Synchronizing transactions on objects

Abstract

A method is discussed for synchronizing operations on objects when the operations are invoked by transactions. The technique, which is motivated by a desire to make use of possible concurrency in accessing objects, takes into consideration the granularity at which operations affect an object. A dynamic method is presented for determining the compatibility of an invoked operation with respect to operations in progress. In making decisions, it utilizes the state of the object, the semantics of the uncommitted operations, the actual parameters of the invoked operation, and the effect of the operations on the objects. One of the attractive features of this technique is that a single framework can be used to deal with the problem of synchronizing access to simple objects as well as compound objects, i.e. objects in which some components are themselves objects.