Pat Helland hates the phrase “Long Running Transactions”….
He wants Transaction to mean ONLY the ACID kind. He gives an example of why he uses terms such as “Long Running Work”:
1) I decide to take a trip to Europe so I book some airline and hotel reservations.
2) The hotel in London hits a threshold of occupancy and decides to increase staffing and food for the restaurant.
3) The hotel orders more food from the Green Grocer.
4) The Green Grocer hits a threshold and orders another delivery from its shipper.
5) The shipping company hits a thresold and orders more diesel fuel for its trucks…
6) Two weeks later, I cancel my trip.So, if I believe in long-running-transactions, the shipping company doesn’t need any more diesel fuel! I don’t think so!
He then goes on to discuss how services talk together. He loves contracts, dialogs, and so forth.
We can slap on these transactions in deployment descriptors, in annotations, and in cross cutting concerns, but are we spending enough time Thinking in Transactions.
As a jazz musician would say:
When I was working with an old school mainframe guy, they planned out their transactions as a #1 priority. It was all about the transactional flow. Are we losing this art?
