ACUCOBOL-GT extends standard COBOL to provide a complete transaction management system. A transaction is a group of related file operations that are treated as an indivisible unit. The purpose of defining such transactions is to ensure that related files can be restored to a consistent state when errors occur.
The transaction management requirements of business applications vary widely and can be quite complex. ACUCOBOL-GT provides a basic transaction management facility. Specialized transaction management middleware frequently offers sophisticated capabilities not included in ACUCOBOL-GT, such as multi phase commit, nested, concurrent and distributed transactions, transaction queuing, automatic rollback on startup, and dynamic load balancing, to name a few. Before selecting a transaction management facility, you should carefully assess the needs of your business systems.
ACUCOBOL-GT's transaction management facility can sometimes interfere with programs that use a separate transaction management facility, such as an online transaction processing (OLTP) facility. To disable ACUCOBOL-GT's transaction management, set the NO_TRANSACTIONS configuration variable. For information about using ACUCOBOL-GT with OLTP systems, see Working with Transaction Processing Systems in A Guide to Interoperating with ACUCOBOL-GT.