Doug Kaye

Most non-programmers think of transactions as associated with buying and selling, credit-card authorizations, and the like. But in the jargon of computer science, the word transaction has a very specific meaning: the interaction and managed outcome of a well-defined set of tasks. If that definition still sounds rather vague or abstract, it's because the scope of what's considered a transaction has expanded over the past two decades, and the older simpler definitions are no longer adequate. Computer systems have been connected via networks, and applications are more distributed in nature. The theories and practices of transactions have been repeatedly stretched to their limits, re-evaluated, and extended. Now, because of web services, we're once again expanding that defi... (more)