To perform a distributed transaction in a CORBA environment, OTS (the CORBA Transaction Service) defines a process called "control object interpositioning". It must be carried out on the server side to ensure transaction integrity. However, for middle-tier servers (servers that do not access a database directly) this process is not necessary. The control object can be simply passed through. However, the two propagation methods of OTS do not provide a good way to take advantage of this fact. The present invention defines a model by which the deployment nature of the server can be specified. Middle-tier or database-tier can be defined in a deployment descriptor file, which is read in deployment time by the server process. The present invention will optimize the middle-tier servers by bypassing the control object interpositioning process and handing the control object directly to the next tier, bringing noticeable performance gains for an n-tiered system.