ISOLATION LEVELS AND COMPENSATING TRANSACTIONS IN AN INFORMATION SYSTEM

A transaction system implemented on a server machine for maintaining consistency in an information system supporting asynchronous transactions. The information system includes a database shared among a plurality of users and implemented on a client machine. The transaction system is invoked at run-time for a transaction where the transaction includes one or more subtransaction steps. The transaction system includes a graphical user interface for receiving a user defined isolation level selection for executing a transaction between the server machine and the database or application, a persistent service for storing object state information for each object affected in the execution of each subtransaction step and a state verification service for verifying the state of each object affected by a subtransaction step to verify the state of the object is the same as a last time the object was seen in the transaction.