Next Generation Application Integration: From Simple Information to Web Services

Notion of a Transaction

Transactional middleware is not a new concept. It originated back in the days of the mainframe, at a time when most mainframe databases came with transactional middleware. These were, in fact, TP monitors that managed processes and coordinated access to the database.

To work, transactional middleware requires that complex applications be divided into bite-sized units called transactions. Transactional middleware controls transactions from their beginning to their end, from the client to the resource server and then back again.

In these scenarios, transactions are either all or nothing. Either they work or they do not. A transaction is never left incomplete. As a result, transactional middleware always leaves the system ...