JPH10149306A - Service cooperation device and its generation device - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a service coordinator by controlling the execution of transactions and to satisfy the inter-transaction limit condition that is designated for every composite transaction when the execution requests are given to plural services and a group of processing (composite transaction) is carried out as a whole. SOLUTION: Plural coordinators a 130 set on a network 100 are expressed in a pair of a set of transactions designated to services 140 to 142 and a set of inter-transaction limit conditions. Then the execution of the transaction set is controlled to satisfy the limit condition set. Thus, a coordinator 130 is obtained with no dependence on the services 140 to 142 and accordingly can be offered as a general-purpose service in the network 100. Furthermore, the concentration of load can be evaded because a coordinator factory 120 produces the coordinators 130 for every composite transaction.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a service system on a network, and in particular, when a request is made to execute a process (transaction) for a plurality of services provided on the network, the service is linked to the service. When executing a group of processes (composite transaction), a service coordinator (coordinator) that controls the execution of the plurality of transactions and guarantees that a constraint between a plurality of transactions specified in advance for each composite transaction is satisfied. , Its generating device, and a service system.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, various reservations for hotels and air tickets,
Various services, such as credit checks, have appeared on networks such as the Internet. By combining these various services, it has become possible for ordinary people to make online reservations for all tickets necessary for travel without going through a travel agency, for example. However, since ordinary users do not have the authority of temporary hold as travel agents have, for example, once a hotel is reserved, it is not possible to cancel the hotel even if the airline ticket cannot be secured, or In some cases, you had to pay a fee. In such a method, when the reservation conditions are complicated, it is difficult to make all reservations necessary for a combination satisfying those conditions. In addition, when viewed from the service side of a hotel or the like, if unspecified number of users are allowed to temporarily suppress service resources such as guest rooms so as not to give such disadvantages to users, it is malicious. The user intentionally temporarily restrains the guest room to the limit of the temporary restraint period, resulting in enormous damage. Therefore, in the related art, service reservations have been made through a reliable third party such as a travel agency without the user directly making a reservation for the service. In the case of a travel booking, it is possible to ask such an agency to guarantee the consistency of multiple transactions. However, at present, with the rapid spread of networks, it has become possible to provide various services that did not exist conventionally. When these services are combined to form a single service, a general-purpose service that can handle any combination of services as well as guaranteeing the consistency of transactions related to travel business like a travel agency A service that guarantees consistency between multiple transactions is required. However, conventionally, no such service exists.

Conventionally, many transaction processing systems have been proposed as a method for guaranteeing the consistency of processing between processes executed in a distributed manner. For example, a standardization organization OMG related to object technology defines a method for realizing synchronous updating of resources held by a distributed object in the Distributed Object Transaction Service (OTS) specification. In the OTS, a special object called a coordinator is defined. This coordinator centrally manages the state of a distributed object (transaction object) holding a resource whose consistency is to be guaranteed, and commits or rolls back the distributed object. Controls the consistency of the transaction object. However, such a conventional transaction processing system only guarantees that all of a plurality of distributed processes are successful or that all of the processes are not executed. This does not guarantee consistency between transactions. Conventionally, there has not been a function provided with a function capable of guaranteeing consistency between transactions having more complicated constraints, such as performing another alternative processing when a part fails. Further, a system that expresses a complicated transaction relationship by a logical expression and controls the execution of the transaction so as to satisfy the constraint is disclosed in, for example, Ahmed K. et al. E
“Database Trans” edited by lmgarmid
action Models for Advance
d Applications "(Morg, 1995)
an Kaufmann). These provide elemental technologies that are effective to achieve the above objectives, but do not assume that the coordinator is operated as a network service, so the method of collecting brokerage fees when using the coordinator, The authentication mechanism between unspecified number of users and services has not been studied yet.

[0004]

As described above, in the prior art, processing (transaction) execution requests are made to a plurality of services provided on a network, and a whole processing (composite transaction) is performed.
However, there is no method that can guarantee that the constraints between a plurality of transactions specified in advance are satisfied. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION An object of the present invention is to solve the conventional problems as described above, and when executing composite transactions, control the execution of those transactions, and restrict constraints between a plurality of transactions specified in advance in units of composite transactions. It is an object of the present invention to provide a service cooperation device that guarantees satisfaction, and a generation device thereof.

[0005]

In order to achieve the above object, in a service coordination apparatus (hereinafter, referred to as a coordinator) of the present invention, a user sets a set of transactions for each service and a constraint condition between the transactions. Given a compound transaction represented by a set and a set, means for performing a transaction execution request to each service in an appropriate order based on the constraints,
A means to monitor the status of the submitted transaction and, if some or all of the transactions fail, request the execution of an alternative transaction and, if necessary, instruct a rollback for the already submitted transaction Means for determining a set of successful transactions that finally satisfies the above-mentioned constraint condition by means of these means, and processing the composite transaction by means of committing these transactions. The coordinator generation apparatus of the present invention is also characterized in that the coordinator having the above configuration is dynamically generated for each of one or a plurality of composite transactions given by a user, and is distributed and arranged on a network as required ( Hereinafter, a device that generates a service cooperation device is referred to as a coordinator factory.) In addition, the coordinator factory having the above configuration holds a list of identifiers of users who have registered use, generates a coordinator only for users who have registered use based on this list, and makes it available. Also features. Further, the coordinator having the above configuration is characterized in that it holds a list of identifiers of services for which service registration has been performed, and requests execution of only transactions for services included in this list. Further, the coordinator or coordinator factory having the above-described configuration is characterized in that instead of performing use registration or service registration, an intermediary fee is charged dynamically using electronic cash or the like.

[0006]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below in detail with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is an overall block diagram of a coordinator showing one embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing a procedure in which one composite transaction is processed in FIG. As shown in FIG. 1, in an initial state, a user 110 of the present system, a coordinator factory (coordinator generation device) 120, and a service 1
40, 141 and 142 are connected (see the solid line).
Here, the user 110 may be a customer who actually requests a reservation, or may be a service in which some services are combined to provide a more advanced service to another user. In the present invention, the user 110 does not refer to the person itself, but refers to a facility including a terminal owned by the user, and the services 140 to 142 also refer to facilities that provide the service, not the service itself. I have. FIG.
, The user 110 first wants to use a set of transactions {T1... T
n} and a set {C1... Cm} of constraints between those transactions are generated (step 201). Each transaction T1... Tn has an identifier SID of a service and an identifier RI of a process requested to the service.
Three sets of D and parameter P << SID, RID, P >>
Is given. The SID is also included in the network address, and is used alone to specify an instance of a service on the network.

[0007] Constraints C1 between transactions ...
For example, as a result of executing each transaction Ti (1 <i <n), true is assigned to Cm and false is assigned to Cm as a result of execution of each transaction Ti (1 <i <n). A constraint expressed by a logical sum or a logical product such as T2∨T3, or T1 → T2 (where T1 is T2
(Representing that the transaction is executed before the transaction), or that the parameter value P obtained as a result of executing each transaction must fall within a certain range. The user 110 sends the user identifier UID and the encrypted authentication data UAUT 'to the coordinator factory 120 to generate the coordinator 130 and the coordinator identifier CID.
Is requested (step 202). Since the identifiers UID and CID also include the network address, the user 110 and the coordinator 130 can each be specified on the network. The coordinator factory 120 receives the received user identifier UI
Authentication is confirmed using D and the encrypted authentication data UAUT '. Although a method of authentication confirmation is not described here, since many authentication services have already spread on networks such as the Internet, they can be used. In addition, the coordinator factory 120 has paid the fee in advance and holds the list 121 of the identifiers UID of the registered users, and based on this, determines whether or not each user has registered the usage. judge.

[0008] If this determination is successful, the coordinator factory 120 sets the coordinator 130 to 1
And the identifier CID is returned to the user. In the present embodiment, one coordinator 130 is thus generated for each composite transaction. In FIG. 1, the newly generated coordinator 130 is indicated by a broken line. Coordinator
Reference numeral 121 in the factory 120 denotes a list of registered users, and reference numeral 122 denotes a list of registered services. Reference numeral 131 in the coordinator 130 denotes a list (copy) of registered services; 132, a transaction storage unit;
Is a constraint condition storage unit, and 134 is a transaction execution state storage unit. In another embodiment, the coordinator factory 120 maintains a list 122 of services that have been pre-paid and registered for service provision, make a copy 131 of the list, and pass it on to the coordinator 130. . The list 131 is used when the coordinator 130 determines an execution transaction in step 204 of FIG. 2 described later, and restricts the execution of transactions for services not included in the list 131. In yet another example of execution, instead of restricting the use of the coordinator 130 to the users or services registered in advance as described above, the usage of the coordinator is charged to the users or services using electronic cash. In this way, it becomes possible for an unspecified user to request cooperation of processing combining unspecified services.

In FIG. 2, a user 110 has an identifier CI
Step 2 for the coordinator 130 specified in D
Set of transactions generated in 01 {T1... T
n} and a set of constraints {C1... Cm} are transmitted (step 203). The coordinator 130 receives the set of transactions {T1... Tn} and the set of constraints {C1... Cm} and stores them in the transaction storage unit 132 and the constraint storage unit 133, respectively. Next, the coordinator 130 determines a set of candidates CS = {Ti... Tj} that can satisfy the set of constraints {C1... Cm} with a subset of the set of transactions {T1. And each Ti ... T
service providing j (specified by SID) 14
For 0 to 142, the process identifier RID and parameter P included in the corresponding transaction, the identifier CID of the coordinator 130, and the encrypted user 11
0 authentication information CAUA 'and the identifier UI of the user 110
D and a set of encrypted authentication information UAUT 'of the user 110 << RID, P, CID, CAUT', UID, UA
UT '>> and request execution (step 20).
4). For a method of efficiently determining the set CS,
Although not specifically described in the present embodiment, since there have been many studies on the problem of constraint satisfaction, the results of those studies can be used.

Each of the services 140, 141, 142 receives a transaction processing request sent from the coordinator 130 (RID, P, CID, CAUT ', UID,
UAUT '>> is accepted, authentication is confirmed, and if it is determined that the transaction is not an unauthorized transaction, the processing is executed and the execution result is returned to the coordinator 130 (step 205). However, at this stage, the set of candidates Ti... Tj is kept in a revocable state until a final commit instruction is issued. Specifically, if the transaction updates the data resource, a tentative update, a compensation transaction that locks the resource's original and cancels the effect of the transaction, such as updating the copy or subtracting from the addition. Can be defined, even if the resource is actually updated, the coordinator 130
Service 1 provides a mechanism that can execute this compensation transaction when it receives a rollback instruction from
There is a method of preparing them in 40 to 142. The coordinator 130 stores the execution result from each of the services 140 to 142 in the transaction execution state storage unit 134,
When the execution failure of one or more transactions is returned, or when the execution results of all the transactions for which processing has been requested are completed, it is checked whether or not the constraint conditions C1... Cm are satisfied (step 206).

As a result of the check, if even one constraint cannot be satisfied, the coordinator 130 determines a new candidate set CS ′ = {Tp... Tq} (step 207). If a new candidate set that has not been confirmed in the past cannot be found, an error occurs. However, such errors can generally be avoided if the transactions that generally succeed always are combined with the constraints by OR. Specifically, it can be avoided by defining a candidate set consisting only of transactions that notify the user that "reservation failed" to be the lowest candidate set of the priority order that satisfies the constraints. . Then, the coordinator 130 determines that ｛x | x∈CS and
The rollback is instructed for the element of {x {CS '}, and the execution of the element of {x | {x} CS and x {CS'} is requested to each service 140 to 142 (step 207). . The symbol ┓ in the above equation means negation of ∈ (inclusive). Each service 140-142,
Rollback or execution of a new transaction is performed according to the instruction of the coordinator 130, and the result is returned to the coordinator 130 (step 20).
8). When executing a new transaction,
As in step 205, the execution of those transactions remains undoable until a final commit instruction is issued.

The coordinator 130 replaces the old candidate transaction set CS with the new candidate transaction set CS ', and returns to step 206 again (step 209). Steps 206 to 209 are repeated again. When all the constraint conditions C1... Cm can be finally satisfied, the process proceeds to the next step 210. The coordinator 130 determines the C processed by each service 140-142.
A commit instruction is issued to the transaction that is an element of S (step 210). Each service 140-1
42 performs a commit process according to the commit instruction requested by the coordinator 130 (step 211).
More specifically, the temporarily updated resource is actually updated. The coordinator 130 has services 140 to
After confirming that the commit processing of 142 has been completed normally, the self is deleted (step 212). Thus, the process ends.

As described above, in the present invention, a plurality of service cooperation processes 130 on the network 100 are defined as a set of transactions {T1... Tn} for each of the services 140 to 142 and a constraint condition between those transactions. By expressing in the form of a set with the set {C1... Cm}, this constraint set {C1.
transaction set {T1 ...
• Control the execution of Tn｝. Thus, the coordinator 130 can be realized independently of the services 140 to 142. As a result, the coordinator 130 can be provided as a service on the general-purpose network 100. In the present invention, the coordinator factory 12
0 dynamically generates the coordinator 130 for each of one or a plurality of composite transactions and distributes the coordinator 130 on the network 100, so that the load on the coordinator 130 can be prevented from being concentrated. In the present invention, the coordinator factory 12
0, the generation of the coordinator 130 can be limited to only those registrants by holding the list 121 of the identifiers of the registrants. Therefore, when the coordinator 130 is provided as a service on the network 100, This makes it possible to collect usage fees. In the present invention, in the coordinator 130,
Since the list 131 of service provider registrant identifiers is retained, transactions to be executed can be limited to only transactions for these registered services 140 to 142. As a result, when the coordinator 130 is provided as a service on the network 100, To
Usage fees can be collected by the service registration fee. Further, in the present invention, instead of performing the use registration or the service registration in the coordinator 130 or the coordinator factory 120, the usage fee is dynamically charged by electronic cash or the like, so that the network 1
In the case where the coordinator 130 is provided as a service on 00, a service usage fee can be collected.

[0014]

As described above, according to the present invention,
When there is a request to execute a process (transaction) for a plurality of services provided on the network, and when a group of processes (composite transaction) is performed as a whole, the execution of those transactions is controlled and a composite transaction is performed. It is possible to realize a service cooperation device (coordinator) that guarantees that a constraint between a plurality of transactions specified in advance in units is satisfied.
As a result, for example, ordinary people can make online reservations for all tickets necessary for travel without going through a travel agency, and can be applied to various fields.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is an overall configuration diagram of a system including a service cooperation device (coordinator) according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart when a single composite transaction is processed in the coordinator in FIG. 1;

[Explanation of symbols]

100: network, 110: service user, 13
0: coordinator, 120: coordinator factory, 121: list of registered users, 122: list of registered services, 131: list (copy) of registered services, 132: transaction storage unit, 133: constraint condition storage unit, 134 ... Transaction execution status storage unit, 140 to 142 ... service.

Claims (5)

[Claims] 1. A distributed processing system for processing a plurality of services connected to a network, a transaction storage unit storing a plurality of transactions requesting processing for the services, and information on constraint conditions between the transactions. And a first means for requesting each of the services to execute a transaction in an appropriate order based on the constraint condition, and monitoring the status of the requested transaction, and A second means for storing a transaction, and when a part or all of the transaction fails to satisfy the constraint condition, requests execution of an alternative transaction and, if necessary, performs rollback of the already executed transaction. A third means for giving an instruction, and a transaction that finally satisfies the above constraint And determining a set, service cooperation apparatus which comprises a fourth means for committing the transaction. 2. The service cooperation apparatus according to claim 1,
A service coordination device generation device, wherein the coordination device is dynamically generated for each of a plurality of coordination processes, and the service coordination device is distributed and arranged on a network. 3. The generation apparatus for a service cooperation apparatus according to claim 2, further comprising: a list storage unit for holding a list of identifiers of users who have registered for use in said generation apparatus;
A service coordination device generating apparatus, wherein the service coordination device is generated only for a user who has registered for use based on the list, and is made available to the user. 4. The service cooperation device according to claim 1, further comprising: a list storage unit for holding a list of service identifiers for which service provision registration has been performed, included in the service cooperation device. A service cooperation apparatus for requesting execution of a transaction only for a transaction for the service. 5. The apparatus for generating a service cooperation apparatus according to claim 3, or the service cooperation apparatus according to claim 4, wherein the user or the service is dynamically charged with an intermediary fee, and A service system that enables a user to cooperate with a process combining an unspecified number of services.