Metadata Support for Transactional Web Services

The paper describes an annotation-based Java framework for supporting transactional Web services. We provide a framework for automated management of compensations in business activity type extended transactions. Unlike rollbacks in traditional ACID transactions, these usually require substantial implementation effort by business programmers. Our annotations provide a flexible, intuitive and easy to use alternative. With a few declarative statements, users can configure the relationship between units of work and their compensations. The framework manages all aspects of the execution of the compensations, ensuring a reliable, consistent transaction outcome.