Atomicity in Electronic Commerce

There is tremendous demand for the ability to be able to electronically buy and sell goods over networks. This field is called electronic commerce, and it has inspired a large variety of work. Unfortunately, much of that work ignores traditional transaction processing concerns -chiefly atomicity. This paper discusses the role of atomicity in electronic commerce. It then briefly surveys some major types of electronic commerce pointing out flaws in atomicity. We pay special attention to the atomicity problems of proposals for digital cash. The paper present two examples of highly atomic electronic cash systems: NetBill and Cryptographic Postage Indicia.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1996
• Where: PODC
• Authors: J. D. Tygar
• Keywords: Atomicity Problems, Concerns -chiefly Atomicity, Distributed And Parallel Computing, Electronic Commerce, PODC 1996