technoguy

Standard transaction processing middleware, notably IBM's Information Management System, emerged in the 1960s and was often closely coupled to particular database management systems. Client-server computing embraced similar principles in the 1980s with mixed success. But, in more recent years, the distributed client-server model has become considerably more difficult to maintain. As the number of transactions grew in response to various online services (especially the Web), a single distributed database was not a practical solution. In addition, most online systems consist of a whole suite of programs operating together, as opposed to a strict client-server model where the single server could handle the transaction processing. Today a number of transaction processing systems are available that work at the inter-program level and which scale to large systems, including mainframes.