An Event-Based Semantics for TransactionsG

In this paper we investigate the notion of transaction in object-oriented speciication. Transactions are a suitable concept to cover diierent aspects that arise in a variety of contexts. For example, in reenement theory a transaction may be understood as the reenement of actions, in database theory it may be understood as an abstraction from sequences of statements , or in business process modelling it may occur as a complex process with a predeened execution order. Thus, there is a wide application area for such a notion. The focus of our work is the stepwise design and modelling of distributed information systems with object-oriented techniques. We put emphasis on the need of a well-deened formal background. The basis of our work is the model for distributed families of concurrent objects presented in ES95]. We syntactically introduce transactions into object-oriented speciication and propose a temporal logic which can speak about transactions to formalize such specii-cations. Moreover, we give an appropriate interpretation of speciications which incorporate transactions based on event structures. The ideas are brieey illustrated by example.