TY - JOUR

T1 - Exploring delay-aware transactions in heterogeneous mobile environments

AU - Ayari, B.

AU - Khelil, A.

AU - Suri, Neeraj

PY - 2009

Y1 - 2009

N2 - In the expanding e-society, mobile embedded systems are increasingly used to support transactions such as for banking or database applications. Such systems entail a range of heterogeneous entities - both the devices and the networks connecting them. While these systems are exposed to frequent and varied perturbations, the support of atomic distributed transactions is still a fundamental requirement to achieve consistent decisions. Guaranteeing atomicity and high performance in traditional fixed wired networks is based on the assumption that node and link failures occur rarely. This assumption is often not supported in current and upcoming mobile environments where the heterogeneity and mobility often result in link and node failures as a dominant operational scenario. In order to continue guaranteeing strict atomicity while providing for high efficiency (low resource blocking time of transaction participants and message overhead) and acceptable commit rate, transactional fault-tolerance techniques need to be revisited perhaps at the cost of transaction execution time. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive classification of perturbations for a wide range of mobile environments including infrastructure-based, ad-hoc, and hybrid environments. We also investigate the impact of these perturbations on the design of mobile transactions. In particular we argue for the delay-awareness of mobile transactions to allow for the fault-tolerance mechanisms to ensure resilience to the various and frequent perturbations. © 2009 ACADEMY PUBLISHER.

AB - In the expanding e-society, mobile embedded systems are increasingly used to support transactions such as for banking or database applications. Such systems entail a range of heterogeneous entities - both the devices and the networks connecting them. While these systems are exposed to frequent and varied perturbations, the support of atomic distributed transactions is still a fundamental requirement to achieve consistent decisions. Guaranteeing atomicity and high performance in traditional fixed wired networks is based on the assumption that node and link failures occur rarely. This assumption is often not supported in current and upcoming mobile environments where the heterogeneity and mobility often result in link and node failures as a dominant operational scenario. In order to continue guaranteeing strict atomicity while providing for high efficiency (low resource blocking time of transaction participants and message overhead) and acceptable commit rate, transactional fault-tolerance techniques need to be revisited perhaps at the cost of transaction execution time. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive classification of perturbations for a wide range of mobile environments including infrastructure-based, ad-hoc, and hybrid environments. We also investigate the impact of these perturbations on the design of mobile transactions. In particular we argue for the delay-awareness of mobile transactions to allow for the fault-tolerance mechanisms to ensure resilience to the various and frequent perturbations. © 2009 ACADEMY PUBLISHER.

KW - Dependability

KW - Mobile database systems

KW - Transactions

KW - Database applications

KW - Distributed transaction

KW - E-society

KW - Fault tolerance mechanisms

KW - High efficiency

KW - Link failures

KW - Message overhead

KW - Mobile environments

KW - Mobile transaction

KW - Node failure

KW - Operational scenario

KW - Resource blocking

KW - Transaction execution

KW - Wired networks

KW - Embedded systems

KW - Fault tolerance

KW - Heterogeneous networks

KW - Quality assurance

KW - Wireless networks

KW - Database systems

U2 - 10.4304/jsw.4.7.634-643

DO - 10.4304/jsw.4.7.634-643

M3 - Journal article

VL - 4

SP - 634

EP - 643

JO - Journal of Software

JF - Journal of Software

SN - 1796-217X

IS - 7

ER -