Transactional application processing in a distributed environment

An apparatus comprising:

• a plurality of network interfaces that are operable to communicatively connect to one or more packet-switched networks;
• forwarding logic coupled to the plurality of network interfaces and when executed operable to receive packet flows and to forward the packet flows;
• transaction service logic encoded in one or more tangible media for execution and when executed operable to:
• receive a request from an upper-layer application that invokes a Java Transaction API (JTA) call, wherein the request includes first information that specifies one or more remote resources that are associated with an extended transaction, wherein the extended transaction comprises a plurality of child transactions;
• and
• send the first information by invoking a Java Transaction Service (JTS) call;
• transaction manager logic encoded in the one or more tangible media for execution and when executed operable to:
• receive the first information from the transaction service logic through the JTS call;
• and
• reserve the one or more remote resources associated with the extended transaction by sending out one or more reservation requests over a Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP) to any one of:
• one or more resource managers that manage the one or more remote resources;
• and
• one or more network infrastructure elements that are operable to cause reservation of the one or more remote resources.