Principles of Transaction Processing, Second Edition (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems) [Paperback]

Philip A. Bernstein (Author), Eric Newcomer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 23, 2009 | ISBN-10: 1558606238 | ISBN-13: 978-1558606234 | Edition: 2

Principles of Transaction Processing is a clear, concise guide for anyone involved in developing applications, evaluating products, designing systems, or engineering products. This book provides an understanding of the internals of transaction processing systems, describing how they work and how best to use them. It includes the architecture of Web Application Servers, transactional communications paradigms, and mechanisms for recovering from transaction and system failures.

The use of transaction processing systems has changed in the years since publication of the first edition. Electronic commerce has become a major focus for business data processing investments, from banking and stock purchase on the web, to eBay auctions, to corporate database management. New standards, new technology and products, and new languages allow web services and SOA to become the leading style of design for enterprise applications. And with the help of this book and its rich examples, you will be able to produce the state-of-the-art applications discussed within.

For more information check out Eric Newcomer's blog:

http://ericnewcomer.wordpress.com/2009/05/15/what-we-learned-writing-the-second-edition-of-the-tp-book/

Complete revision of the classic "non mathematical" transaction processing reference for systems professionals.

Updated to focus on the needs of transaction processing via the Internet-- the main focus of business data processing investments, via web application servers, SOA, and important new TP standards.

Retains the practical, non-mathematical, but thorough conceptual basis of the first edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

What do reserving a seat on an airplane, buying a movie ticket over the Internet, and launching a missile all have in common? Principles of Transaction Processing for the Systems Professional explains that these and many other computerized tasks require the use of transaction processing (TP). Authors Philip Bernstein and Eric Newcomer demonstrate that this previously specialized area of systems design is becoming more important with the growth of Internet commerce. This theoretically astute and practical-minded book begins with a description of the principles of successful transaction management. (The so-called "ACID" test requires that transactions be atomistic, consistent, isolated, and durable.) The authors illustrate the principles with real-world examples of transactions in everyday life, such as ATM systems and the stock market. Bernstein and Newcomer then outline how transaction processing monitors work and discuss some of the details, such as interface definition languages, which let disparate computers communicate, and remote procedure calls.

The text also explores some real-world TP monitor products, from IBM's CICS to Tuxedo to Microsoft Transaction Server. While transaction processing has been a part of mainframe system design for decades, it has recently become relevant for commerce and everyday database access on the Web. The authors look at today's Web servers--Microsoft Internet Information Server and Netscape's FastTrack Server--and show how they manage transactions. Additional chapters move back into the theoretical, with descriptions of database transactions and strategies for replicating data. The text finishes up with some predictions on where this vital and established technology is headed. This book is a must for any developer who is designing a Web site that connects users to data in a distributed environment. It's also a definitive guide to an intriguing area of computing. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"The best introduction to transaction processing systems I have ever read."
—K.Torp, ACM Computing Reviews, November 1997 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann; 2 edition (June 23, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558606238
• ISBN-13: 978-1558606234
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 1.1 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #421,052 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent intro to transaction principles November 18, 2004

By Bill

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book was written in 1997 which is often considered ancient in "Internet-years" but it is still very relevant because it focuses on fundamental principles of transaction processing (TP) rather than the latest whiz-bang technologies that optimize TP.

For those of you who aren't TP experts, a transaction is a computer operation that meets the ACID test. ACID here stands for:

Atomic - the steps that comprise transaction succeed or fail as one, there is no partial success.

Consistent - the internal data structures of the system(s) remain consistent with business rules.

Isolated - the data read or manipulated by the transaction is not altered during the duration of the transaction's execution.

Durable - the results of the transaction are persisted

Why does this matter to the system user or stakeholder? The canonical example is that of the ATM machine (or the "handy bank" if you're Australian). When you withdrawl money from an ATM, it has to go out and validate you have enough funds to meet the withdrawl, reserve those funds, and dispense cash - all within the same transaction. If the ATM failed after your bank account had been debited but before you'd gotten your money, you'd be very upset; conversely if the cash was dispensed but the debit procedure failed, the bank would be very upset. Ted provides very amusing analogy for this using a wedding ceremony but you can read that in his book.

There's a whole lot more to transaction processing beyond ACID and the ATM example, including two-phase commit (TPC), high-availability, massive concurrency, and crash recovery. To find out about all of these topics, read the book.... One thing to remember though is that most application developers will never have to deal with the extremely complex details of providing a working and robust transaction management implementation, but like any technology it's important to understand the technology's fundamental principles and mechanics to effectively use it.

The book itself is extremely dense. The content of the book is "only" 324 pages long but covers a large amount of ground in a good amount of detail. Definitely read in a quiet place free of interruptions with a strong cup of coffee.

One shortcoming of the book is that it was written in 1997 so it doesn't cover TP implementations in Java (e.g. JTA, EJBs, etc.) but it was nice to finally find out what the heck IBM's CICS and IMS products are.

Interestingly enough, I have never had to deal with complex transaction processing (i.e. two-phase commit) in my short IBM career. This is probably because I've worked on business-to-consumer (B2C) applications where only one data source is involved rather than a business-to-business system where multiple data sources are involved. I'll have to ask the B2B guys if they get heavy into two-phase commit or if it's not an issue.

The reason I read this book is because I've always been a bit mystified by Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs). When I joined IBM, I knew the word, but I was not familiar with such topics as object-relational persistence, object remoting, and transaction processing, so to me EJBs were simply things that took four classes/interfaces to do what I could do in one simple POJO. Ted Neward, in a very interesting web interview on the Serverside.com mentioned that he used to think EJBs were completely worthless, but during the process of writing Effective Enterprise Java came to realize that they were not worthless but rather over-marketed. He said that they should have been called Transactional JavaBeans rather than Enterprise JavaBeans because transactions are what EJBs did very well. So, hearing this from Ted I decided to read a book on fundamentals of transaction processing, so that I could understand EJBs better. Now that I've read all about TP principles, I pick Richard Monson-Haefel's book again, and all of a sudden EJBs start to make a lot more sense. Read more ›

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars clear, concise and practical January 13, 2002

By Boris Aleksandrovsky

Format:Paperback

I have been using this book in the advanced undegraduate class series on Transaction Processing. Since this book, as emphasised in the preface has eveolved from the class material, it is exemplerary suited for that purpose. But not only in academia, this book has enought coverage to provide a first reference point in such topics as TP monitors, queue design, locking solutions, HA and recovery in databases, 2PC. Additionally, VERY usefull (if somewhat dated) industry survey of Transaction Monitors (this will really benefit to the other edition perhaps including app servers and EJBs). Highly recommended.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A very good introduction into TP concepts March 25, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

This book is a very good introduction to transaction processing. It did a wonderful job of explaining concepts, and gave concise, clear examples. I would recommend this book as a primary text for anyone wanting to get an overview of the main TP ideas, with the Gray & Reuter book as a supplemental text. The book is very readable, too.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Clearly written, understandable intro to a complex subject July 14, 2002

By Mike Tarrani HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback

Transaction processing is a daunting topic, and this is one of the few books that provides the basics in a clear, understandable manner without overwhelming the reader. Most of the book is focused solely on transaction processing, but it touches on queuing as well, which makes it the ideal first book for anyone who is seeking details that extend beyond pure TP.

I like the way that the authors use real products to reinforce key points made throughout the book. While some of the products are no longer mainstream (indeed, some were never mainstream), the fact that real world implementations are used makes the information realistic. If you are using CICS, MQSeries, Tuxedo or similar products this book will have even more value. I also like the way difficult topics, such as locking, high availability and database recovery are given entire chapters because these topics need to be thoroughly understood in order to completely understand transaction processing.

After reading this book you will be armed with sufficient knowledge to make intelligent choices in selecting the right approach for transaction processing in a system design, or to understand the nuts and bolts of any TPM that you are supporting. I also agree with Cem Kaner's earlier comments that this book is an ideal resource for software test professionals who need to understand the entire environment that they will be testing. If you want to go deeper into TP, I recommend "Transactional Information Systems: Theory, Algorithms, and the Practice of Concurrency Control" by Gerhard Weikum and Gottfried Vossen, which drills much further down into the details of both transaction processing and queuing systems.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading for back office server developers December 27, 2000

By V. Ravindran

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book has a special place in my heart, since I read it front to back on a plane before an interview with my current employer. The information I picked up was timely to say the least.

Even if you are not interviewing for job, this book will be a very useful for those unfamiliar with basic to intermediate TP concepts. While the products the book covers are not as snazzy as the OTS systems and EJB, they are the rocks that are keeping everything working today while these newer technologies get their kinks worked out.

This should be required reading for any project that is developing a big system. I read it again recently and found that I had missed a lot from the first read. To me, this book is as important as the Design Patterns book.