TPS: Transaction Processing Systems

A Transaction Processing System (TPS) is a type of information system that collects, stores, modifies and retrieves the data transactions of an enterprise.

What is Transaction? Agreement, contract, exchange, understanding, or transfer of cash or property that occurs between two or more parties and establishes a legal obligation.

Types of Transactions
Batch Processing Batch processing is a resourcesaving transaction type that stores data for processing at pre-defined times.

Real Time Processing In many circumstances the primary factor is speed.

Features of Transaction Processing Systems

Rapid Processing TPS systems are designed to process transactions virtually instantly to ensure that customer data is available to the processes that require it.

Reliability
Similarly, customers will not tolerate mistakes. TPS systems must be designed to ensure that not only do transactions never slip past the net, but that the systems themselves remain operational permanently.

Standardization

TPS interfaces are designed to acquire identical data for each transaction, regardless of the customer.

Controlled Access

Since TPS systems can be such a powerful business tool, access must be restricted to only those employees who require their use.

Transactions Processing Qualifiers (ACID TEST)

Atomicity
Atomicity means that a transaction is either completed in full or not at all.

Consistency TPS systems exist within a set of operating rules

Isolation
Transactions must appear to take place in isolation.
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Durability

Once transactions are completed they cannot be undone.

Components of TPS
1.Input 2.Processing 3.Storage 4.Output

In a TPS, there are 5 different types of files:

Master file: Contains information about an organizations business situation. Transaction file: It is the collection of transaction records. Report file: Contains data that has been formatted for presentation to a user. Work file: Temporary files in the system used during the processing. Program file: Contains the instructions for the processing of data.

Storing and Retrieving

Data warehouse A data warehouse is a database that collects information from different sources. When it's gathered in realtime transactions it can be used for analysis efficiently if it's stored in a data warehouse. It provides data that are consolidated, subjectoriented, historical and read-only:

Consolidated: Data are organized with consistent naming conventions, measurements, attributes and semantics.

Subject-oriented: It organizes only key business information from operational sources so that it's available for analysis.

Historical: It stores series of snapshots for an organizations operational data generated over a period of time. Read-only: Once data are moved into a data warehouse, it becomes readonly, unless it was incorrect.

Recovery Process
A TPS may fail for many reasons. These reasons could include a system failure, human errors, hardware failure, incorrect or invalid data, viruses, software application errors or natural or man-made disasters.

A TPS will go through a recovery of the database to cope when the system fails, it involves the backup, journal, checkpoint, and recovery manager:

Journal: A journal maintains an audit trail of transactions and database changes. Checkpoint: The purpose of check pointing is to provide a snapshot of the data within the database. Recovery Manager: A recovery manager is a program which restores the database to a correct condition which can restart the transaction processing.

Two types of recovery are backward recovery and forward recovery: Backward recovery: used to undo unwanted changes to the database. It reverses the changes made by transactions which have been aborted.

Forward recovery: it starts with a backup copy of the database