Clustered Database Resilience for Electronic Transaction Processing
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current electronic banking systems face challenges in ensuring the resilient and flexible storage and management of electronic transaction messages, particularly during technology failures or natural disasters, which can lead to overpayment or underpayment between banks due to the periodic settlement cycle model.
Innovation Solution
A system comprising a plurality of switches and a clustered database, where each switch receives transaction request messages and a digital signature is used to verify the messages, with the clustered database generating transaction summary records for settlement, ensuring data accessibility even if one database becomes non-operational.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a single centralized database is used to store transaction messages, then the system is simple to manage, but the system becomes vulnerable to technology failures and natural disasters, leading to loss of transaction data
Solution Approach 1:
The database is divided into multiple separate database systems distributed across different geographic locations. Each database stores copies of transaction messages, and the system can continue operating even if one database becomes non-operational due to technology failures or natural disasters.
Solution Approach 2:
Databases are placed at different geographic locations with different environmental conditions. This ensures that a natural disaster affecting one location does not affect all databases, providing local resilience against regional disasters.
2Reliability
If databases are distributed across multiple locations for resilience, then the system becomes more resilient to failures, but the complexity of synchronizing and managing the databases increases
Solution Approach 1:
Multiple database systems are merged into a logical clustered database structure. The switch can access any database in the cluster, and the system presents a unified interface to users while maintaining multiple physical copies for resilience.
Solution Approach 2:
Transaction messages are copied to multiple databases across different locations. Each database contains identical copies of the transaction data, ensuring that if one database fails, the data can be retrieved from another database without loss.
3Ease of operation
If transaction messages are stored in a clustered database with multiple synchronised databases, then data accessibility is maintained during failures, but the device complexity and resource requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The switch acts as an intermediary between the user and the clustered database system. It manages the complexity of accessing multiple synchronized databases by providing a simplified interface, allowing users to access transaction data without needing to understand the underlying database architecture.
Data Source
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AI summary
A device for processing electronic transaction request messages from financial institutions, each transaction request message instructing payment of funds from one financial account in a first financial institution to another financial account in a second financial institution, the device comprising: a plurality of switches located at a location, each switch being operable to receive a transaction request message from a financial institution; and a clustered database connected to the plurality of switches, the clustered database comprising a plurality of synchronised databases, wherein the clustered database is configured to generate a transaction summary record on the basis of the received transaction request message that allows settlement of the funds between the financial accounts defined by the received transaction request message.