Date of Award

1999

Document Type

Master Thesis

Degree Name

Masters of Science (Research)

Department

Mathematics & Computing

First Advisor

Prof Dr. Dieter Dippel, Darmstadt

Second Advisor

Mr. Jim O’Dwyer, Cork

Abstract

Software components representing business entities like customer or purchase order introduce a new way of Online Transaction Processing to business applications. Collaborating business objects allow to complete whole business processes as a single distributed transaction, instead of dividing it into queued steps, which sometimes even require user intervention. This IS due to the fact that business objects contain both business data and logic and that they incorporate multiple databases from different vendors and different geographic locations in a single transaction.

Business objects cannot be used as stand-alone components, but require a framework of services that manage persistence, concurrent transactions, and state management. Business objects are placed in a component container that implements such a framework. The container transparently activates a business object when requested and deactivates it according to any garbage collection mechanism. It keeps transactional caches and synchronises concurrent access. It manages distributed transactions, which span several business objects, containers, and data sources.

Throughout this thesis, I introduce the concept of business objects and their containers, and discuss the technical issues of persistence, transactions, and concurrency. 1 compare different types of application servers and discuss their ability to host business objects. In the prototypical implementation of a business object framework I propose a design for a component container and present solutions for the state management and concurrent access to fine-grained business objects by multiple transactions.

Comments

Sponsor: S.E.S.A. GmbH, D-65760 Eschborn/Ts.

Submitted to the National Council for Educational Awards for the Degree of Master of Science July 1999

Access Level

info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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