System for managing and processing distributed object transactions and process implemented by said system

• US 6,101,527 A
• Filed: 11/18/1997
• Issued: 08/08/2000
• Est. Priority Date: 11/18/1996
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Bull Sas (Atos SE)
• Original Assignee: Bull Sas (Atos SE)
• Inventors: Bouchy, Frederic, Lejeune, Herve, Coq, Philippe
• Primary Examiner(s): Maung, Zarni
• Assistant Examiner(s): DINH, KHANH Q
• Application Number:
  US08/972,270
• Time in Patent Office: 994 Days
• Field of Search: 709/201, 709/303, 709/221, 707/10, 707/202, 707/201, 707/203, 707/204, 707/6, 707/8
• US Class Current: 709/201
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/465 Distributed object oriented systems remote method invocation [RMI] G06F9/548
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/466 Transaction processing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99953 Recoverability

Abstract

The present invention relates to a system and process for managing and processing object transactions in a network of distributed resources operating in the client-server mode, wherein the client sends a request to at least one transaction object contained in at least one of the servers (RS1, RS2, etc.) distributed across the network, while a transaction manager dialogues with a resource manager (RM) through a predefined interface by means of a transaction validation protocol. This system is noteworthy in that it achieves the implicit integration of resource managers (RM) adapted to the predefined interface, so as to integrate the participation of existing or future resource managers (RM) into a distributed transaction managed by the transaction manager, by providing objects capable of participating in the transaction validation protocol implemented by the transaction manager, which objects address the resource managers through the predefined interface. For this purpose, in the present system, each server comprises a specific local component (LOC1, LOC2, etc.) which encapsulates the calls to the predefined interface in the form of objects called resource objects (RSO), while moreover one server for managing the predefined interface (XAMS) is provided per domain for implementing the encapsulation of the transaction validation protocol, thus allowing multiple distributed objects to execute multiple requests in the same single transaction.

Claims

1. A system for managing and processing object transactions in a network of distributed resources operating in the client-server mode, wherein the client sends a request to at least one transaction object contained in at least one of multiple servers distributed across the network, while a transaction manager dialogues with a resource manager through a predefined interface by means of a transaction validation protocol, comprising:

said system being arranged and configured to achieve implicit integration of resource managers adapted to the predefined interface so as to integrate participation of resource managers into a distributed transaction managed by the transaction manager, by providing objects capable of participating in the transaction validation protocol implemented by the transaction manager, which objects address the resource managers through the predefined interface;

each said server comprising a specific local component which encapsulates calls to the predefined interface in the form of resource objects, and one of said servers being designated for managing the predefined interface is provided per domain for implementing encapsulation of the transaction validation protocol, thereby allowing multiple distributed objects to execute multiple requests in the same single transaction.

2. The system for managing and processing object transactions according to claim 1, characterized in that the specific local component encapsulating the calls to the predefined interface is integrated into a library linked to an application program accessing the resource manager in order to execute operations associated with said transaction.

3. The system for managing and processing object transactions according to claim 1, characterized in that when a client initiates a transaction, a transaction context is created and is transmitted to the transaction objects and to the recoverable objects with each transaction request, which transaction context is formed by a certain number of coordination, completion and control objects associated with each transaction, the coordination object allowing the recoverable objects to register resources for completing a transaction, the completion object supporting the operations for validating or canceling the transaction, and the control object allowing the client to retrieve both the coordination and completion objects.

4. The system for managing and processing object transactions according to claim 1, characterized in that when a client initiates a transaction, a transaction context is created and is transmitted to the transaction objects and to the recoverable objects with each transaction request, which transaction context is formed by a certain number of coordination, completion and control objects associated with each transaction, the coordination object allowing the recoverable objects to register resources for completing a transaction, the completion object supporting the operations for validating or canceling the transaction, and the control object allowing the client to retrieve both the coordination and completion objects.

5. The system for managing and processing object transactions according to claim 2, characterized in that when a client initiates a transaction, a transaction context is created and is transmitted to the transaction objects and to the recoverable objects with each transaction request, which transaction context is formed by a certain number of coordination, completion and control objects associated with each transaction, the coordination object allowing the recoverable objects to register resources for completing a transaction, the completion object supporting the operations for validating or canceling the transaction, and the control object allowing the client to retrieve both the coordination and completion objects.

6. The system for managing and processing object transactions according to claim 3, in the case of the normal completion of a transaction wherein at least one resource has requested a commit and the other resources involved have either requested a commit or a simple reading, characterized in that:

the recording of various information is carried out in order to allow an automatic restart of the transaction after a failure has occurred, the recording of the information required by the resource object to determine the result of the transaction during a recovery after a failure after which its changes were prepared, the recording of the information required by a coordination object to complete the transaction after a recovery following a failure and the recording of any decision made heuristically so that the resource object can again determine the same result for a transaction in the case where the validation operation is executed more than once;

adding the decision to the contents of the recording of the information required by a coordination object to complete the transaction if the decision is made heuristically, which decision made heuristically until the coordination object has initiated the operation makes it possible to forget said decision for all the resources that have made decisions heuristically.

7. The system for managing and processing object transactions according to claim 4, in the case of the normal completion of a transaction wherein at least one resource has requested a commit and the other resources involved have either requested a commit or a simple reading, characterized in that:

the recording of various information is carried out in order to allow an automatic restart of the transaction after a failure has occurred, the recording of the information required by the resource object to determine the result of the transaction during a recovery after a failure after which its changes were prepared, the recording of the information required by a coordination object to complete the transaction after a recovery following a failure and the recording of any decision made heuristically so that the resource object can again determine the same result for a transaction in the case where the validation operation is executed more than once;

adding the decision to the contents of the recording of the information required by a coordination object to complete the transaction if the decision is made heuristically, which decision made heuristically until the coordination object has initiated the operation makes it possible to forget said decision for all the resources that have made decisions heuristically.

8. The system for managing and processing object transactions according to claim 5, in the case of the normal completion of a transaction wherein at least one resource has requested a commit and the other resources involved have either requested a commit or a simple reading, characterized in that:

the recording of various information is carried out in order to allow an automatic restart of the transaction after a failure has occurred, the recording of the information required by the resource object to determine the result of the transaction during a recovery after a failure after which its changes were prepared, the recording of the information required by a coordination object to complete the transaction after a recovery following a failure and the recording of any decision made heuristically so that the resource object can again determine the same result for a transaction in the case where the validation operation is executed more than once;

adding the decision to the contents of the recording of the information required by a coordination object to complete the transaction if the decision is made heuristically, which decision made heuristically until the coordination object has initiated the operation makes it possible to forget said decision for all the resources that have made decisions heuristically.

9. The system for managing and processing object transactions according to claim 3, characterized in that when only one resource object has been registered, only one validation operation is executed in the resource object without any recording of information.

10. The system for managing and processing object transactions according to claim 4, characterized in that when only one resource object has been registered, only one validation operation is executed in the resource object without any recording of information.

11. The system for managing and processing object transactions according to claim 5, characterized in that when only one resource object has been registered, only one validation operation is executed in the resource object without any recording of information.

12. The system for managing and processing object transactions according to claim 3, characterized in that in the case where a malfunction has occurred and a recoverable server has been restarted, the server reads the record in order to retrieve the object labels of the recoverable coordination objects, each resource object calling the operation that makes it possible to rerun the end of the transaction in the corresponding recoverable coordination object, the restart and the recovery of the recoverable objects thus being controlled by the transaction manager.

13. The system for managing and processing object transactions according to claim 4, characterized in that in the case where a malfunction has occurred and a recoverable server has been restarted, the server reads the record in order to retrieve the object labels of the recoverable coordination objects, each resource object calling the operation that makes it possible to rerun the end of the transaction in the corresponding recoverable coordination object, the restart and the recovery of the recoverable objects thus being controlled by the transaction manager.

14. The system for managing and processing object transactions according to claim 5, characterized in that in the case where a malfunction has occurred and a recoverable server has been restarted, the server reads the record in order to retrieve the object labels of the recoverable coordination objects, each resource object calling the operation that makes it possible to rerun the end of the transaction in the corresponding recoverable coordination object, the restart and the recovery of the recoverable objects thus being controlled by the transaction manager.

15. The system for managing and processing object transactions according to claim 6, characterized in that in the case where a malfunction has occurred and a recoverable server has been restarted, the server reads the record in order to retrieve the object labels of the recoverable coordination objects, each resource object calling the operation that makes it possible to rerun the end of the transaction in the corresponding recoverable coordination object, the restart and the recovery of the recoverable objects thus being controlled by the transaction manager.

16. The system for managing and processing object transactions according to claim 7, characterized in that in the case where a malfunction has occurred and a recoverable server has been restarted, the server reads the record in order to retrieve the object labels of the recoverable coordination objects, each resource object calling the operation that makes it possible to rerun the end of the transaction in the corresponding recoverable coordination object, the restart and the recovery of the recoverable objects thus being controlled by the transaction manager.

17. The system for managing and processing object transactions according to claim 8, characterized in that in the case where a malfunction has occurred and a recoverable server has been restarted, the server reads the record in order to retrieve the object labels of the recoverable coordination objects, each resource object calling the operation that makes it possible to rerun the end of the transaction in the corresponding recoverable coordination object, the restart and the recovery of the recoverable objects thus being controlled by the transaction manager.

18. The system for managing and processing object transactions according to claim 3, characterized in that upon reception of a preparation request according to the two-phase commit protocol, the resource object requests the local component of each recoverable server to terminate the association of the execution unit with the transaction by calling the appropriate dissociation operation, whereas when all the associations have been terminated, the resource object transfers a preparation operation to the resource manager and returns the appropriate decision.

19. The system for managing and processing object transactions according to claim 6, characterized in that upon reception of a preparation request according to the two-phase commit protocol, the resource object requests the local component of each recoverable server to terminate the association of the execution unit with the transaction by calling the appropriate dissociation operation, whereas when all the associations have been terminated, the resource object transfers a preparation operation to the resource manager and returns the appropriate decision.

20. The system for managing and processing object transactions according to claim 12, characterized in that upon reception of a preparation request according to the two-phase commit protocol, the resource object requests the local component of each recoverable server to terminate the association of the execution unit with the transaction by calling the appropriate dissociation operation, whereas when all the associations have been terminated, the resource object transfers a preparation operation to the resource manager and returns the appropriate decision.