Multicriteria transaction for e-commerce applications

We discuss a multicriteria transaction (MCT) model to address problems encountered in large-scale e-commerce transaction processing systems. A MCT is a generalized transaction where users can specify their preferences in a request by specifying multiple criteria in the transaction. With each criteria specification, a set of alternate execution paths is included. Thus, a MCT is less likely to fail. Moreover, the MCT model allows easy extraction of criteria from a set of transactions and, hence, optimal decisions can be made to achieve better customer satisfaction. We discuss the design of a MCT processing system and compare the MCT model to conventional transaction processing approaches.