PURPOSE: To synchronize a distributed transaction or another distributed calculation part. CONSTITUTION: In the middle of processing of a transaction or another distributed calculation, a calculation management system forms many agents 200 to 204 to handle various aspects or parts of calculation to be executed. Each agent is advanced through a set of prescribed state transitions which determine the state of the agent at arbitrary times. The calculation management system determines a set of dependencies for each agent, and each dependency corresponds to the state transition which is stopped till the occurrence of a specific state transition in another designated agent. A combination of selected dependencies is determined for each agent to execute various mutually dependent and cooperating protocols. A distributed processing management system manages the transaction processing and is used to synchronize events in the distributed calculation of an another form. COPYRIGHT: (C)1992,JPO