Client transparency system and method therefor

[0002] The present invention relates generally to transaction processing systems (TPS) and more particularly to problem correction systems which minimize user intervention.

[0003] Commonly, human end-users are exposed to many different failures and error situations in systems which are called transaction processing systems (TPS). TPSs are three-tier (client-server-database) systems which allow client applications to perform database transactions. For example, there are various reservation systems, such as for airlines, hotels, and car rentals, and financial systems, such as banking, credit card, and automated teller machines. In these systems, a customer or sales representative uses a client application that allows a user to query and update a database. The client interface allows the client to specify which database to add information to or to update. If a failure occurs, for example during an update, it is difficult for the client to know whether the update was actually performed or not.

[0004] As an example, for an Automated Teller Machine (ATM) failure, it is likely that the ATM customer would need to call the bank to find out whether the transaction was completed properly. This would generate more work for bank employees and create unsatisfied customers and very costly in terms of the lost business, reduced productivity, and unsatisfied customers.

[0005] Essentially, the client needs to query the database and see if the update has been performed and if it has not, to reissue the update. Even this solution is, however, not failure proof.

[0006] First, the system might not know what the values were before the update, and if the update is relative to the old value, the client might not be able to determine whether the update was performed or not. For example, if the ATM transaction involved a deposit to an account, the bank employee would have to have information regarding the previous balance and any other deposits and withdrawals that may have occurred to the account around the time of the failure.

[0007] Second, another client might have done an update after the first client's query and failed update. Therefore, the first client will not be able to determine with confidence whether the update was performed or not. Thus, the first client would have to guess what to do.

[0008] Thus, involving the client in the recovery of a failed request should be avoided to the largest possible extent. Unfortunately, complex commercial database systems and transaction processing systems generally fail to provide client transparency, or the ability to detect and correct problems without human intervention. Rather, it is expected that the failure recovery either be handled by the client or be coded into applications.

[0009] Embedding the failure recovery into the application code complicates the application considerably and is error prone.

[0010] Implementing error recovery logic is difficult and complex. Client applications as well as application servers currently need to implement error recovery as part of the application specific code. Further, the error recovery logic is not necessarily reusable for any application adhering to the described architecture.

[0011] In a TPS the client application code demarcates the transaction. If the transaction fails, the client application retries the transaction. This might or might not involve action from the end user. In the worst case the end client might need to reissue the transaction. There is a key problem with this approach in that there is a window in which a failure can occur when the client application does not know the outcome of the transaction. In the worst case the client needs to manually check if the transaction was committed and then take the appropriate action.

[0012] Replication protocols, such as ISIS and Horus, both from Cornell University, allow a service to be implemented by multiple servers, called a server group. Each request issued by a client application will be sent to all the servers. The protocol ensures that the requests processed by the servers of a group are processed synchronously according to some synchronization criteria. The states of servers are kept consistent by ensuring this synchronization. When new servers join a group the state is transferred from a server that is up to date.

[0013] The main idea of replication protocols is that if the states are kept consistent for two or more servers, one of them can fail without impacting the delivery of the service.

[0014] It is hard, and often impossible, to use replication solutions to solve reliability of services using database applications. The reason is that multiple servers can not simultaneously coordinate their writes to the same database. If different databases were used it would be difficult to keep the databases consistent. Both these problems are complicated further by the fact that databases can be accessed by other applications, causing the databases to diverge.

[0015] Thus, it is very difficult and often impossible to use replication protocols for the type of database (or state aware) applications for which the error recovery problem needs to be solved.

[0016] Even if it were simple to use replicated systems for database applications, they do not provide any support for automatically recovering from a failure during a database transaction. A client application would still need to determine the outcome of the transaction.

[0017] Basically, although replication protocols can provide error recovery to certain types of systems, they are not suitable for database applications. Secondly, it would still be necessary to determine the outcome of failed calls in some manner.

[0018] Traditional, high availability solutions for database-centric applications are typically based on clusters. A cluster consists of multiple computers, called nodes. Each node is capable of running a database, and when the database fails, it is restarted by cluster manager software. The consistency model for the database is based on the notion of “rollback” where the database is restarted in some previous, consistent state. The transactions that were being executed when the database failed are aborted.

[0019] Traditional cluster mechanisms limit database down time because they immediately restart the database. However, the failure is visible to the database clients. The clients may experience lost connections to the database, aborted transactions, and indeterminate transactions where the outcome cannot be determined.

[0020] The Microsoft Transaction Service (MTS) provides a programming model and runtime system for three-tiered, component-based systems. MTS provides transactional semantics for the components in the middle tier. These components are annotated communications (COM) components where the annotations capture transaction composition across components. From an application architecture perspective, MTS supports a programming model in which the middle tier contains stateless objects and transactions are demarcated in the middle tier.

[0021] However, MTS does not provide error-recovery logic. Client applications using MTS-controlled objects must manually and explicitly implement error recovery logic to determine the outcome of database transactions. Moreover, client applications will have to explicitly handle failures of middle-tier objects: they must catch exceptions that occur when middle tier objects fail and they must subsequently connect to a new middle tier object.

[0022] An answer has long been sought to solve the above problems, but they have also long eluded those skilled in the art.

[0023] The present invention is targeted to three-tier transaction processing systems (TPSs) built up as: one or more client applications (CAs), one or more server applications (SAs), and one or more database systems (DBS). The client application implements an application that requires data and services that are best realized as distributed resources. A SA represents such a resource. The SA provides a service that can be shared among multiple CAs. SAs store their data in a database. A client transparency mechanism (CTM) and a server transparency mechanism (STM) are added, and both can be represented as conventional state machines. A database on a clustered node is used for the database management. SAs implement transactional behavior. The STM implements the server side of the protocol so that the CAs may recover from SA and database failures. The cluster application programming interface (API) is used to determine whether, when, and if to retry. Information is stored in the database so that the outcome of the transaction can be determined.

[0024] The present invention provides a simpler programming model for CAs and SAs where the error recovery logic is embedded in middleware.

[0025] The present invention further provides very high-availability from a client's perspective since most failures can be automatically recovered.

[0026] The present invention further provides a TPS in which CAs do not need to do outcome determination after a failure and a subsequent system recovery.

[0027] The present invention further provides a TPS in which SAs do not need to explicitly reconnect to database or request retry from the CA.

[0028] The present invention further provides a TPS in which the solution masks communication and node failures for the CA.

[0029] The present invention further provides a high-availability TPS which uses a data store with a notion of transaction.

[0030] The present invention further provides a TPS in which the CA uses stateless servers that uses data-stores to save information and system state.

[0031] The present invention further provides a TPS in which an operation request will correspond to one transaction.

[0032] The present invention further provides a TPS in which all SAs use the same data store.

[0033] The present invention further provides a TPS in which data-stores are made highly available using a fault-tolerance solution, such as a cluster.

[0034] The above and additional advantages of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from a reading of the following detailed description when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.

[0035] FIG. 1 is a three-tier TPS incorporating the client transparency system of the present invention;

[0036] FIG. 2 is a timeline diagram for a problem-free TPS incorporating the present invention;

[0037] FIG. 3 is a timeline diagram for a TPS incorporating the present invention having an early server application problem;

[0038] FIG. 4 is a timeline diagram for a TPS incorporating the present invention having an indeterminate time server application problem;

[0039] FIG. 5 is a timeline for a TPS incorporating the present invention performing read-only operations; and;

[0040] FIG. 6 is the high level architecture of the TPS incorporating the present invention showing possible failure modes and normal and alternate routings.

[0041] Referring now to FIG. 1, therein is shown a transaction processing system (TPS) 10. A user 11 of the TPS 10 would interact with a client application (CA) 12, which could be one personal computer in a large network. The CA 12 has an attached client transparency mechanism (CTM) 14. The CTM 14 is connected to a conventional communications infrastructure (CI) 16.

[0042] The CI 16 represents communications systems such as telephone lines, dedicated lines, etc. which allow both local and remote communications between systems connected to it.

[0043] A plurality of server transparency mechanisms (STMs) 18 (18-1, 18-2, etc., not shown) are connected to the CI 16 and a plurality of server applications (SAs) 20 (20-1, 20-2, etc., not shown) are each connected to their respective STMs 18. Generally, there will be a plurality of SAs 20 which implement transactional behavior. The plurality of STM's 18 implement the server side of the protocol which will herein be described, so that CAs may recover from application and database failures. The SAs 20 are further connected directly to the CI 16.

[0044] A database system (DBS) 22 is further connected to the CI 16. The DBS 22 stores data persistently and is one which can be restarted fast with data consistency guarantees to enable fast recovery from faults. The systems that exhibit traditional behavior may be implemented as databases on a clustered node. Further, the DBS 22 is capable of storing information so that the outcome of transactions can be determined.

[0045] A load balancing service (LBS) 26 is connected to the CI 16. The LBS 26 registers the SAs and balances the load between the SAs having the same functionality so as to avoid overloading any particular SAs. In an alternative embodiment, the LBS 26 could balance load by other methods, such as a simple round-robin allocation method.

[0046] A bi-directional communication path 24 interconnects all the entities involved in the TPS 10.

[0047] Referring now to FIG. 2, therein is shown the basic structure of the method of the present invention which is depicted as a timeline diagram 30. The timeline diagram 30 shows the order in which components of the TPS 10 exchange messages across the CI 16. The vertical lines represent the system components, which are the CA 12, the CTM 14, the STM 18, the SA 20, and the DBS 22. The user 11 is shown with the CA 12. Horizontal lines represent messages. A line with one arrow represents a single message with the arrow indicating the direction of the message from the sender to the receiver. A line with two arrows represents bidirectional messaging. The lines with two arrows allow for abstraction of the exchange of multiple messages as one logical exchange.

[0048] In FIG. 2 the messages are shown as part of a single end-to-end activity when no failures occur during the activity. The messages are more fully described as XA commands from a library of subroutines whose interfaces are defined by the X/Open Consortium and whose implementation is supported by many database vendors. The X/Open Consortium is an independent, worldwide, open systems organization supported by most of the world's largest information system suppliers, user organizations, and software companies. The consortium combines emerging standards into a comprehensive, integrated, high-value, and useable system environment called the Common Applications Environment (CAE). This environment covers the standards, above the hardware level, that are needed to support open systems. The CAE environment are defined and contain among other things, an evolving portfolio of practical application programming interfaces (APIs), which significantly enhance the portability of application programs at the source code level, and definitions of and references to, protocols and protocol profiles, which significantly enhance the interoperability of applications.

[0049] The user 11 first inputs a transaction into the CA 12. The CA 12 then sends a transactional request 32, which contains the information for the transaction, to the CTM 14. The CTM 14 resends it to the STM 18. The STM 18 then sends and receives start 34 messages to and from the DBS 22 to start a transaction. After the start 34, the STM 18 sends the request 32 to the SA 20. In response to the request 32, the SA 20 implements a read/write operation 36 with the DBS 22 and manipulates the DBS 22 in an application-specific manner. For example, the application-specific manner could be a banking transaction such as a deposit, withdrawal, transfer between accounts, etc.

[0050] When the manipulation is complete, the SA 20 sends a transactional reply 40 to the STM 18 which suspends the transaction of the DBS 22. After the suspend 38, the STM 18 sends the reply 40 to the CTM 14 as the response to the request 32. The CTM 14 then provides a commit 42 message to the STM 18 to initiate the commit phase of the transaction.

[0051] The commit phase includes a sequence of messages between the STM 18 and the DBS 22. Initially, a resume 44 releases the suspension of the transaction of the DBS 22. The STM 18 then inserts a unique transaction identifier, the universal unique identification (UUID), into a special table in the DBS 22 and sends an end 48 back to the STM 18. If the transaction has been committed successfully, the STM 18 sends a committed 52 message to the CTM 14. The CTM 14 then sends the transactional reply 40, which is the response information for the transaction, back to the CA 12 and thence to the user 11.

[0052] The UUID insertion is necessary to handle failures, or undesirable conditions, that happen during the server-side commit operations. If the CA 12 observes such failures, it does not know, per se, if the transaction was committed before the failure happened. If the transaction was not committed, the CA 12 must retry the commit operation. The STM 18 generates the UUID and inserts it into the DBS 22 as part of the server-side transaction. The CTM 14 can then use this UUID as a handle to the transaction and determine if the transaction has been committed. Since the UUID insertion is part of the transaction, the UUID will be in the database if and only if the transaction has been successfully committed. The DBS 22 and the STM 18 have the message end 48 and the commit 50 transmitted before the STM 18 provides the committed 52 to the CTM 14.

[0053] As can be seen from the above, the method has a two-phase nature. One logical method invocation involves two actual applications of the STM 18 and DBS 22 messages. The first invocation executes the transaction and the second invocation commits it as a completed transaction in the DBS 22. The two-phase nature ensures that a server-side transaction is not committed until the CTM 14 has received the reply of the method execution. If the CTM 14 does not receive the reply 40, it needs to retry the method invocation. The CTM 14 should not perform the retry if the transaction has already committed at the server side since that would cause the transaction to be executed twice.

[0054] The method also permits suspending the transaction at one server and resuming it at another in the event the first server fails after the suspend 38 but before the transaction is resumed.

[0055] Referring now to FIG. 3, therein is shown the operation of the method of the present invention when there is a failure, or undesirable operational condition, during the request 32. The method of operation is depicted as a timeline diagram 60. It should be noted that the present invention is described by its functionality in handling a couple of representative failure scenarios. It would be obvious to those having ordinary skill in the art how the system and method operate without undue experimentation.

[0056] Thus, FIG. 3 illustrates the method of operation when a SA 20-1 fails halfway through a transaction during the request 22. As well known to those skilled in the art, server applications have various means of indicating when they have failed.

[0057] The user 11/CA 12/CTM 14 send the request 32 through the STM 18-1 to SA 20-1 and the STM 18-1 sends start 34 to the DBS 22. If a failure occurs at the SA 20-1 before the transaction has completed, the CTM 14 recognizes a failure 64 which causes the CTM 14 to retry the method invocation. The failure 64 causes the server process to terminate, and the CTM 14 cannot retry the method invocation against the same server application SA 20-1. The CTM 14 needs to retry against a different server.

[0058] Multiple SAs provide the same functionality and CTMs can switch between SAs that provide the same functionality. To switch SAs, the CTM 14 uses the LBS 26 which stores references to the SAs and STMs and keeps track of which SAs provide the same functionality, such as SA 20-2, SA 20-3, etc. When the SAs start up, they register with the LBS 26 under a logical name that captures their functionality. For example, SAs could register under the names of the interface that they support. CA 12 and CTM 14 then use this logical name to access SAs through the LBS 26.

[0059] The primary purpose of the LBS 26, with respect to the functionality of the method of the present invention, is to map these logical names to SAs and thereby manage the redundancy in the middle tier. However, its primary purpose in the TPS 10 is to balance the load among all the SAs that implement the same interface during normal operation.

[0060] After the user 11/CA 12/CTM 14 send out the initial request 32 to the STM 18-1, the STM 18-1 and DBS 22 begin communication with start 34.

[0061] With a failure in SA 20-1 sometime after the start 34, CTM 14 determines that the failure 64 has occurred in the STM 18-1. The CTM 14 then sends a get server 66 message to the LBS 26 which selects a server application which is available and has the same functionality, such as SA 20-2. The CTM 14, without the intervention of the user 11, then sends a message, roll back 68, to the STM 18-2. The STM 18-2 sends a roll back 70 to the DBS 22 in order to free up resources, such as database locks, held by the failed transaction. When the roll back is complete, the DBS 22 is rolled back to the last committed transaction, and the STM 18-2 returns a message, retry 72, back to the CTM 14.

[0062] With the receipt of the retry 72, the CTM 14 proceeds with a retry of the request 32 and, without failures, will proceed with the same transaction, which is the same as shown in FIG. 2 and which utilizes the same messages with the same numbers as shown therein.

[0063] It should be noted that the user 11 and the CA 12 are not involved in the recovery from the failure of the SA so the failure recovery is transparent to them.

[0064] Referring now to FIG. 4, therein is shown the method of the present invention when there is a failure during the commit phase when it is not possible to determine when a server failed. The timeline diagram 80 shows the user 11/CA 12/CTM 14 providing the request 32 to the STM 18-1. After the start 34 from the STM 18-1 to the DBS 22, the STM 18-1 causes the SA 20-1 to execute the request 32 with read/write 36. After the SA 20-1 is complete, it sends the reply 40 to the STM 18-1. The STM 18-1 then suspends the transaction with DBS 22 with suspend 38. The reply 40 is then sent from the STM 18-1 on to the CTM 14. Upon receipt of the reply 40, the CTM 14 sends the commit 42 to the STM 18-1. The resume 44, insert UUID 90, and the end 94 are communicated between the STM 18-1 and the DBS 22, but the SA 20-1 fails before committing the transaction.

[0065] The CTM 14 recognizes the failure 82, and can not determine if the transaction was actually committed in the DBS 22 because the CTM 14 cannot tell exactly when the SA 20-1 failed.

[0066] To determine the outcome of the transaction, the CTM 14 first obtains a new server, SA 20-2, from the LBS 26 using the get server 84 and obtaining the reference to SA 20-285. The CTM 14 then sends a message, check 86, to the STM 18-2 for it to determine the state of the transaction due to the failure. The check 86 will have the UUID of the in-progress transaction when the failure occurred. The STM 18-2 then sends lookup UUID 90 and inspects the table of transaction identifiers in the DBS 22 to determine if the transaction was committed. For example, where the transaction did not commit, the STM 18-2 inserts the transaction identifier into the DBS 22. Assuming that the failure occurred after the end 94, the STM 18-2 will not find the UUID and will determine that the transaction has not yet been committed. The STM 18-2 and the DBS 22 will communicate the commit 50 which will cause the STM 18-2 to send the committed 52 message to the CTM 14. The CTM 14 will then send the reply 40 to the CA 12 and the user 11.

[0067] Again, it should be noted that the above failure is transparent to the user 11 and the CA 12.

[0068] Referring now to FIG. 5, therein is shown a simplified version of the method of the present invention. The timeline diagram 100 depicts a read-only transaction. The two-phase nature of the method previously described ensures that it is always possible to re-execute the method until it is completed without failure and a result has been received. The two-phase nature is necessary to avoid executing the same transaction twice. However, for read-only transactions, the same transaction can be executed multiple times without bringing the system into an inconsistent state. Thus, the two-phase nature is not required to ensure consistent retries. Essentially, the CA 12/CTM 14 provides the request 32 to the STM 18/SA 20 and the start 34, read operations 102, end 48, and commit 50 can occur before the reply 104 is sent back to the CTM 14/CA 12.

[0069] In the TPS 10 of the present invention, the CTM 14 and the STM 18 provide automatic error recovery without client application or human user participation. The CTM 14 and the STM 18 implement a protocol which is hidden from conventional SAs 20 and the CA 12.

[0070] As would be evident to those having ordinary skill in the art, the TPS 10 is capable of handling a plurality of failure modes. For example, failure of a SA 20-1 during the initial request, a failure of the SA 20-1 just before committing, and the failure of the SA 20-1 after committing. Similar failures would be that of the DBS 22 or of the LBS 26 during an update.

[0071] Referring now to FIG. 6, therein is shown a simplified schematic of the TPS 10 showing the possible failure modes and the normal and alternative routings. The CA 12/CTM 14 is connected by an arrow 120 to a failed LBS 26 and by an arrow 121 to a restarted LBS 26. It is also connected by an arrow 122 STM 18-1/SA 20-1 and by an arrow 124 to STM 18-2/SA 20-2. The STM 18-2/SA 20-2 is connected by arrow 126 to a failed DBS 22 and by an arrow 128 to a rolled back DBS 22.

[0072] As a system overview, the SAs, the STMs 18-1, 18-2, etc. register their respective SAs 20-1, 20-2, etc. with the LBS 26 at startup. When the CA 12 makes its first invocation of a SA, the CTM 14 will fetch a reference from the LBS 26 as indicated by the arrow 120. The CTM 14 then invokes the STM 18-1/SA 20-1.

[0073] If there is a failure of the SA 20-1 as shown by the “X”, the SA 20-1/STM 18-1 informs the CTM 14 by the arrow 122. The CTM 14 will then fetch a reference from the LBS 26 to STM 18-2/SA 20-2. The CTM 14 then invokes the SA 20-2 through the STM 182. The STM 18-2 handles the database connections and performs transaction demarcation, while the SA 20-2 directly performs the actual manipulation of the database. The manipulation can be performed in a number of different languages such as Standard Query Language, SQL.

[0074] In the event of a failure of the DBS 22 as shown by the “X”, the DBS 22 will provide an indication of its failure by one of a number of mechanisms, which are well known to those skilled in the art, back to the STM 18-2 as shown by the arrow 126. The DBS 22 will also restart itself, or rollback, to its last committed transaction. After the DBS 22 is restarted, the STM 18-2 will cause the communication to be established with the DBS 22 by the arrow 128.

[0075] After fetching the initial reference from the LBS 26, the CTM 14 uses this reference until it becomes invalid. In particular, the CTM 14 only communicates with the LBS initially and after failures, as indicated by the arrow 120. If there is a failure of the LBS 26 as shown by the “X”, the references will be maintained in the LBS 26 and the CTM 14 will retry after the LBS 26 is restarted. There will be a failure over to the LBS 26, which then begins to supply references in the event of other component failures.

[0076] Again, it should be noted that the user 11 and the CA 12 are not involved in the recovery from the failure.

[0077] FIG. 6 is the high-level architecture and the arrows demonstrate common call paths. It is important to note that the CA 12 and the SA 20 need to know nothing about the LBS 26, the CTM 14, the STM 18, or the DBS API.

[0078] The client transparency protocol is implementable directly in and by the CA and SAs. However, it is more desirable from a customer point of view to be implemented so that it is transparent to the user and will require little change to the CA and SA. This would make the client transparency system transportable and implementable into existing systems.

[0079] In the TPS 10, the failure recovery logic is completely separated from the application logic, while there is a well-defined interface on the SA side. This means on the CA side, the application code is not aware of the failure recovery at any time. If the CA 12 is exposed to failure (which happens rarely), it can be assumed that the failure is serious and encompasses several entities of the TPS 10 such that human user intervention is actually required.

[0080] While the invention has been described in conjunction with a specific best mode, it is to be understood that many alternatives, modifications, and variations will be apparent to those skilled in the art in light of the aforegoing description. Accordingly, it is intended to embrace all such alternatives, modifications, and variations which fall within the spirit and scope of the included claims. All matters set forth herein or shown in the accompanying drawings are to be interpreted in an illustrative and non-limiting sense.