Tech Report CS-91-63

The Whole Transaction Model for Heterogeneous Multidatabases

Marian H. Nodine and Patrice A. Tegan

November 1991

Abstract:

A heterogeneous multidatabase allows a user to manipulate data contained in a collection of individual, autonomous databases managed by different database management systems. In this paper, we introduce the {\em whole transaction model} for multidatabases. This model is distinguished from other models in that it does not require the global transactions on the multidatabase to be atomic. Rather, the user specifies the atomic steps required to do the multidatabase transaction but different multidatabase transactions can interleave their steps arbitrarily.

This paper presents a method for defining global transactions in the whole transaction model and discusses concurrency control and related issues. We also discuss an implementation of this model which includes a language for defining transactions in the heterogeneous multidatabase, and a design for a database server which executes these transactions and enforces concurrency control and compensation-based recovery.

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