Distributed Transaction Processing Standards and Their Applications

The OSI Standards committee (ISO SC21 Working Group 8) has defined the distributed transaction processing (DTP) standards that consist of a reference model, service definitions and protocol specifications. The reference model can be used for defining and building distributed transaction processing systems and applications. X/Open is an industrial standards organisation that has also defined a reference model for OSI DTP. The purpose of this model is to provide industry with a functional decomposition that captures the functionality of OSI DTP, and that can be architected, designed and implemented. In addition to the reference model, X/Open has also defined application program interfaces and system interfaces between the system components defined in the model. The interfaces provide a standard way for applications and resource management technology to work in a DTP environment. In this paper, OSI DTP concepts, model, services are introduced and their application to some other OSI technologies is discussed. Also, the X/Open DTP reference model and its application program and system interfaces are discussed. Finally, the applications of the model and interfaces in building distributed applications are discussed. Keywords—Distributed transaction processing; X/Open; RDA; systems management. Source of Publication—This paper was published in the Computer Standards and Interfaces 17 (1995) pp 363-373.