Efficient validation of mobile transactions in wireless environments

Abstract

In broadcast environments, the limited bandwidth of the upstream communication channel from the mobile clients to the server bars the application of conventional concurrency control protocols. In this paper, we propose a new variant of the optimistic concurrency control (OCC) protocol that is suitable for broadcast environments. At the server, forward validation of a transaction is done against currently running transactions, including mobile transactions and server transactions. At the mobile clients, partial backward validation of a transaction is done against committed transactions at the beginning of every broadcast cycle. Upon completion of execution, read-only mobile transactions can be validated and committed locally and update mobile transactions are sent to the server for final validation. These update transactions have a better chance of commitment because they have gone through the partial backward validation. In addition to the nice properties of conventional OCC protocols, this protocol provides autonomy between the mobile clients and the server with minimum upstream communication, which is a desirable feature to the scalability of applications running in broadcast environments. This protocol is able to process both update transactions and read-only transactions at the mobile clients at low space and processing overheads.