Efficient and reliable reservation algorithm for mobile transactions

In a mobile computing environment, a user carrying a portable computer can execute a mobile transaction by submitting the operations of the transaction to distributed data servers from different locations. As a result of this mobility, the operations of the transaction may be executed at different servers. The distribution of operations implies that the transmission of messages (such as those involved in a two phase commit protocol) may be required among these data servers in order to coordinate the execution of these operations. In this paper, we will address the distribution of operations that update partitioned data in mobile environments. We introduce a new algorithm, the Reservation Algorithm (RA), that does not necessitate the incurring of message overheads (e.g., for a 2PC protocol) for operations pertaining to resource allocation. We address one related issue, termination protocols, which guarantees that the commit decision of a mobile host will not contradict with the unilateral abort decision of a data server.