Chapter 1 a Each time you purchase

Chapter 1 a

Each time you purchase gas using a credit card, the point-of-sale terminal connects to the credit card company's computer. In case that fails, it may alternatively try to debit the amount to your account by connecting to your bank. This generalizes to all kinds of point-of-sale terminals such as cash registers, ATMs, etc. When banks balance their accounts with each other (electronic fund transfer), they use transactions for reliability and recoverability.

Making reservations for a trip requires many related bookings and ticket purchases from airlines, hotels, rental car companies, and so on. From the perspective of the customer, the whole trip package is one purchase. From the perspective of the multiple systems involved, many transactions are executed: One per airline reservation (at least), one for each hotel reservation, one for each car rental, one for each ticket to be printed, on for setting up the bill, etc. Along the way, each inquiry that may not have resulted in a reservation is a transaction, too.

Order entry, job and inventory planning and scheduling, accounting, and so on are classical application areas of transaction processing. Computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) is a key technique for improving industrial productivity and efficiency. Just-in-time inventory control, automated warehouses, and robotic assembly lines each require a reliable data storage system to represent the factory state.

WWWBrowser Server Javaapplet proprietary protocol Database Server

Thin

GUI OOUI System Mgmt. SQL Files TRPC Security Transport OS Objects ORB Mail WWW Groupware TP-Mon. DBMS etc. OS

creation termination commit coordination invocation

Chapter 1 b

Today’s workstation has the power of yesterday’s mainframe. Similarly, today’s WAN (wide area network) has the communications bandwidth of yesterday’s LAN (local area network). In addition, electronic memories are growing in size to include much of the data formerly stored on magnetic disk. These technology trends have deep implications for transaction processing.

The early 90 s

Scenario 2000 Point-to-point bandwidth likely to be common among computers by the year 2000.