One of the growing fields of internet electronic commerce is the area of on-line banking. Startup institutions like Security First Network Bank (
) are providing banking throughout the US via the Internet. They offer all of their services electronically, without the need for traditional bank branches. Even at their one physical location in Atlanta, there are web terminals for customers to interact with the bank. Traditional financial institutions as well are beginning to offer banking over the Internet. There are a number of difficult problem areas that need to be solved to make Internet banking commonplace. In this example, we will look at just one small part of the total problem, and develop a solution that uses the power of transaction processing and Microsoft Transaction Server.http://www.sfnb.com
In our example, we will be assuming that a user has successfully passed through all the necessary security checkpoints that on-line banking will require. This user also has multiple accounts with our fictitious on-line bank. The task that our solution will allow the user to perform is to be able to transfer some amount of money from one account to another. The system will need to ensure that the user has sufficient funds in the account they are transferring the money from. The system must also provide an atomic operation that encompasses both the withdrawal of the money from the first account as well as the deposit of the same amount of money into the second account. First, we will design the components that will be used to manage the information in the accounts.