Principles of Transaction Processing

by Philip A. Bernstein, Eric Newcomer

Principles of Transaction Processing is a comprehensive guide to developing applications, designing systems, and evaluating engineering products. The book provides detailed discussions of the internal workings of transaction processing systems, and it discusses how these systems work and how best to utilize them. It covers the architecture of Web Application Servers and transactional communication paradigms.The book is divided into 11 chapters, which cover the Overview of transaction processing application and system structureSoftware abstractions found in transaction processing systemsArchitecture of multitier applications and the functions of transactional middleware and database serversQueued transaction processing and its internals, with IBM's Websphere MQ and Oracle's Stream AQ as examplesBusiness process management and its mechanismsDescription of the two-phase locking function, B-tree locking and multigranularity locking used in SQL database systems and nested transaction lockingSystem recovery and its failuresTwo-phase commit protocolComparison between the tradeoffs of replicating servers versus replication resourcesTransactional middleware products and standardsFuture trends, such as cloud computing platforms, composing scalable systems using distributed computing components, the use of flash storage to replace disks and data streams from sensor devices as a source of transaction requests. The text meets the needs of systems professionals, such as IT application programmers who construct TP applications, application analysts, and product developers. The book will also be invaluable to students and novices in application programming.

Genres: Computer Science

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Case · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book needs a rewrite. There are some sections with solid material: chapters 8 and 9 on two-phase commit and replication. The rest are a hodge-podge, mixing very simple material with very complex material, making it a rough read for readers at any level. Many of the earlier chapters focus on or are written with very old technologies in mind. This makes the book hard to relate to when coming from a modern TP stack.

The writers were not kind to me from a time-perspective either - it is rather repetitive in places and in general lacks concision.

If there was any other book on transaction processing that came higher-rated, I would check it out first. But I don't know of any.