Background

This paper uses a specific business transaction processing system, OMS, as a basis for discussing an approach to implementing an OO based Business Transaction Processing System (BPTS). At the time of this position paper, OMS is in an architecture and preliminary design stage.  Consequently, this paper focuses on unresolved issues in modeling (domain analysis and requirements definition) and architecture.

OMS is a set of applications supporting the sale of insurance and making of loans for international development projects.  OMS will support the full lifecycle of the products from initial contact through application and approval, tracking of performance and close-out of loans and insurance.  OMS must interface with a customized version of an ORACLE accounting system.  A large number of OMS transactions have accounting effects and completion of the transactions are dependent on interfacing with and updating the accounting application.

The organization supported by OMIS is small (approximately 200 users), has a relatively low volume of transactions (under 1000 per day) and a relatively small database (under 250 megabytes).  However, the OMS business transactions are relatively complex.  OMS does not have many of the performance and data size problems of many traditional transaction processing systems.  An OO approach is being taken to simplify development and encapsulate complex business logic. 

OMS will be deployed on a combination of Windows 95 clients and Windows NT and Solaris servers.  OMS is being developed using Visual Basic, VB script and ORACLE, however C++ may be used for performance intensive portions of the application.  Microsoft DCOM and ODBC/ORACLE SQL are being used to provided distributed connectivity.  Currently, ORACLE is being used to provide transaction integrity, but Microsoft Transaction Server is being evaluated.

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