Introduction to Pathmaker

Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) Applications
Introduction to Pathmaker and Pathway
1–8 067867 Tandem Computers Incorporated
Requirements of Online
Transaction Processing
Typically, online transaction processing applications must do the following:
Handle multiple users performing related jobs such as simultaneous order entries.
Handle concurrent requests to modify or retrieve the same information.
Handle requests from different types of input devices, located at different
geographic sites.
Communicate with applications on other computers or share information stored
on other computers.
Perform a mix of operations consisting of some that must occur immediately and
some that can occur periodically.
Manage large amounts of geographically distributed information.
Pathway is designed to assist in the development and running of complex OLTP
applications that meet all of these requirements. Because the function of the
Pathmaker product is to help create Pathway applications, it is important to
understand basic Pathway concepts and terminology. For this reason, Pathway is
explained in greater detail in the next subsection.