International Business Machines Corporation

Simon J Maple

Ian Robinson

Andrew S Feltham

Elizabeth Jane Maple

Andrew Wilkinson

Daniel James Matthews

Jon Hawkes

A technique for transaction recovery by one transaction manager of another transaction manager's transactions in which each transaction manager is adapted to manage two phase commit transactional operations on transactional resources and to record commit or rollback decisions in a transaction recovery log. The recovery transaction manager detects apparent unavailability of the another transaction manager for transaction processing and initiates a transaction recovery process for the another transaction manager's transactions. This process also determines whether any of the transactions of the another transaction manager have all respective resources prepared to commit without there yet being a pending commit decision record in the another transaction manager's recovery log. If so, the recovery transaction manager writes a rollback record indicating an intention to roll back the identified transaction, in the another transaction manager's recovery log provided no commit decision record has been recorded.

Transaction recovery in a transaction processing computer system employing multiple transaction managers

Techniques for authenticating the identity of a caller in a telephone call are disclosed. The device generating the call implements encrypting caller identification information and initiating the telephone call, said initiating comprising providing a voice carrier signal including the caller identification information; and simultaneously providing a data carrier signal including the encrypted caller identification information. The receiving device implements receiving the telephone call; decrypting the encrypted caller identification information at the recipient device; and verifying the identity of at least an unknown caller at the recipient device by at least one of verifying the authenticity of a certificate used to encrypt the caller identification information; and comparing the decrypted caller identification information with the caller identification information from the voice carrier signal. A telephony device implementing such an authentication technique is also disclosed.

Telephone caller authentication

An indication is provided to a transaction participant as part of a message originating from a transaction coordinator. The message indicates that the transaction coordinator supports a heuristic response. The transaction coordinator coordinates commitment of transactions as requested by an application in response to a determination by the transaction participant of a heuristic outcome. Heuristic outcomes include situations where transaction participants determine they are unable to honor transactional prior prepared commitments made to the transaction coordinator during first prepare phases of two-phase commits associated with the transactions. The heuristic response is received from the transaction participant in association with a transaction coordinated by the transaction coordinator and indicates that the transaction participant is unable to honor a transactional prior prepared commitment made by the transaction participant during a first prepare phase of a two-phase commit associated with the transaction coordinated by the transaction coordinator as requested by the application.

Heuristics processing

The invention provides a mechanism for a transaction coordinator to indicate to a transaction participant that it supports a heuristic outcome, where a course of action has occurred which means that the transaction participant is unable to honor a transactional prior commitment to the transaction coordinator. The mechanism is such that a transaction participant that is incapable of communicating a heuristic outcome may ignore any such indication. A transaction participant may be incapable because it does not understand the concept of a heuristic outcome at all or because it does not have the ability to inform the transaction coordinator that a heuristic outcome has occurred.

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Basingstoke, United Kingdom

Simon J Maple