Shops sample C/S OLTP, but keep bread-and-butter apps under wraps - early users of client/server transaction processing monitors usually start with noncritical systems

Software Magazine, Dec, 1994 by Brian Riggs

"As a software professional, I need to be able to proactively manage the system," Long said. "That is one of the things that transaction process monitors do." With the application, Long is able to example the statistics for every transaction run on the system. "Every time we interact with a particular application, we monitor our peak times and log times, and determine how we could better rearrange or reconfigure [the network!," he said.

Long also counts increased performance among the benefits of a distributed transaction processing system. "If Joe Bob in IS decides to run his AI module against the database m the middle of the day, everybody [on the network] suffers severely. But in a transaction monitoring system, I can queue and prioritize that so he gets only a small slice of time and the other users are not affected as much," he explained.

In addition, with the transaction monitor, "I can save on licensing," said Long. At the health care facility for which he is developing the application, Long has a 200-user license from Oracle Corp., Redwood Shores, Calif. "But because I have prioritized queue servers through Tuxedo, Oracle - from a licensing and systems points of view - only sees 12 to 15 users depending on how many servers I have up."

Despite its benefits, Long warns that distributed transaction processing requires a commitment to developing and maintaining intricate client/server systems. It is complex, sophisticated and definitely not for everybody. "It's not something you just jump into and not expect to have good, qualified people [to support it!," Long commented. "But if you plan it right, it can save a company a lot of money in maintenance and development costs. It will also save a lot of customers money in redevelopment costs and rework. From a business point of view, it gives them access to information in a very timely fashion."

The level of sophistication demanded by distributed transaction processing even has some vendors skeptical about the usefulness and marketability of TP middleware. "l think that it will essentially end up going away," said Mark Golkar, product manager at Pyramid Technology Corp., headquartered in San Jose, Calif. "On a Unix platform, TP monitors are not that critical. Functionality is being handled at the terminal level."

Nonetheless, Pyramid and Edison, N.J.-based Technology Information Management Co. jointly developed several OLTP products. Released this fall, System/WS provides client-side functionality for OLTP application development on MS-DOS, Windows, Macintosh, OS/2, Novell's UnixWare systems and other Unix platforms.

Other TP product vendors are less extreme in their assessment of available technology. Whether a TP monitor has value, said VISystems' Bigbee, depends on a customer's computing environment and processing needs.

Citing "The DBMS vs. TP Monitor Debate," a report published by the Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Group, Bigbee explained that TP monitor middleware is unnecessary if an organization's network has less than 50 users, has databases with less than 2Gb of data, and processes fewer than 25,000 transactions daily. Instead, companies with small networks can get OLTP-like functionality from any number of database management system toolsets from vendors like Informix Software Inc., Menlo Park, Calif., and Oracle Corp.