Towards an Enhanced Protocol for Improving Transactional Support in Interoperable Service Oriented Application-Based (SOA-Based) Systems

When using a shared database for distributed transactions, it is often difficult to connect business processes and softwarecomponents running on disparate platforms into a single transaction. For instance, one platform may add or update data, and thenanother platform later access the changed or added data. This severely limits transactional capabilities across platforms. Thissituation becomes more acute when concurrent transactions with interleaving operations spans across different applications andresources. Addressing this problem in an open, dynamic and distributed environment of web services poses special challenges,and still remains an open issue. Following the broad adoption and use of the standard Web Services Transaction Protocols,requirements have grown for the addition of extended protocols to handle problems that exist within the context of interoperableservice-oriented applications. Most extensions to the current standard WS-Transaction Protocols still lack proper mechanisms forerror-handling, concurrency control, transaction recovery, consolidation of multiple transaction calls into a single call, and securereporting and tracing for suspicious activities. In this research, we will first extend the current standard WS-TransactionFramework, and then propose an enhanced protocol (that can be deployed within the extended framework) to improvetransactional and security support for asynchronous applications in a distributed environment. A hybrid methodology whichincorporates service-oriented engineering and rapid application development will be used to develop a procurement system(which represents an interoperable service-oriented application) that integrates our proposed protocol. We will empiricallyevaluate and compare the performance of the enhanced protocol with other conventional distributed protocols (such as 2PL) interms of QoS parameters (throughput, response time, and resource utilization), availability of the application, databaseconsistency, and effect of locking on latency, among other factors.Keywords: Database, interoperability, security, concurrent transaction, web services, protocol, service-oriente

Web Service Transaction Correctness

In our research we investigate the problem of providing consistency, availability and durability for Web Service transactions. First, we show that the popular lazy replica update propagation method is vulnerable to loss of transactional updates in the presence of hardware failures. We propose an extension to the lazy update propagation approach to reduce the risk of data loss. Our approach is based on the buddy system, requiring that updates are preserved synchronously in two replicas, called buddies. The rest of the replicas are updated using lazy update propagation protocols. Our method provides a balance between durability (i.e., effects of the transaction are preserved even if the server, executing the transaction, crashes before the update can be propagated to the other replicas) and efficiency (i.e., our approach requires a synchronous update between two replicas only, adding a minimal overhead to the lazy replication protocol). Moreover, we show that our method of selecting the buddies ensures correct execution and can be easily extended to balance workload, and reduce latency observable by the client. Second, we consider Web Service transactions that consume anonymous and attribute based resources. We show that the availability of the popular lazy replica update propagation method can be achieved while increasing its durability and consistency. Our system provides a new consistency constraint, Capacity Constraint, which allows the system to guarantee that resources are not over consumed and also allows for higher distribution of the consumption. Our method provides; 1.) increased availability through the distribution of element master\u27s by using all available clusters, 2.) consistency by performing the complete transaction on a single set of clusters, and 3.) guaranteed durability by updating two clusters synchronously with the transaction. Third, we consider each transaction as a black box. We model the corresponding metadata, i.e., transaction semantics, as UML specifications. We refer to these WS-transactions as coarse grained WS-transactions. We propose an approach that guarantees the availability of the popular lazy replica update propagation method while increasing the durability and consistency. In this section we extend the Buddy System to handle course grained WS-transactions, using UML stereotypes that allow scheduling semantics to be embedded into the design model. This design model is the then exported and consumed by a service dispatcher to provide: 1.) High availability by distributing service requests across all available clusters. 2.) Consistency by performing the complete transaction on a single set of clusters. 3.) Durability by updating two clusters synchronously. Finally, we consider enforcement of integrity constraints in a way that increases availability while guaranteeing the correctness specified in the constraint. We organize these integrity constraints into three categories: entity, domain and hierarchical constraints. Hierarchical constraints offer an opportunity for optimization because of an expensive aggregation calculation required in the enforcement of the constraint. We propose an approach that guarantees that the constraint cannot be violated but it also allows the distribution of write operations among many clusters to increase availability. In our previous work, we proposed a replica update propagation method, called the Buddy System, which guaranteed durability and increased availability of web services. In this section we extend the Buddy System to enforce the hierarchical data integrity constraints

Maintaining Consistency Under Isolation Relaxation of Web Services Transactions

Abstract. For efficiently managing Web Services (WS) transactions which are executed across multiple loosely-coupled autonomous organizations, isolation is commonly relaxed. A Web services operation of a transaction releases locks on its resources once its jobs are completed without waiting for the completions of other operations. However, those early unlocked resources can be seen by other transac-tions, which can spoil data integrity and causes incorrect outcomes. Existing WS transaction standards do not consider this problem. In this paper, we propose a mechanism to ensure the consistent executions of isolation-relaxing WS transac-tions. The mechanism effectively detects inconsistent states of transactions with a notion of a completion dependency and recovers them to consistent states. We also propose a new Web services Transaction Dependency management Protocol (WTDP). WTDP helps organizations manage the WS transactions easily without data inconsistency. WTDP is designed to be compliant with a representative WS transaction standard, the Web Services Transactions specifications, for easy inte-gration into existing WS transaction systems. We prototyped a WTDP-based WS transaction management system to validate our protocol.

Web-palveluiden transaktionaalinen koostaminen

Web-palvelut ovat tekniikkana suosittu tapa toteuttaa yritysten sisäiset ja ulkoiset liiketoimintaprosessit sähköisenä palveluna. Koostamisen avulla olemassa olevista web-palveluista voidaan rakentaa uusia monipuolisempia palveluja. Tässä työssä tutkitaan, minkälainen transaktionaalisuuden taso koosteisessa web-palvelussa voidaan saavuttaa käytettävissä olevilla teknologioilla. Tämä tehdään vertailemalla web-palveluiden transaktionaalisia ominaisuuksia tietokantateoriasta tuttuihin transaktion ACID-ominaisuuksiin, sarjallistuvuusteoriaan, sekä transaktiomalleihin. Työssä tutkitaan myös sitä, tarvitaanko web-palveluiden transaktionaalisessa koostamisessa ylipäätään tietokantojen teoriasta tuttuja käsitteitä ja malleja. Tutkimuksessa syvennytään niihin web-palveluiden koostamisessa käytettäviin menetelmiin ja protokolliin, jotka tarjoavat transaktionaalisia piirteitä liiketoimintaprosessien toteuttamiseksi. Nämä ovat web-arkkitehtuuripinon WS-AtomicTransaction- ja WS-BusinessActivity -protokollat. Tulosten analysoinnissa on käytetty apuna erään matkatoimiston web-palvelua. Web-palveluiden välisten transaktioiden ACID-ominaisuudet käytiin läpi kahden web-palvelun käyttötapauksen kautta. Tuloksista selvisi, että web-palveluiden välisissä transaktioissa toteutuu ainoastaan transaktion ACID-atomisuus. Samalla selvitettiin, miten tämä saavutettu transaktionaalisuuden taso käytännössä vaikuttaa web-palveluiden väliseen toimintaan. Tutkielman tuloksien vaikutuksia web-palveluiden väliseen kanssakäyntiin arvioitiin sekä palvelun toteuttajan, että loppukäyttäjän näkökulmasta. Tuloksien perusteella kävi ilmi, että vakavien ongelmien välttämiseksi toteuttajan on tunnettava sovelluksen ongelmakenttä erityisen hyvin ja ymmärrettävä se, miten koosteisen web-palvelun transaktionaalisuuden taso vaikuttaa kyseisessä ympäristössä palvelun toimintaan. Tutkielman lopussa esitellään tämän tutkielman tuloksena syntynyt eksklusiivinen malli, jonka avulla koosteeseen osallistuvien web-palveluiden välisissä transaktioissa voidaan saavuttaa globaali ACID-eristyvyys. Mallia soveltamalla web-palvelut voivat etsiä eksklusiivista kauppaa käyviä web-palveluja SOA-arkkitehtuurimallin mukaisesti UDDI-rekisteristä, ja suorittaa näiden kanssa häiriöttämästi sarjallistuvia transaktioita. ACM Computing Classification System (CCS): - Information systems~Web services - Information systems~Database transaction processin

Recovery Management of Long Running eBusiness Transactions

eBusiness collaboration and an eBusiness process are introduced as a context of a long running eBusiness transaction. The nature of the eBusiness collaboration sets requirements for the long running transactions. The ACID properties of the classical database transaction must be relaxed for the eBusiness transaction. Many techniques have been developed to take care of the execution of the long running business transactions such as the classical Saga and a business transaction model (BTM) of the business transaction framework. Those classic techniques cannot adequately take into account the recovery needs of the long running eBusiness transactions and they need to be further improved and developed. The expectations for a new service composition and recovery model are defined and described. The DeltaGrid service composition and recovery model (DGM) and the Constraint rules-based recovery mechanism (CM) are introduced as examples of the new model. The classic models and the new models are compared to each other and it is analysed how the models answer to the expectations. Neither new model uses the unaccustomed classification of atomicity even if the BTM includes the unaccustomed classifying of atomicity. A recovery model of the new models has improved the ability to take into account the data and control dependencies in the backward recovery. The new models present two different kinds of strategies to recover a failed service. The strategy of the CM increases the flexibility and the efficiency compared to the Saga or the BTF. The DGM defines characteristics that the CM does not have: a Delta-Enabled rollback, mechanisms for a pre-commit recoverability and for a post-commit recoverability and extends the concepts of a shallow compensation and a deep compensation. The use of them guarantees that an eBusiness process recovers always in a consistent state which is something the Saga, the BTM and the CM could not proof. The DGM offers also the algorithms of the important mechanisms. ACM Computing Classification System (CCS): C.2.4 [Distributed Systems]: Distributed application