to realise this potential. In an attempt to simplify the treatment of these problems in distributed database systems, the notion ofatomic transactionswas introduced. The transaction concept is equally applicable to the area of distributed programming environments. However, traditional database transaction mechanisms are not efficient or flexible enough to meet the requirements of distributed programming environments. This paper presents a survey of transaction techniques and discusses the application of the transaction model to distributed programming environments.