A distributed object oriented framework to offer transactional support for long running business processes

Abstract

Many business processes are both long running and transactional in nature. They are also mostly multi-user processes. Implementations such as the CORBA OTS (Object Transaction Services) modeled on the lock-based systems used for classic transactions do not fully support the requirements of such processes, and as a result, application developers must develop custom-built infrastructure – on an applicationby- application basis – to support users’ transactional expectations. This paper presents a novel approach to implementing long-lived transactions within distributed object environments. We propose the use of the unitof- work (UOW) transaction model and framework, an advanced nested transaction model that enables concurrent access to shared data without locking resources. The UOW approach describes a well-structured distributed object architecture that can easily be integrated with distributed object systems. The framework offers uniform (i.e., application independent) structural transaction support for long running business processes and provides them with the semantics of traditional, short, transactions. Use of the framework enables object developers to focus on business logic, with the framework infrastructure providing functions required to support the desired semantics. We discuss the framework programming model, how it provides transactional behavior to long running business processes and some of the research challenges still ahead of us.