Peter Holditch

In this column over the years, I have spent a considerable amount of time talking about contention and locking in the database tier. At the end of the day, the endless conversations about scaling the application tier boil down to less than a bag of beans if a scaled application c... (more)

I have been knocking around the computer industry for a while now, and I've noticed some changes in my contemporaries and myself... For one thing, the buttons around the stomach of those old shirts that have eluded capture by my wife are looking a bit more strained than they did ... (more)

"High performance" is what everybody strives for when putting together a new system. Technical folk often spend hours hung up on the raw speed of their code, and a certain machismo can be derived from shaving milliseconds off that pesky transaction that is the latest pride and jo... (more)

The value of two phase commit transactions has always been that programmers can write applications that access data spread across multiple databases and be confident that any updates that are made will be consistently reflected in all of the databases, or none, at the end of the ... (more)

In browsing around the Web, as one occasionally does in a free nanosecond, I read an interesting article about twp-phase commit transactions by Gregor Hohpe of ThoughtWorks ("Your Coffee Shop Does Not Use Two Phase Commit"). Gregor comes at the subject from the direction opposite... (more)

As I write, the noise level that continues to be generated around open source application servers and their claims to be coming into the world of enterprise computing continues. In my view, the main reason why the noise travels so far and seems so loud has nothing to do with the ... (more)

This issue, in an uncharacteristic attempt to fit in with the Zeitgeist, I propose to depart slightly from my well-trodden path to the transaction manager and take a look at frameworks. I expect you can guess which particular framework I am going to take a pass at, too. For near... (more)

A realization has dawned across the industry that "service-oriented architecture" is a good thing. In fact, this is less of a dawning and more of a reawakening. Ever since our Neolithic forebears picked up a bone and realized that separating the 3270 screen handling code from th... (more)

As we've discussed over the past few issues, JTA-style transactions provide a way for multiple data updates to be tied together so application logic can operate safely in the assumption that it will succeed or fail consistently, even in the face of technical failures along the ro... (more)

One definition of a commodity is something that you take for granted. I'll bet there aren't many readers out there who wake in the morning and exclaim, "Thank goodness there's air in the room to breathe!" Likewise, computer users will seldom give thanks for their operating systems... (more)

This month's article is again inspired by a posting on the weblogic.developer.interest.transaction newsgroup. The question (excerpted from the posting) was: Does the 10 in weblogic-ejb-jar.xml apply to transactions that are in a sus... (more)

Whatever your innermost feelings about the < and > symbols, and however fondly you remember debugging network infrastructures with nothing more than a LAN sniffer and an uncanny ability to interpret 4k blocks of hex, it is fairly safe to say that Web services are here to stay. Wi... (more)

Another discussion based on a weblogic.developer.interest.transaction posting this month. It's a newsgroup that always proves to be a good source of information for the world at large when it comes to transactional behavior (and a good source of inspiration for me when the articl... (more)

The launch of BEA's WebLogic Platform 8.1 was greeted with enthusiasm by industry analysts and IT practitioners alike, who recognized its potential to open up the power of the J2EE platform to a much broader spectrum of developers. This allowed J2EE architects to do what their sk... (more)

The buzz in the industry these days is all about service-oriented architecture. One of the key benefits that this brings is loose coupling between systems, which in turn improves the agility of the overall architecture - if systems are unaware of each other's implementation detai... (more)

This month's article is again inspired by an interesting design discussion posted on the weblogic.developer.transaction newsgroup. (Ever get the feeling I'm running short of inspiration? Ideas for new articles always welcome!) Since the problem described is a common one with trans... (more)

No, don't worry, it's not a a floor-wax/dessert-topping/toothpaste article this month; it's simply a look at how multilanguage application environments might be used together in highly distributed systems. Interested? Well, don't worry, somebody has to beS Swallow your pride and ... (more)

This month I was again inspired by the weblogic.developer.interest.transaction newsgroup on newsgroups.bea.com - if you weren't listening last time I plugged this newsgroup, listen now; one day, it might save your life! Be Paranoid, Be Very Afraid A quick guess at what "NotSuppo... (more)

In most large-scale "mission critical" systems, high on the list of requirements is resistance to failure. With the world living in fear of violent destruction post 9/11, it is more common for the definition of "failure" in this context to be the loss of a whole data-processing f... (more)

I have a rather deaf and rather elderly grandmother. She is a lovely woman and can spend hours telling tales - sometimes fascinating and sometimes... well, less fascinating - about times past. Communication in the reverse direction can be a bit of a challenge - sometimes a raise... (more)