The present teaching relates to committing transactions over a database in a semi-distributed manner. In one example, a transaction is executed to access a plurality of keys stored in the database. A request is transmitted to a transaction management engine to commit the transaction. The transaction management engine performs a conflict check between the transaction and one or more transactions running concurrently with the transaction, and generates an instruction based on the conflict check. The instruction is received from the transaction management engine. Based on the instruction, one or more of the plurality of keys are updated in the database or data added by the transaction to the database are erased.