JUCS - Journal of Universal Computer Science 13(8): 1094-1109, doi: 10.3217/jucs-013-08-1094
Achieving Atomicity for Web Services Using Commutativity of Actions
expand article infoP. Michael Melliar-Smith‡, Louise E. Moser§
‡ University of California, Santa Barbara, United States of America§ University of California, United States of America

Corresponding author: P. Melliar-Smith ( pmms@ece.ucsb.edu )

© P. Melliar-Smith, Louise Moser.
This article is freely available under the J.UCS Open Content License.
Citation: Melliar-Smith PM, Moser LE (2007) Achieving Atomicity for Web Services Using Commutativity of Actions. JUCS - Journal of Universal Computer Science 13(8): 1094-1109. https://doi.org/10.3217/jucs-013-08-1094
Open Access
Abstract
Web Services enable the creation of complex business activities through the cooperation of independently developed software programs. However, Web Services incur the risk of long delays and locked data when using the classical distributed transaction strategy, and the risk of inconsistency when using the compensating transactions strategy. If the benefits of Web Services are to be fully realized, a better strategy must be employed. In this paper we describe an extended transactions strategy that can be used in conjunction with existing Web Services infrastructures, and that is compatible with existing business practices. The strategy exploits local transactions and commutativity of local actions at each data item to achieve global atomicity for business activities.
Keywords
web services, distributed transactions, atomicity, concurrency control, commutativity