dbcc complete_xact enables a system administrator to commit or roll back a distributed transaction in circumstances where the external transaction coordinator cannot.
In versions of SAP ASE earlier than 15.0, a transaction could not heuristically committed unless it was in the “prepare” state, and the transaction coordinator used a two-phase commit protocol to commit the transaction. However, in some cases, a transaction coordinator may want to use a one-phase commit protocol as an optimization to commit the transaction.
1pc heuristically completes a transaction that was subject to a one-phase commit protocol optimization—instead of the regular two-phase commit protocol—by the external transaction manager that was coordinating its completion. Heuristically committing such a transaction requires that the transaction be in a “done” state (as reported by sp_transactions).