Systems and methods are provided for supporting transaction recovery based on a strict ordering of two-phase commit calls. At least one resource manager in a mid-tier transactional environment can be designated as the “determiner resource,” in order to support eliminating mid-tier transaction logs (TLOG) in processing a two-phase transaction. A transaction manager can prepare all other resource managers in the mid-tier transactional system before the determiner resource. Furthermore, the transaction manager can rely on the list of outstanding transactions to be committed that is provided by the determiner resource for recovering the transaction. The transaction manager can commit an in-doubt transaction returned from a resource manager that matches the list of in-doubt transactions returned from the determiner resource. Otherwise, the transaction manager can roll back the in-doubt transaction.