SilverStream Supports JTS Spec. With New Transaction Broker

• By Matt Migliore
• 12/28/2001

The solution, called jBrokerTM 1.0, is the newest member of SilverStream’s jBroker suite of enterprise class Java and XML-based middleware products. jBroker comes packaged as a component of the SilverStream eXtend Application Server, but is also sold separately to ISVs and OEMs.

By releasing a JTS-compliant transaction broker, SilverStream is providing customers a solution that supports the Java Transaction application programming interface at the API level and implements the Java mapping of the Object Transaction Service specification below the API level.

“Most transaction servers are either OTS heavy or JTA heavy, but ours provides a nice balance,” says Rohit Garg, vice president of Java technologies for SilverStream.

Through JTS, jBrokerTM offers services and management functions required to support transactional demarcation and resource management, synchronization, and propagation of information specific to a particular transaction instance. In addition, the solution supports multiple resource types, including OTS, XA and 1-phase, as well as support for Oracle and Cloudscape JDBC XA drivers. Rohit says SilverStream will be adding more JDBC and XA drivers as demand dictates, and has plans to support all of them over time.

According to Rohit, the balance jBrokerTM provides between JTA and OTS enables users to migrate transactions in an optimal way by concentrating on XA and skipping a lot of the CORBA code usually required for migration. He says, the solution is also efficient in the way it logs transaction. Rather than logging local transaction multiple times, as is typical for transaction brokers, jBroker logs them only once. But for distributed transaction, it logs them at both the distributed and local locations.

Going forward, SilverStream plans to add XML support to jBrokerTM in the first half of 2002. XML will give the solution the ability to work with distributed transaction as Web services. “[Web services] is one of the other ways in which we are going to exploit this technology,” says Rohit.

An evaluation copy of SilverStream's jBrokerTM is available for download at software.silverstream.com.