Abstract

Two-Phase Commit (2PC) has been for twenty-five years the prevailing protocol for software transaction processing, but 2PC is predicated on datastructures, not documents, and on that central fact is unsuited for the world of markup. The ACID properties realized in 2PC (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) are not easily achieved when operating upon marked-up documents directly, and the adaptation of marked-up documents to meet ACID requirements may require so great a wrench as to pervert the essential nature of those documents. As a alternative to 2PC and the ACID properties, this presentation proposes a markup-centric transaction protocol. That protocol is characterized by SALT properties (Specificity, Autonomy, Locality, Terminality) and incorporates the architectural principles of REST to realize a transaction environment specifically suited for marked-up documents and for the decentralized address space of the Web.