A Novel Framework for Supporting the Exponential Worldwide Adoption of Electronic Transactions (original) (raw)

Electronic transactions have become the main- stream mechanism for performing commerce activities in our daily lives. Aiming at processing them, the most common ap- proach addresses the use of a switch that dispatches transactions to processing machines using the so-called Round-Robin sched- uler. Considering this electronic funds transfer (EFT) scenario, we developed a framework model denoted GetLB which comprises not only a new and efficient scheduler, but also a cooperative communication infrastructure for handling heterogeneous and dynamic environments. The GetLB scheduler uses a scheduling heuristic that combines static data from transactions and dynamic information from the processing nodes to overcome the limitations of the Round-Robin based scheduling approaches. Scheduling efficiency takes place thanks to the periodic interaction between the switching node and processing machines, enabling local deci- sion making with up-to-date information about the environment. Besides the description of the aforementioned model in detail, this article also presents a prototype evaluation by using both traces and configurations obtained with a real EFT company. The results show improvements in transaction makespan when comparing our approach with the traditional one over homogeneous and heterogeneous clusters.