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The Gnosis Transaction Manager
is the first commercially available long transaction
handler designed for Microsoft SQL Server™. The Gnosis Transaction Manager
can perform long transactions of virtually
unlimited duration, size and complexity. |
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What are Long
Transactions ? |
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| A long transaction
(sometimes known as a saga) corresponds to work-in-progress
that takes a significant amount of time to complete, which
may be from a number of hours, to days, weeks or even
months of elapsed time. Long Transactions are often of
large and complex data sets, whereas, today's relational
databases have been designed primarily to handle short
transactions, which take a small amount of time to complete
and are usually comprised of small data sets. |
| From here on all long transactions
performed by the Gnosis Transaction Manager will be referred
to as Gnosis Transactions. |
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What
are Gnosis Transactions ? |
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Gnosis Transactions
manage work-in-progress,
such as partially completed paperwork, documents, drawings or designs. The work-in-progress may take hours, days, weeks or even months to complete, and may comprise many data objects of different kinds. The Gnosis
Work Manager application represents Gnosis Transactions
as folders that store the users changes (which correspond
to database row inserts, updates and deletes). The standard kind of Gnosis Transaction that manages work-in-progress is referred to as Work by the Gnosis Work Manager.
For information on special types of Gnosis Transactions known as Decision Points and Alternatives see the next section. |
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All completed Gnosis Transactions
are stored in the Committed set of data, which
has been represented as the file cabinet. |
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| The user creates a new Gnosis Transaction when
the user has a new work job to do. The new work becomes represented
as a green open folder, indicating the contents of the
work folder are being displayed and updated by the user. Any inserts,
updates and deletes that the user makes are now applied and accumulated in this work folder. |
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| When a Gnosis Transaction is
displayed, it is displayed over the contents of its Parent
Transaction(s) and the Committed data set. The
database changes contained in a displayed Gnosis Transaction
overlay their previous versions, thus all data and changes
are seen in their context, which is what the database
will become when the Transaction is committed. |
| A user may display the contents of another
users' Gnosis Transaction, which is represented as a yellow
open folder, the owner of the work folder is also displayed
when the user is not the owner. The user may also gain update control of
the work folder, when no one else is writing
to it. |
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| The Gnosis Transaction may be hidden, which
is represented as a yellow closed folder. Hence the insert,
update and delete contents of the work folder are not
displayed and the original versions are. |
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When we complete a Gnosis Transaction,
we commit into its parent, and so forth, until reaching
the Committed data set. To commit successfully,
the contents of the work folder must conform to the
business rules defined by the Gnosis Business Rule Manager. |
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Gnosis Transactions may be based on
other Gnosis Transactions in a tree structure. Such
configurations can enable multiple users to work on
a combined work project.
For more information on Gnosis Transactions please
click
here. |
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Decision Points and Alternatives enable the modelling of different scenarios in the same database. A Decision Point becomes the source or starting point of multiple Alternatives and is the object into which the selected Alternative is committed. There are no limits to the amount of data that can be stored in an Alternative or to the number of Alternatives created. |
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The Gnosis Work Manager application manages Decision Points and Alternatives, in a very similar way to Gnosis Transactions (which are outlined above). |
| A Decision Point is represented as a light blue multi tabbed folder, and is the parent of many Alternatives which are represented as single tabbed folders (and part of a Decision Point). Alternatives may in turn have sub Alternatives and so forth. Only one branch of a Decision Tree may be committed into the Decision Point, all other Alternative branches are discarded as they represent unselected Alternatives. |
| In this example the Decision Point called NewPlant contains 3 Alternatives, named Option1, Option2 and Option3. Presently Option3 is being shown and is started for update (reresented as the Green Alternative folder). |
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| When the chosen Alternative is Committed into the Decision Point the Decision Point changes into a standard Work folder that must in turn be committed. |
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What is the Gnosis
Business Rule Manager? |
The Gnosis
Business Rule Manager program is the major definition
component for the Gnosis Transaction Manager. It is
here that all the structural, integrity and business
rule definitions for Gnosis Transactions are made.
The Gnosis Business Rule Manager also manages the
generation of the physical database objects in Microsoft
SQL Server™.
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Where
are Gnosis Transactions and Business Rules Stored ? |
Gnosis Transactions and
Gnosis Business Rules are stored in the Microsoft
SQL Server™ database and implemented as table,
view, stored procedure, trigger objects and data.
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| With Gnosis Transactions, all your database
definitions, data integrity & business rules, work-in-progress
and committed data are stored in the same database.
The data and objects are as secure, reliable and available as your database
administrative procedures provide, while adding no additional
administrative overheads. |
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How are Gnosis Transactions
Executed ? |
| Gnosis Transactions are executed by calling
stored procedures in the database. There are stored procedures
that perform all the management operations for Gnosis
Transactions, such as begin, check, commit and rollback.
You can write your own program to do this or use the Gnosis
Work Manager application. |
Any system that you build will have data
structures and rules defined by the Gnosis Business
Rule Manager. The Gnosis Business Rule Manager will
build the database from the definitions you give it
and provide you with an interface for managing your
data. |
| The interface for managing your data may
be via stored procedures, and/or via the object interface,
of select, insert, update and delete statements. The interface
is designed to make interaction with the database from
the application perspective simple, conventional and easy
to migrate existing applications to. The application does
not need to know if it is interacting with a Gnosis Transaction
database. |
| The applications that use the interface
for managing your data may be written in a variety of
languages, such as Visual Basic, C++, C# and Delphi, and
use technologies such as ADO, ADO.NET, OLEDB etc. |
| Although it may not be necessary, it is
still desirable to make a few application modifications
for interacting with Gnosis Transactions. |
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