Nested dynamic actions: how to solve the fault containment problem in a cooperative action model

Elements of transaction processing become more and more accepted as a base for fault-tolerant distributed computing. We have developed an action concept with an extended functionality suited to better support the needs of Concurrent Engineering applications. This allows actions to access data produced by other, still active actions. In case of an action fault, however, fault containment may become a problem of major concern. Nesting seems to be an appropriate means to tackle this problem. Unfortunately, it is not possible to simply adopt the nested transactional concept as designed by Moss, because it does not consider dependencies between actions belonging to different parents. This paper is to present a nesting concept which provides an adequate means for fault containment in dynamic actions. Special emphasis is given to the problem of protecting the work of a parent action against the consequences of the abort of other actions