Web Services Transaction Specifications

The Web Services Transaction specifications define the coordination types discussed in the previous section. These specifications are used along with WS-Coordination and WS-Security to implement distributed transactions across a set of diverse web services.

The Web Services Transaction Specifications define two specifications:

• Atomic transaction (AT)

• Business activity (BA)

An atomic transaction is a typical single-domain transaction that requires the ACID properties to be satisfied. This is typically used for activities of short duration and is applicable within a limited trust domain.

A business activity is used for activities having long duration. In this case, due to the long duration, the changes made by each participant are not hidden from others for an unduly long time and so are immediate and permanent. Exceptions are handled by the business logic and compensating transactions are used to guarantee consistency.

Both AT and BA allow coordination...