Francis Nicholas Parr

Business-to-business integration with tpaML and a business-to-business protocol framework

In business-to-business interactions spanning electronic commerce, supply chain management, and other applications, the terms and conditions describing the electronic interactions between businesses can be expressed as an electronic contract or trading partner agreement (TPA). From the TPA, configuration information and code that embody the terms and conditions can be generated automatically at each trading partners site. The TPA expresses the rules of interaction between the parties to the TPA while maintaining complete independence of the internal processes at each party from the other parties. It represents a long-running conversation that comprises a single unit of business. This paper summarizes the needs of interbusiness electronic interactions. Then it describes the basic principles of electronic TPAs, followed by an overview of the proposed TPA language. The business-to-business protocol framework (BPF) provides various tools and run-time services for supporting TPA-based interaction and integration with business applications. Finally, we describe examples of solutions constructed using TPAs and BPF.

An intelligent page store for concurrent transaction and query processing

An intelligent page store is proposed that provides two paths for accessing data. Update and transaction traffic are presented the current version of the data by the page store. Complex queries against the same data are presented a recent transaction consistent snapshot of the data. Periodically, new snapshots are created for access by new queries. By using an implicit versioning scheme, the page store maintains one copy of most of the data, while providing consistent access. This scheme allows the transaction and query systems to be independently optimized. The authors show that transaction performance is largely unaffected by concurrent queries, and disks are used efficiently since a query copy of the database is obviated.<<ETX>>

Reweaving the tapestry: integrating database and messaging systems in the wake of new middleware technologies

Modern business applications involve a lot of distributed data processing and inter-site communication, for which they rely on middleware products. These products provide the data access and communication framework for the business applications. Integrated messaging seeks to integrate messaging operations into the database, so as to provide a single API for data processing and messaging. Client applications will be much easier to write, because all the logic of sending and receiving messages is within the database. System configuration, application deployment, and message warehousing are simplified, because we don’t have to manage and fine-tune multiple products. Integrating messaging into a database also provides features like backup, restore, transactionality & recoverability to messages. In this paper, we’ll look at some aspects of messaging systems, and the challenges involved in integrating messaging such as message delivery semantics, transaction management and impact on query processing.

A case for fault-tolerant memory for transaction processing

For database transaction processing, the authors compare the relative price-performance of storing data in volatile memory (V-mem), fault-tolerant non-volatile memory (FT-mem), and disk. First, they extend Grays five-minute rule, which compares the relative cost of storing data in volatile memory as against disk for read-only data, to read-write data. Second, they show that because of additional write overhead, FT-mem has a higher advantage over V-mem than previously thought. Previous studies comparing volatile and non-volatile memories have focused on the response time advantages of putting log data in non-volatile memory. The authors show that there is a direct reduction in disk I/O, which leads to a much larger savings in cost using an FT-mem buffer. Third, the five-minute model is a simple model that assumes knowledge of inter-access times for data items. The authors present a more realistic model that assumes an LRU buffer management policy. They combine this with the recovery time constraint and study the resulting price-performance. It is shown that the use of an FT-mem buffer can lead to a significant benefit in terms of overall price-performance.

Responsive systems: an introduction

This paper introduces responsive systems: systems that are real-time, event-based, or time-dependent. There are a number of trends that are accelerating the adoption of responsive systems: timeliness requirements for business information systems are becoming more prevalent, embedded systems are increasingly integrated into soft real-time command-and-control systems, improved message-oriented middleware is facilitating growth in event-processing applications, and advances in service-oriented and component-based techniques are lowering the costs of developing and deploying responsive applications. The use of responsive systems is illustrated here in two application areas: the defense industry and online gaming. The papers in this special issue of the IBM Systems Journal are then introduced. The paper concludes with a discussion of the key remaining challenges in this area and ideas for further work.

Patterns for real-world-aware and real-time solutions

We apply pattern language methodology to describe design and integration patterns for real-world-aware and real-time solutions, i.e., software solutions that integrate business information processing with sensor and actuator manipulations of the external world. Efficient engineering of such solutions depends on the definition and reuse of components whose real-time characteristics can be specified. Other nonfunctional characteristics, such as throughput and reliability, may also be constrained and critical for correct behavior of a design element. We present a pattern language comprising a basic catalog of design patterns for component-based real-time solutions.

An Object implementation of Network Centric Business Service Applications (NCBSAs)

The Internet stretches traditional strict transaction processing concepts in several directions. First, transactions spanning multiple independent organizations may need to address enforcement of pairwise legal agreements rather than global data consistency. Second, a new transaction processing paradigm is required that supports different views of unit of business for all participants, i.e., service providers as well as end consumers. There may be several related interactions between any two interacting parties dispersed in time creating a long running conversation. Hence, persistent records of business actions need to be kept. Additionally, some actions and groups of actions may be cancellable (however, this may not mean that all effects are undone, e.g., non refondable payments). Finally, the greater variability in response time for network computing creates a need for asynchronous and event driven processing, in which correct handling of reissued and cancelled requests is critical. This paper presents a framework for development of NCBSA using CORBA services while satisfying the above requirements.

Requirements for systemic risk management in the financial sector: invited talk

The subprime financial crisis of 2008 exposed systemic weaknesses in the financial sector. Emergency liquidity on an enormous scale was required to prevent a collapse of the banking system. There is much discussion now concerning how to monitor and manage the risk of such systemic events. Our objective in this document is to discuss the computational requirements of systemic risk management. At a high level we address the basic functional and non-functional requirements of data and analytics posed by a hypothetical systemic risk regulator. To make our discussion concrete, we will explore the problem of systemic risk management in the residential mortgage markets of the United States. Our requirements discussion is organized around three main categories: data, analytics, and platform. We first review the basic features of data and analytics for the mortgage markets, and then will develop our thoughts concerning requirements for data management, analytics infrastructure, and platform functionality.