In this paper we investigate the notion of transaction in
object-oriented specification. Transactions are a suitable
concept to cover different aspects that arise in a variety
of contexts. For example, in refinement theory a transaction
may be understood as the refinement of actions, in database
theory it may be understood as an abstraction from sequences
of statements, or in business process modelling it may occur
as a complex process with a predefined execution order.
Thus, there is a wide application area for such a notion.
The focus of our work is the stepwise design and modelling
of distributed information systems with object-oriented
techniques. We put emphasis on the need of a well-defined
formal background. The basis of our work is the model for
distributed families of concurrent objects presented in
[ES95]. We syntactically introduce transactions into
object-oriented specification and propose a temporal logic
which can speak about transactions to formalize such
specifications. Moreover, we give an appropriate
interpretation of specifications which incorporate
transactions based on event structures. The ideas are
briefly illustrated by example.