Transaction Manager Failover: A Case Study Using JBOSS Application Server

The extension of object-oriented middleware to component-oriented middleware is now commonplace, with many distributed applications structured as remote clients invoking services constructed from components. An advantage components offer over objects is that only the business logic of an application needs to be addressed by a programmer. An application server hosts components, managing supporting services to provide the execution environment for components. A transaction manager within an application server assumes responsibility for managing the execution of transactions. Failure of an application server instance could result in abortion of ongoing transactions that are being managed by the transaction manager on that server. This paper describes, for the case of Enterprise Java Bean components and JBoss application server, how replication for availability can be supported to tolerate application server/transaction manager failures. Replicating the state associated with the progression of a transaction (i.e., which phase of two-phase commit is enacted and the transactional resources involved) provides an opportunity to continue a transaction using a backup transaction manager if the transaction manager of the primary fails. © 2006 University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Printed and published by the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Computing Science, Claremont Tower, Claremont Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, England. Bibliographical details KISTIJANTORO, A. I., MORGAN, G., SHRIVASTAVA, S. K. Transaction Manager Failover: A Case Study Using JBOSS Application Server [By] A. I. Kistijantoro, G. Morgan, S. K. Shrivastava Newcastle upon Tyne: University of Newcastle upon Tyne: Computing Science, 2006. (University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Computing Science, Technical Report Series, No. CS-TR-975) Added entries UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE Computing Science. Technical Report Series. CS-TR-975 Abstract The extension of object-oriented middleware to component-oriented middleware is now commonplace, with many distributed applications structured as remote clients invoking services constructed from components. An advantage components offer over objects is that only the business logic of an application needs to be addressed by a programmer. An application server hosts components, managing supporting services to provide the execution environment for components. A transaction manager within an application server assumes responsibility for managing the execution of transactions. Failure of an application server instance could result in abortion of ongoing transactions that are being managed by the transaction manager on that server. This paper describes, for the case of Enterprise Java Bean components and JBoss application server, how replication for availability can be supported to tolerate application server/transaction manager failures. Replicating the state associated with the progression of a transaction (i.e., which phase of two-phase commit is enacted and the transactional resources involved) provides an opportunity to continue a transaction using a backup transaction manager if the transaction manager of the primary fails.The extension of object-oriented middleware to component-oriented middleware is now commonplace, with many distributed applications structured as remote clients invoking services constructed from components. An advantage components offer over objects is that only the business logic of an application needs to be addressed by a programmer. An application server hosts components, managing supporting services to provide the execution environment for components. A transaction manager within an application server assumes responsibility for managing the execution of transactions. Failure of an application server instance could result in abortion of ongoing transactions that are being managed by the transaction manager on that server. This paper describes, for the case of Enterprise Java Bean components and JBoss application server, how replication for availability can be supported to tolerate application server/transaction manager failures. Replicating the state associated with the progression of a transaction (i.e., which phase of two-phase commit is enacted and the transactional resources involved) provides an opportunity to continue a transaction using a backup transaction manager if the transaction manager of the primary fails. About the author Achmad Kistijantoro is a PhD student in the School of Computing Science at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Graham Morgan is a lecturer in the School of Computing Science at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. His interests are in the area of distributed applications, including web services, networked virtual environments, fault tolerance and group communications. Santosh Shrivastava was appointed a Professor of Computing Science, University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1986; he leads the Distributed Systems Research Group. He received his Ph.D. in computing science from Cambridge in 1975. His research interests are in the areas of distributed systems, fault tolerance and application of transaction and workflow technologies to e-commerce, virtual organisations and Grid-based systems. His group is well known as the developers of an innovative distributed transaction system, called Arjuna and a CORBA based dependable workflow system for the Internet. He has led and managed several European Union funded, multipartner research projects, beginning with BROADCAST (1992) to a project on complex service provisioning on the Internet, TAPAS, that started in 2002. Together with his colleagues he set up a company in 1998 in Newcastle to productise Arjuna transaction and workflow technologies. Now based within the University campus, Arjuna Technologies is a centre of excellence in transaction technologies and is focusing on building products to support reliable Web Services-based applications. Close industry-university collaboration is guaranteed, and research projects on E-commerce platform and services have been initiated. Suggested keywords AVAILABILITY, APPLICATION SERVERS, COMPONENTS, ENTERPRISE JAVA BEANS, FAULT TOLERANCE, MIDDLEWARE, REPLICATION, TRANSACTIONS Transaction Manager Failover: A Case Study Using JBOSS Application Server A. I. Kistijantoro, G. Morgan, S. K. Shrivastava School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK