A 3-level atomicity model for decentralized process-centered software engineering environments

Abstract

Decentralized process-centered software engineering environments (PSEEs) provide an architecture for interoperability between multiple PSEEs with heterogeneous processes. Atomicity is a standard correctness model for guaranteeing that a set of activities occurs as an atomic unit, or none of them occur at all. Within a single PSEE, atomicity is the concern of its database system. In a decentralized environment, however, the autonomous environments must find ways to cooperate if an atomic unit is split between multiple PSEEs. This paper describes a flexible atomicity model that enables process administrators to reconcile the conflict between local autonomy and global atomicity and cooperatively specify the scope of multi-site atomicity based upon the desired semantics of multi-site tasks in the decentralized PSEE.