Specification and execution of transactions for advanced database applications

Autonomous multidatabases, Computer Aided Design (CAD) databases, and Object Oriented Databases have requirements that cODstitute a few examples of systems where traditional transactions may not be sufficient. Users of these advanced applications are more sophisticated than users envisioned for On Line Transaction Processing (OLTP) applications a few decades ago. The need to relax the properties of complex database transactions is urgent. Frameworks for fiexible transaction systems are needed. This paper is a step towards this objective. This paper addresses the formalization of a new transaction model called Flex along with execution control and analysis protocols. The algorithm is formalized through the use of Predicate Transition Nets (PTN) and reachability trees. -This research was supported, in part, by a gra.Ilt from the Software Engineering Research Center at Purdue University, a Nalional Science Foundation Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (NSF Granl No. ECD-8913133). IUniversity of 'JUnis, Faculty of Science, Tunisia.