METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ENABLING A COMPONENT IN A FIRST TRANSACTION PROCESSING ENVIRONMENT TO ACCESS A RESOURCE IN ANOTHER ENVIRONMENT

An interconnect for enabling a component in a transaction processing environment to request, as part of a global transaction under the control of a transaction manager that is not XATMI-compliant, a resource on a remote server outside of that environment that is under the control of an XATMI-compliant transaction manager, comprises a resource manager and a connection manager. The resource manager has a first interface that receives XATMI service requests from the component and a second interface that receives directives issued by the first transaction manager for the global transaction. The resource manager (i) translates the XATMI service requests and directives into corresponding service requests of a bi-directional two-phase commitment communications protocol, (ii) issues the corresponding service requests to a protocol machine of the connection manager, and (iii) coordinates the processing of the corresponding service requests by the protocol machine with the processing of corresponding events in the transaction processing environment of the first transaction manager. The resource manager further comprises (i) means for mapping a first identifier that identifies the global transaction within the transaction processing environment of the first transaction manger to a second identifier that uniquely identifies the transaction within the protocol machine, (ii) means for maintaining a record for each branch of the transaction in which information relating thereto is stored, and (iii) means for logging together, in a secure storage, recovery information for both the transaction processing environment of the first transaction manager and the protocol machine.