Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania start-up Transarc Corp, a spin-out from Carnegie Mellon University established to exploit Carnegie Mellon’s Andrew File System with funding from IBM, formally rallied the supporters of its transaction processing technology for heterogeneous networks of Unix systems this week. The backers formally declared are IBM itself, Hewlett-Packard Co, Stratus Computer Inc, plus database companies Informix Software Inc and Sybase Inc, and software companies JYACC and Independence Technologies Inc – and DEC is still negotiating. Hewlett-Packard says it will use the client-server transaction-processing technology in conjunction with its HP 9000 Unix and HP 3000 proprietary computers for distributed, open transaction processing to improve cost effectiveness, data integrity and multivendor integration. The technology is designed to comply with evolving and existing standards, including X/Open Co Ltd’s distributed transaction-processing model and XA interface. It is built on Open Software Foundation Distributed Computing Environment core services for distributed computing, including the Apollo Network Computing System 2.0 Remote Procedure Call and PasswdEtc authorisation standards. Stratus Computer says it will support the Transarc technology on its full line of XA2000 Continuous Processing Systems in phases over the next several years, running under both its FTX Unix and proprietary VOS. Transarc will provide Stratus with the underlying Transactional RPC, Distributed Transaction Service and Transactional C technology that will enable transactions to flow between its own and third party boxes, prov iding global transaction management to ensure all systems involved in a single transaction are updated pro perly when the transaction arrives.
