Hewlett-packard Development Company, L.p.

David J Wisler

Charles Stuart Johnson

Trina R Wisler

Sitaram V Lanka

Albert C Gondi

William J Carley

Yu-Cheung Cheung

David Hege

Jim B Tate

A Registration protocol is used in transaction processing for normal operations. If an error occurs, the system reverts to a Full Broadcast protocol. The Registration Protocol reduces the number of messages that are sent among CPUs in a cluster thereby permitting performance improvements in the system. The Registration Protocol has Begin, DPCheck, PhaseFlush and Phase(lock release) phases just as does the Full Broadcast Protocol, thereby permitting the Full Broadcast protocol to step in at any phase after an error is detected.

Hybrid method for flushing transaction state in a fault-tolerant clustered database

A modified transaction registration protocol is disclosed. The registration protocol is inherently centralized in that processes requesting registration to participate in the work of a transaction, must send a request to a Broadcast Owner CPU which is the CPU that initiated the transaction. The processes wait, suspended, until a response is received from the Broadcast Owner CPU. However, if the Broadcast Owner CPU fails to respond to the registration request, then the processes that are waiting are incapable performing work for the transaction. While a CPU failure may not occur often, in a fault-tolerant system, such events must be accounted for. Therefore, the transaction registration protocol is modified to revert to a Full Broadcast transaction protocol and complete any outstanding registration requests. This is accomplished by distributing transactions to all of the CPUs in the system, and in each CPU forcing the completion of registration requests in each CPU.

Method for handling node failures and reloads in a fault tolerant clustered database supporting transaction registration and fault-in logic

Growing community of inventors

Tigard, OR, United States of America

David J Wisler