Distributed Transaction Processing System Having Resource Managers That Collaborate To Decide Whether To Commit Or Abort A Transaction In Response To Failure Of A Transaction Manager

• US 20100017642A1
• Filed: 09/26/2008
• Published: 01/21/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 07/16/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP (Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Company)
• Original Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: Myers, Douglas B.
• Granted Patent: US 8,650,272 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/2
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0709 in a distributed system consisting of a plurality of standalone computer nodes, e.g. clusters, client-server systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0757 by exceeding a time limit, i.e. time-out, e.g. watchdogs
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1474 in transactions G06F16/20 takes precedence

Abstract

A distributed transaction processing system includes a plurality of resources, resource managers to manage corresponding ones of the resources, and a transaction manager to coordinate performance of a transaction with the resource managers. In response to failure of the transaction manager, the resource managers are configured to collaborate to decide whether to commit or abort the transaction.

Claims

1. A distributed transaction processing system comprising:

a plurality of resources;

resource managers to manage corresponding ones of the resources;

a transaction manager to coordinate performance of a transaction with the resource managers,

wherein in response to failure of the transaction manager, the resource managers are configured to collaborate to decide whether to commit or abort the transaction.

2. The distributed transaction processing system of claim 1, wherein the resource managers detect failure of the transaction manager based on a timeout condition.

3. The distributed transaction processing system of claim 1, wherein failure of the transaction manager comprises either (1) the transaction manager crashing or (2) loss of communication with the transaction manager.

4. The distributed transaction processing system of claim 1, wherein the transaction manager is to communicate identities of the resource managers involved in the transaction to each of the resource managers involved in the transaction.

5. The distributed transaction processing system of claim 1, wherein, in response to failure of the transaction manager, each of the resource managers:

handles recovery and completion of the transaction with respect to the corresponding resource that the resource manager is managing, and

communicates with one or more other resource managers if necessary to determine whether to abort or commit the transaction.

6. The distributed transaction processing system of claim 5, wherein each resource manager is configured to:

abort the transaction if the resource manager has not yet finished preparing the transaction for commit;

finish committing the transaction if the resource manager has already started committing the transaction;

finish aborting the transaction if the resource manager has already started aborting the transaction.

7. The distributed transaction processing system of claim 5, wherein each of the resource managers that has completed preparing the transaction but has not started either committing or aborting the transaction, communicates with at least one of the other resource managers to:

determine the state of the transaction for the at least one other resource manager; and

commit or abort the transaction at the resource manager according to the determined state of the transaction of the at least one other resource manager.

8. The distributed transaction processing system of claim 7, wherein each resource manager is configured to:

commit the transaction in response to determining that the at least one other resource manager has started to commit or has committed the transaction.

9. The distributed transaction processing system of claim 7, wherein each resource manager is configured to:

abort the transaction in response to determining that the at least one other resource manager (1) has started to abort or aborted the transaction;

or (2) has not finished preparing the transaction.

10. The distributed transaction processing system of claim 7, wherein each resource manager is configured to:

abort the transaction in response to determining that all the other resource managers are in a prepared state for the transaction.

11. The distributed transaction processing system of claim 1, further comprising a persistent storage to store persistent information of the transaction for each of the resource managers.

12. The distributed transaction processing system of claim 11, wherein a particular one of the resource managers is configured to delete the respective persistent information of the transaction in response to determining that all of the other resource managers have already committed or aborted the transaction, and therefore will no longer require the corresponding persistent information for recovery purposes.

13. A method for use in a distributed transaction processing system, comprising:

providing resource managers to manage respective resources of the distributed transaction processing system;

providing a transaction manager to coordinate performance of a transaction with the resource managers;

configuring the resource managers with respective timeout conditions to cause the resource managers to timeout in response to failure of the transaction manager or any of the resource managers involved in the transaction; and

the resource managers involved in the transaction collaborating to complete the transaction based upon timeouts of the resource managers.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising the transaction manager communicating the timeout conditions to the corresponding resource managers.

15. An article comprising at least one computer-readable storage medium containing instructions that when executed cause a computer to:

run resource managers to manage respective resources;

coordinate, by a transaction manager, performance of a transaction that involves plural resource managers;

detect failure of the transaction manager; and

in response to detecting failure of the transaction manager, the plural resource managers communicating among each other to complete the transaction.