The concept of a transaction, highly significant in the context of data bases, is broadened to make it refer to any atomic operation that changes the state of a software system or its environment, or initiates a control action. This leads us to consider software systems as composed of transactional and procedural computations. We discuss the specification of transactional software, and introduce a mechanism for linking transactions into processes. We also raise several issues relating to transactional computing that were the basis for discussion at the workshop, and include comments by participants.
Alfs T. Berztiss