HP NonStop TMF Glossary Abstract This glossary defines technical terms used in the manuals that support the HP NonStop™ Transaction Management Facility (TMF). It is intended for users of that product and its manuals. Product Version TMF H01 Supported Releases This publication supports H06.03 and all subsequent H-series release version updates (RVUs) until otherwise indicated by its replacement publication.
Document History Part Number Product Version 540135-001 TMF H01 Published July 2005
HP NonStop TMF Glossary What’s New in This Glossary iii Glossary Information iii New and Changed Information iv About This Glossary v TMF Documentation v Notation Conventions vi TMF Glossary A B C D E F G H I L M N O P R S T U V Z Glossary-1 Glossary-3 Glossary-3 Glossary-6 Glossary-7 Glossary-8 Glossary-8 Glossary-9 Glossary-9 Glossary-10 Glossary-10 Glossary-10 Glossary-11 Glossary-12 Glossary-14 Glossary-15 Glossary-16 Glossary-18 Glossary-18 Glossary-19 Hewlett-Packard Company—540135-001 i
TMF Glossary Contents HP NonStop TMF Glossary —540135-001 ii
What’s New in This Glossary Glossary Information HP NonStop TMF Glossary Abstract This glossary defines technical terms used in the manuals that support the HP NonStop™ Transaction Management Facility (TMF). It is intended for users of that product and its manuals. Product Version TMF H01 Supported Releases This publication supports H06.03 and all subsequent H-series release version updates (RVUs) until otherwise indicated by its replacement publication.
New and Changed Information What’s New in This Glossary HP NonStop TMF Glossary —540135-001 iv
About This Glossary This manual defines technical terms used in the manuals that support the HP NonStop Transaction Management Facility (TMF). It is intended for users of that product and its manuals. The glossary consists of an alphabetic list of terms and their definitions.
Notation Conventions About This Glossary • • • • TMF Operations and Recovery Guide Read this guide for information about how to perform and monitor standard TMF operations, obtain online and audit dumps, and respond to a variety of TMF exception conditions. TMF Reference Manual Refer to this manual for information about how to use the TMFCOM command interface to TMF. This manual includes syntax, cautionary considerations, and command examples for TMFCOM.
TMF Glossary A B C D E F G H I L M N O P R S T U V Z A abort record. A record in a master audit trail identifying an aborted transaction. aborted transaction. A transaction that was backed out (undone) or is in the process of being backed out. access control block (ACB). An operating system data structure that contains control information for a particular open of a file. An ACB is composed of various types of sections, depending on the type of file to which the ACB corresponds.
audit dump TMF Glossary audit dump. A copy of an audit trail file written to a tape or disk volume by an audit dump process: audit dumps occur automatically when an audit trail file becomes full. An audit dump process may be configured for each audit trail; it can be reconfigured while TMF is running. Audit dumps preserve audit trail files for use by the file recovery process.
autoabort threshold TMF Glossary autoabort threshold. The time limit used to identify long-running transactions that should be aborted. When a transaction runs longer than the threshold, TMF aborts it. To change this threshold, use the ALTER BEGINTRANS command. auxiliary audit trail. An audit trail configured in addition to the master audit trail. Auxiliary audit trails receive the audit information generated by a specified set of audited volumes; they do not contain TMF control information.
child TMF Glossary child. For distributed transactions, the transaction manager that receives and performs work on behalf of another transaction. The transaction manager that sends the work is known as the parent. During the course of the transaction, a child may send a transaction to yet another transaction manager, therefore becoming a parent in the new relationship (but remaining a child in the previous relationship). Contrast with parent. child node.
cluster TMF Glossary cluster. (1) A collection of servers, or nodes, that can function either independently or collectively as a processing unit. (2) A term used to describe a server in a FOX ring. More specifically, a FOX cluster is a collection of processors and I/O devices functioning as a logical group. In FOX nomenclature, the term is synonymous with "server" or "node." COBOL85. The compiler and run-time support for the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) programming language COBOL, X.3.
context-free server TMF Glossary context-free server. A server that does not retain any information about the processing of previous requests. A context-free server accepts a single message from a requester, performs the requested tasks, and issues a single reply to respond to the requester. After the reply message is issued, the server retains no information, or context, that can be used in subsequent requests. Pathway servers should be context-free.
disabled audited volume TMF Glossary disabled audited volume. An audited volume that is exempt from TMF processing. The volume continues to be available for operations other than audited requests, and TMF continues to process transactions for other audited volumes. An audited volume that is disabled is not automatically enabled for TMF processing when TMF is restarted. disk media failure. The failure of disk media to retain stored data; examples are unreadable sectors or damaged disk surfaces.
file TMF Glossary F file. The physical storage for a set of related records in an Enscribe database. Also, the physical storage for a NonStop SQL table or index (the creation of a table or index implicitly creates a file with the same name as the table or index). file recovery. The process of reconstructing specified audited files when the current copies on the audited volume are not usable.
gateway TMF Glossary G gateway. A process or set of processes that supports distributed transaction processing by providing communication between different transaction-processing environments. In a NonStop operating system environment, a gateway supports communication between TMF and a foreign transaction manager. gateway process.
incomplete transaction TMF Glossary I incomplete transaction. A transaction that was active when the server failed; ultimately, TMF backs the transaction out of the database. independent product (IP). A licensed software product, independent of the standard operating system release version update (RVU) and delivery process, that is generally delivered on separate media from the NonStop operating system release software.
multi-threaded process TMF Glossary multi-threaded process. An application process that can deal with more than one TMF transaction concurrently. A multi-threaded requester, for example, can initiate more than one transaction concurrently and switch from one transaction to another. Similarly, a multi-threaded server can accept multiple work requests concurrently (for one or more transactions) and switch from one work request to another. N network transaction. See distributed transaction.
OLTP TMF Glossary OLTP. See online transaction processing. OLTP application. An application in which many users can update data simultaneously, recording the changes in the database as they are entered. online backup. A copy of an audited database file written to secondary storage media (such as tape) while transactions are being processed by database applications and TMF is running.
parent TMF Glossary P parent. For distributed transactions, the transaction manager that sends a portion of a transaction to another transaction manager to perform work on it. The transaction manager that receives the transaction is known as the child. During the course of the transaction, a child may send the transaction to yet another transaction manager, therefore becoming a parent in the new relationship (but remaining a child in the previous relationship). Contrast with child. parent node.
primary process TMF Glossary primary process. The currently active process of a process pair in the NonStop operating system environment. See also process pair. procedure call. A method of invoking, from within a program, one of many server services. Some of these services can be applied to TMF transactions. process pair. A fault-tolerant arrangement of processes in the NonStop operating system environment, whereby two processes in separate processors share the same name and execute identical code.
requester TMF Glossary requester. A process or program that runs in the NonStop operating system environment on a NonStop server and requests services from a server process. For example, a SCREEN COBOL program is a requester program, and the Pathway terminal control process (TCP) is the requester process that interprets such a requester program. Alternatively, a requester program can make requests through procedure calls to the Pathsend facility or through the NonStop operating system WRITEREAD procedure.
server TMF Glossary server. (1) A process or program that provides services to a client or a requester. Servers are designed to receive request messages from clients or requesters, perform the desired operations, and return reply messages to the clients or requesters. A server process is a running instance of a server program. (2) A combination of hardware and software designed to provide services in response to requests received from clients across a network.
Tandem Advanced Command Language (TACL) TMF Glossary T Tandem Advanced Command Language (TACL). The command language that provides the NonStop operating system’s interactive user interface. TACL features built-in functions that can be used for constructing programmatic routines and macros. Some of these functions call operating system procedures that perform TMF operations. TMF.
transaction TMF Glossary transaction. An operation or a series of operations that transforms a database from one consistent state to another. TMF treats transactions as a single unit; either all of the changes made by a transaction are made permanent (the transaction is committed) or none of the changes are made permanent (the transaction is aborted). If an error occurs while a transaction is in progress, TMF backs out whatever partial changes were made to the database, leaving it in a consistent state.
undo-needed file TMF Glossary U undo-needed file. An audited file that contains changes that must be undone because of one or more aborted transactions. Such files cannot be opened. They are automatically recovered by the volume recovery process when that is possible; otherwise, you must use the file recovery process to recover them. unilateral abort. An abort caused by a participant in a transaction that is not yet in the prepared state. unresolved transaction.
ZTMFAT subvolume TMF Glossary HP NonStop TMF Glossary —540135-001 Glossary -20
