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ConTract

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Database Systems

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Definition

A ConTract is an extended transaction model that employs transactional mechanisms in order to provide a run-time environment for the reliable execution of long-lived, workflow-like computations. The focus is on durable execution and on correctness guarantees with respect to the effects of such computations on shared data.

Key Points

The notion of a ConTract (concatenated transactions) combines the principles of workflow programing with the ideas related to long-lived transactions. The ConTract model is based on a two-tier programing approach. At the top level, each ConTract is a script describing a (long-lived) computation. The script describes the order of execution of so-called steps. A step is a predefined unit of execution (e.g., a service invocation) with no visible internal structure. A step can access shared data in a database, send messages, etc.

A ConTract, once it is started, will never be lost by the system, no matter which technical problems (short of a real...

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Recommended Reading

  1. Reuter A, Waechter H. The ConTract model. In: Stonebraker M, Hellerstein J, editors. Readings in database in database systems. 2nd ed. Los Altos: Morgan Kaufmann; 1992. p. 219–63.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. EML Research GmbH Villa Bosch, Heidelberg, Germany

    Andreas Reuter

Authors
  1. Andreas Reuter
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Correspondence to Andreas Reuter .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Panos K. Chrysanthis

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Reuter, A. (2017). ConTract. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_727-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_727-2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4899-7993-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-7993-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Computer SciencesReference Module Computer Science and Engineering

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