OLTP: Online Transaction Processing Systems

This excellent introduction to designing an online transaction processing (OLTP) system takes on the problems OLTP system designers and managers must solve, one at a time. Claybrook details the challenges presented by overall transaction models, serialization, scheduling, locking, commit management, and distributed systems and offers clear, useful ideas about how to efficiently solve these problems. All of this is theoretical information, and the text is rife with mathematical notation, flow charts, pseudocode, and references to "data granules." This is not the place to look for information on how to program your AS/400 to do what you want or how to get TUXEDO to stop an annoying behavior. Still, the general overview provided by this slender volume will serve PC experts well and offer insight into the lessons of big machines in a relatively easy-to-understand way.