Research On Key Technologies For Extensibility Of Distributed Transaction Monitor

Transaction processing technology is a key technology in distributed computing environment. As an important component in the middleware platform, TP monitor provide distributed transaction supporting facility for the whole system.Currently, most TP monitors are based on XOpen/DTP specification. They have been massively deployed at many key application fields such as telecom and finance. However, mature as these TP monitors are, they are all developed with a monolithic architecture style, and there are many shortcomings such as being lack of openness, low flexibility, difficult to customize, etc. These shortcomings heavily reduce the extensibility of TP monitorThe problems which brought by low extensibility include higher extension cost, massive refactory of origin system, longer time for development, more defection, etc. As the most fundamental part of middleware platform, TP monitor particularly should be highly extensible in face of changing requirement.In order to solve this problem, we research relevant technologies on how to improve the extensibility of TP monitor by the case of OnceTX. A TP monitor with high extensibility has the merits of flexibility, customizability and low cost for extension. It can better cater with the rapid change of system requirements and release the burden of middleware platform integration.In this article we discuss the design and implementation technologies for an extensible TP monitor. We study a very flexible technique, the micro-kernel architecture. It can solve those shortcomings brought by monolithic architecture. We introduce how micro-kernel architecture is implemented in OnceTX and validate its usefulness to extensibility with the case of OnceTX's performance monitoring extension. Besides, deploying design patterns in TP monitor can improve its extensibility. We discuss those patterns deployed in OnceTX and how they facilitateextension. We use an example of WebServices transaction support to illustrate the pattern-based extension of OnceTX.