Latest World News on Internet Business Money Market: SOA Advisor: Using Web services as distributed transactions and the role of XA

SOA Advisor
August 23, 2007
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ISSUE SPONSORED BY: IONA Technologies - Making Software Work Together

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Using Web services as distributed transactions and the role of XA
[by Frank Teti]

Today, many technologists believe that Web services are the proper
mechanism for integrating with disparate database environments.
Contrary to public opinion, Web services and distributed (aka XA)
transactions are complementary, not alternative, technologies.

Recently, I read an article that stated that:

"Enterprise service buses are the preferred tools for integrating
systems with heterogeneous data interchange interfaces and based on a
wide array of technologies, from COBOL to CORBA to JEE". (Eugene
Ciurana, Mule: A Case Study, TheServerSide.com)

http://go.techtarget.com/r/2047202/6276287

While Web services are clearly useful for integration with
heterogeneous data sources, relying solely on Web services,
especially for heterogeneous (that is, distributed) transactions is
more complex than supporting XA and architecturally limiting.
Furthermore, the Web services specifications and resulting
implementations are new, and therefore not as mature as XA. If Web
services are pursued, a number of other WS-* specifications would
need to be in place to begin to construct the transactional
management that XA provides.

Still, I agree with Dan Foody, CTO of Actional in that "The long term
success of Web services and SOA is directly affected by their ability
to be used for mission critical solutions in the enterprise. Because
many mission critical applications require transactional integrity,
WS-TX (Web Services Transaction) will enable these applications to be
successfully built and deployed using Web services without
sacrificing multi-vendor interoperability."
http://go.techtarget.com/r/2047203/6276287

Business and technical requirements

For the most part, all business software systems are derived from
corporate processing requirements. Even the modern concept of an
"enterprise service bus" I am sure was developed within a PowerPoint
presentation of a senior business analyst in order to address the
dysfunctional enterprise environment after a merger and acquisition.

Still, business process analysts should not be encumbered by the
technological feat of a process design during the visioning stage of
a new application, even if the requirements indicate the need for
heterogeneous transactions between legacy applications. After all,
that is what XA is all about.

My most recent project can be characterized as a significant
enhancement to a five-year-old J2EE application, which by today's
standards is part service bus and part business process management.
This application was designed to integrate and unify the many claims
management systems within a large insurance company.

These integration points are at the individual claim transaction
level, so internal consistence of workflow transactions is paramount
to the overall "enterprise-wide" system staying internally
consistent. Based on these requirements and the specified logical
units of work (see figures: Logical Unit of Work 1 and 2), it became
clear to me that the best way to guarantee transaction integrity was
to develop a set of XA-style transactions. While some analysts
suggest that a set of Web services could accomplish the same object,
there are limitations to using that construct, which will be further
discussed.
http://go.techtarget.com/r/2047204/6276287

Read more about XA-style in the rest of the article here.
http://go.techtarget.com/r/2047205/6276287

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Frank Teti is a principal architect and industry analyst. He can be
reached at frank_teti@hotmail.com.

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