Atomicity versus Anonymity: Distributed Transactions for Electronic Commerce

1. Electronic Commerce Electronic commerce challenges our notions of distributed transactions in several ways. I discuss issues how distributed transactions can apply to electronic transactions, with special emphasis on the role of atomic@. I discuss the application of these ideas to two systems I have helped design and build: NetBill (a system for highly atomic micro-transactions) and Cryptographic Postage Indicia (a system for generating postage on laser printers attached to PCs or other devices.) I discuss the dijjficulties in integrating atomic, anonymous payment systems and some issues in supporting anonymous auctions. Finally, I conclude with a set of open questions. Electronic commerce is clearly among the most exciting developments in Internet based applications today. Here are some measures: Dell reports selling more than three million dollars worth of computers each day from their web site. Ernst & Young reports for that the online stores now offer the best prices for 90% of all consumer goods. 10% of all flower orders received by I-800-FLOWERS now arrive via the world wide web. Estimates vary on the amount of electronic commerce now occurring. Here is one measure of the excitement over electronic commerce: the 12 June 1995 issue of Business Week includes the following projection of the role of electronic commerce. This projection is probably overly optimistic, but it indicates that electronic commerce is being taken seriously in some quarters. *Effective September 1998, the author will hold a joint appointment in between the Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Department and the School of Information Management & Systems, both at the University of California, Berkeley, 94720. The author’s e-mail addresses will be [email protected] and [email protected]. This work was in part supported by DARPA (Contract F19628-96-C0061). NSF (Cooperative Agreement IRI-9411299), and the US Postal Service. The U.S Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for government purposes, not withstanding any copyright notations thereon. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the author and should not be interpreted as reflecting the official policies, either expressed or implied, of any of the supporting agencies or the U.S. Government. Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material is grantedprovided that the copies are not made or distributed for direct commercial advantage, the VLDB copyright notice and the title of the publication and its date appear; and notice is given that copying is by permission of the Very Large Data Base Endowment. To copy otherwise, or to republish, requires a fee and/or special permission from the Endowment. Proceedings of the 24th VLDB Conference New York, USA 1998 Year Traditional Commerce (billion $) Electronic