Abstract: A method and apparatus are provided for allowing a resource manager to be more tightly integrated with foreign transaction managers with which it interacts through the use of an extensible framework of transaction and resource manager events. The tighter integration made possible by a framework in which personality modules are registered with resource managers. Each personality module corresponds to a particular foreign transaction protocol. Each personality module includes a mapping of key resource and transaction events to actions, where the action mapped to a particular event is the action required by the protocol in response to the event. When an event occurs within the resource manager, the resource manager performs the action mapped to the particular event by the appropriate personality module.