A Reservation-Based Extended Transaction Protocol for Coordination of Web Services within Business Activities

This chapter describes a novel reservation-based extended transaction protocol for coordination of tasks within a business activity. With the advance of Web Services, it is anticipated that the implementation of business activities as Web Services, and the automation of business activities across multiple enterprises over the Internet, will become a reality. Classical extended transaction protocols are not well suited for this new breed of business activity, because of their use of compensating transactions. The reservationbased extended transaction protocol, described in this chapter, eliminates the need for compensating transactions by using an explicit reservation phase and an explicit confirmation/cancellation phase. This chapter provides a mapping of the reservation-based extended transaction protocol onto the Web Services Coordination Specification, and describes an implementation of the protocol.