Notice: This is not the official home page of the TransCoop project, which has disappeared, but the one maintained by Frans, one of it's members. Many pages and documents that the original page used to link to have disappeared. These links have been removed from this page and some documents have been replaced with local ones.

The TransCoop project

Synopsis: Transaction Management Support for Cooperative Applications (TransCoop ESPRIT Project 8012).
Work area: Advanced, cooperative transaction models for database systems, powerful specification language.
Coordinator: Gesellschaft für Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung,
Dolivostrasse 15, D-64293 Darmstadt, Germany
(IPSI institute)
Partners: Valtion teknillinen tutkimuskeskus (VTT) SF
University of Twente (UT) NL
Keywords: object-oriented database systems, transaction management, cooperative work, specification languages for database systems.
Starting date: April 1994.
Completion date: June 1997.

Abstract

The aim of TransCoop was the development of a language for defining different kinds of cooperative tasks, the development of a transaction model that can be parameterized to support the execution of different kinds of such tasks as defined by the specification language, and the definition of a formal model to prove that the transaction management scheme meets the requirements of cooperative tasks defined in the language.

An introduction to the results of the project are given in the article Transaction Support of Cooperative Work: An Overview of the TransCoop Project, which was presented at the TransCoop Workshop held on June 5-6, 1997 in Darmstadt, Germany. The results are presented in detail in a book about the project, entitled Transaction Management Support for Cooperative Applications, was published by Kluwer in December 1997. Current existing home pages about the TransCoop project at:

GMD, Darstad, Germany
UT, Enschede, the Netherlands
VTT, Helsinki, Finland

Results of the project

The following deliverables were completed during the first year of the project:

Del. IV.1: Merge Options for LOTOS and TM (October 7, 1994)
Del. II.1: Requirements for the specification language (January 20, 1995)
Appeared as: Memoranda Informatica 95-16, University of Twente.
Del. II.2: Requirements for the transaction model (January 20, 1995)
Del. III.1: Specification of the Prototype Architecture (April 10, 1995)
Appeared as: Memoranda Informatica 95-18, University of Twente, and as: VTT Research Notes 1694.
Del. IV.2: Language Features for Co-operation (May 2, 1995)
Appeared as: Memoranda Informatica 95-40, University of Twente.
Del. V.1: Analysis of adaptions and extension to the open nested transaction model (May 9, 1995)

The following deliverables were completed during the second year of the project:

Del. IV.3: An Introduction to CoCoA (February 21, 1996)
Appeared as: Memoranda Informatica 96-10, University of Twente.
Del. III.2: Specification of the Demonstrator (April 25, 1996)
Del. V.2: Definition of the TransCoop Cooperative Transacion Model (April 30, 1996)
Del. V.3: Design of Cooperative Transaction Manager (May 14, 1996)
Del. IV.4: The TransCoop Specification Environment (May 14, 1996)
Appeared as: Memoranda Informatica 96-21, University of Twente.
Sources for the Transcoop Specification Environment and CoCoA parser and compiler are available.
Del. VI.1: Requirements for the Formal Model (May 15, 1996)

The following deliverables were completed during the third and last year of the project:

Del. VII.1: Design of the TransCoop Demonstrator System (October 30, 1996)
Del. VII.2: The TransCoop Demonstrator System

(All deliverables were made public as technical reports by the responsable partner.)

The following conference and journal papers were published:

Functionally Specified Distributed Transactions in Co-operative Scenarios, by Rolf A. de By, Susan J. Even and Peter A.C. Verkoulen at RIDE*95.
Requirements for an Advanced Database Transaction Model to Support Design for Manufacturing by P.A.C. Verkouwen, F.J. Faase, A.W. Selders and P.J.J. Oude Egberink at the "Flexible Automation and Intelligent Manufacturing" conference in Stuttgart, published by Begell House, New York.
(Slides of the presentation)
Usability of some workflow products in an inter-organizational setting by Jari Juopperi, Aarno Lehtola, Olli Pihlajamaa, Aija Sladek and Jari Veijalainen. In Proc. of IFIP WG8.1 working Conference on Information Systems for Decentralized Organizations, Trontheim, Norway, August, 1995.
Transaction Support for Cooperative Hypermedia Document Authoring - A Study on Requirements, by Thomas Tesch, Jürgen Wäsch. In Proceedings of the 8th ERCIM Database Research Group Workshop on Database Issues and Infrastructure in Cooperative Information Systems (EDRG-8), Trondheim, Norway, August 23-25, 1995.
Research Issues in Workflow Systems, by Jari Veijalainen, Olli Pihlajamaa and Aarno Lehtola In Proceedings of the 8th ERCIM Database Research Group Workshop on Database Issues and Infrastructure in Cooperative Information Systems (EDRG-8), Trondheim, Norway, August 23-25, 1995.
Enforcing inter-task dependencies in transactional workflows by Jian Tang and Jari Veijalainen, Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Cooperative Information Systems, May 9-12, 1995, Vienna, Austria. at CoopIS-95, Vienna.
Towards a cooperative transaction model - The cooperative activity model by: Marek Rusinkiewicz, Wolfgang Klas, Thomas Tesch, Jürgen Wäsch, and Peter Muth at the 21th International Conference on Very Large Databases in Zurich.
Transaction-oriented Work-flow Concepts in Inter-organizational Environments by: Jian Tang, Jari Veijalainen at Fourth International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management CIKM '95, November 95, Maryland.
History Merging as a Mechanism for Concurrency Control in Cooperative Environments by: Jürgen Wäsch and Wolfgang Klas in Proceedings RIDE'96: Interoperability of Nontraditional Database Systems (RIDE-NDS '96), New Orleans, Louisiana, Feb. 26-27, 1996, pp. 76-85.
Managing overlapping transactional workflows, by Juha Puustjärvi, Henry Tirri, and Jari Veijalainen. Advanced Information Systems Engineering (Proceedings of the 8th International Conference, CAiSE'96 in Crete, Greece, May 1996), edited by P.Constantopoulos, J.Mypoulos and Y.Vassiliou. Springer Verlag 1996, Pp. 345-361.
Language features for cooperation in an object-oriented database environment by Susan Even, Frans Faase, and Rolf de By. In International Journal of Cooperative Information Systems, Special Issue on Formal Methods, Vol.5, No.4, pg 469-500.
History Merging as a Mechanism for Information Exchange in Cooperative and Mobile Environments, by Jürgen Wäsch. in: A. Mecklenstock [Ed.]: Bericht zum 7. Workshop "Transaktionskonzepte", Nieheim/Ostwestfalen, 17.-19. Januar 1996. Datenbank-Rundbrief, Mitteilungsblatt der GI-Fachgruppe Datenbanken (GI-FG 2.5.1), Ausgabe 17, Mai 1996
Semantic-Based Transaction Management for Cooperative Applications, by Justus Klingemann, Thomas Tesch, and Jürgen Wäsch. Proceedings of the International Workshop on Advanced Transaction Models and Architectures, Goa, India, Aug. 31 - Sep. 2, 1996. pp. 234-252.
Transaction Models Supporting Cooperative Work - The TransCoop Experiences, by Karl Aberer, Justus Klingemann, Thomas Tesch, Jürgen Wädsch, Erich J. Neuhold. In: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Cooperative Database Systems for Advanced Applications (CODAS'96), Kyoto, Japan, December 5-7, 1996, pp. 467-476.
Enabling Cooperation among Disconnected Mobile Users, by Justus Klingemann, Thomas Tesch, Jürgen Wäsch. Proceedings of the Second Conference on Cooperative Information Systems (CoopIS-97), Charleston, South Carolina, June 24-27, 1997.
Integrating Organisational and Transactional Aspects of Cooperative Activities, by F. J. Faase, S. J. Even, R. A. de By, P. Verkouwen. 6th International Workshop on Database Programming Languages (DBPL).
( Slides of the presentation.)

People involved in the TransCoop project

At GMD, IPSI institute, DIMSYS department

Wolfgang Klas (left project early)
Karl Aberer (replaced Wolfgang Klas)
Thomas Tesch
Jürgen Wäsch
Justus Klingman
Marek Rusinkiewicz (visiting member from University of Houston, June-August, 1994)

At University of Twente, Computer Science Department, IS workgroup

Peter Apers
Rolf de By (left project early)
Peter Verkoulen (left project early)
Susan Even
Frans Faase

At VTT, Information Technology

Jari Veijalainen (left project early)
Hannu Kaijanranta (replacing Jari Veijalainen)
Aarno Lehtola
Olli Pihlajamaa
Juha Ylä-Jääski
Jari Juopperi (left project early)
Aija Sladek (left project early)
Tor Lillqvist (left project early)
Jian Tang (visiting member, 1995)

At University of Helsinki, Department of Computer Science

Henry Tirri (left project early)
Juha Puustjärvi

TransCoop project meetings

Kick-off meeting, Darmstadt, April 12, 1994
WP2 meeting, Enschede, June 20, 1994
General meeting, Helsinki, July 15-18, 1994
General meeting, Enschede, 27-28 october
General meeting, Kuusamo, Finland, February 9-11, 1995
WP4.3 meeting, Enschede, April 10-11, 1995
First Review, Enschede, June 7, 1995
PMG meeting, Darmstadt, June 21, 1995
WP4.6 meeting, Darmstadt, August 29-30, 1995
General meeting, Darmstadt, February 19-20, 1996
General meeting, Helsinki, May 23-24, 1996
Second Review, Enschede, June 12, 1996
PMG meeting, Darmstadt, October 9, 1996
General meeting, Darmstadt, December 16-17, 1996
Software integration meeting, Helsinki, March 10-11, 1997
Software integration meeting, Darmstadt, April 11-12, 1997
Workshop, Darmstadt, June 6, 1997