A Distributed Transaction and Accounting Model for Digital Ecosystem Composed Services

Abstract

Abstract-This paper addresses two known issues for dynamically composed services in digital ecosystems. The first issue is that of efficient distributed transaction management. The conventional view of transactions is unsuitable as the local autonomy of the participants is vital for the involvement of SMEs. The second issue is that of charging for such distributed transactions, where there will often be dynamically created services whose composition is not known in advance and might involve parts of different transactions. The paper provides solutions for both of these issues, which can be combined to provide for a unified approach to transaction management and accounting of dynamically composed services in digital ecosystems.

A scale-free business network for digital ecosystems

“…The purpose of a business network is to enable networked organisations to engage in distributed business transactions [4] that realise their core business activities. If such a network is to support B2B interactions between SMEs it should be fully distributed (no central point of control for transaction or network operations) and should also offer a consistent model for performing transactions.…”

“…The business activities are at the top level of the model; business activities in the term of transactions which should be distributed (if we are to preserve the local autonomy of SMEs) and recoverable (selfhealing). In previous work [3], [4], we have introduced a transaction model with such characteristics whose design makes use of the inherent diversity of a digital ecosystem. The result of the interaction between participants of a transaction, which comes down to the composition of the corresponding services, provides a virtual connection which is useful for the design of the underlying network.…”

“…For this reason, VPTNs potentially may improve the 'cluster coefficient' of the lower level (VSN) and in exchange VSNs can warranty the diversity for VPTNs (by providing reliable connectivity which makes alternative paths/scenarios feasible for a disconnected VPTN). This may protect business transactions against failure -using alternative paths and scenarios to avoid the costly abortions of long-running transactions is feasible as shown in [4] and is referred to as forward recovery. It can be seen that one of the most important characteristics the VSNs should provide is 'connectivity' -ensuring that there is a network of interconnected nodes.…”

“…At the same time, the telecoms industry is moving towards the Next Generation Networks (NGNs), and this comes with yet another view of services and applications; the so-called Next Generation Services (NGSs) [2]. Our approach is trying to leverage these developments in creating a business environment which supports dynamic contexts for distributed long-lived transactions in open communities of small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs), proposed in [3], [4].…”

An open digital environment to support business ecosystems

“…At the same time, others in the industry released other specifications: Web Services Coordination (WS-Coordination) and Web Services Transactions (WS-AtomicTransactions and WS-BusinessActivity) [27], [29]. Recently, Choreology Ltd. has started to make a joint protocol which tries to cover both models and this effort has highlighted the caveats of each as mentioned in [12], [13], [30].…”