Decentralized, distributed internet data management

Abstract

In a light-weight transactional system architecture, each component providing a service performs its own scheduling and transaction management. An invocation of one of these services (through remote method invocation) results in the creation of a local transaction (child of the invoking transaction and parent of any transaction that might be triggered by invoking the services of other servers). The information that is required to build a global composite transaction is implicitly added by the system to each call. Each transaction is, however, independently handled at each server. That is, the servers neither communicate among themselves nor rely on a centralized component to make scheduling or recovery decisions. In this way, components can be dynamically added or removed from the system without compromising correctness. Regardless of the configuration, the system according to the invention guarantees that transactions executed over these servers are correct and recoverable at a global and local level.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 - 24 . (canceled) 
     
     
         25 . A computerized distributed transaction system, the system being a composite system comprising at least one computer processor, the system comprising;
 a plurality of processes, each process having an interface and implementing at least one respective service defined by that interface;
 wherein each service invocation provides client context-related information in the form of application-level comments about the nature of the invocation to the service, or 
 wherein any globalCommit requires a registration, and the registration for a globalCommit also supplies such additional application-level comments at the time of registering for globalCommit, or 
 each or any globalCommit message exchange between processes carries application-level comments. 
   
     
     
         26 . The system of  claim 25 , such application-level comments being logged on persistent storage for recoverability in the event of a crash, such application-level comments being used for assistance at any time before, during or after global commitment. 
     
     
         27 . A method for use in a distributed transaction system, said system being a composite system, the system comprising:
 a plurality of processes, each process having an interface and implementing at least one respective service defined by that interface, the method comprising the step of:   by each service invocation, providing application-level comments about the nature of the invocation to the service, or   propagating a registration for a globalCommit,
 wherein the registration for a globalCommit also supplies such additional application-level comments, or 
   exchanging globalCommit messages between processes,
 wherein each globalCommit messages includes application-level comments. 
   
     
     
         28 . The method of  claim 27  further comprising the step of logging such application-level comments on persistent storage for recoverability in the event of a crash, such application-level comments being used for assistance at any time before, during or after global commitment.