Geared toward the Java and Web services realms, Arjuna will be transitioned from a commercial product to an open source offering, renamed JBoss Transactions and added to the JBoss Enterprise Middleware System (JEMS).

The JBoss-branded version of the product will be introduced in the first quarter of 2006.

"What [Arjuna] does is it enables JBoss to offer an open source transaction service for distributed transaction management," said Shaun Connolly, JBoss vice president of product management.

Positioned for applications in financial services, insurance, and telecommunications, the Arjuna technology helps coordinate transactions over multiple databases and provides consistency. For example, it can ensure rollbacks in billing and shipping databases should a transaction fail.

The technology supports the WS-TX (Web Services Transactions) specification and distributed transaction management for Java. Web services backing provides transactional support for users developing Web services-based applications in an SOA, according to JBoss.