We all know that we can always wrap our database call in transaction ( with or without a proper ORM), in a form like this:

$con = Propel::getConnection(EventPeer::DATABASE_NAME);
try {
    $con->begin();
    // do your update, save, delete or whatever here.
    $con->commit();
} catch (PropelException $e) {
    $con->rollback();
    throw $e;
}

This way would guarantee that if the transaction fails, the database is restored to the correct status.

But the problem is that let's say when I do a transaction, in addition to that transaction, I need to update another database ( an example would be when I update an entry in a column in databaseA, another entry in a column in databaseB must be updated). How to handle this case?

Let's say, this is my code, I have three databases that need to be updated ( dbA, dbB, dbc):

$con = Propel::getConnection("dbA");
try {
    $con->begin();
    // update to dbA
    // update to dbB
    //update to dbc
    $con->commit();
} catch (PropelException $e) {
    $con->rollback();
    throw $e;
}

If dbc fails, I can rollback the dbA but I can't rollback dbb.

I think this problem should be database independent. And since I am using ORM, this should be ORM independent as well.

Update: Some of the database transactions are wrapped in ORM, some are using naked PDO, oledb ( or whatever bare minimum language provided database calls). So my solution has to take care this.

Any idea?