A Generic Transaction Model for ForCES-Based Distributed Systems

Transaction operations are supposed to be supported in ForCES-based distributed systems (FDS). In this paper, we propose a generic transaction model in the light of the characteristics of transaction process in the FDS. The model is a practical and adaptive nested transaction model that extends more support for interoperable transactions and flexible transactions. To ensure the commonality and compatibility of FDS, we consider each Forwarding Elements (FE) as a black box with an exception that it supports the well-known transaction protocol defined in the ForCES protocol. In our model, an interoperable or a flexible ForCES transaction is decomposed into subtransactions with corresponding dependency relations among them. Each subtransaction is a basic transaction that can be supported by the transaction protocol without any private extension. We propose a binary tree model to denote a ForCES transaction, and the transaction execution order of a successful commit is definite with the aid of the transaction B-tree. We also analyze some relative issues, such as how to ensure ACID properties, and presents methods to achieve global serializability and to enhance the efficiency of transaction execution.