Duration and scope of inter-transaction affinities

When planning your dynamic or distributed routing strategy, and planning how to manage inter-transaction affinities, it is important to understand the concepts of affinity relations and affinity lifetimes. The relations and lifetimes of inter-transaction affinities define the scope and duration of inter-transaction affinities.

Clearly, the ideal situation for a dynamic or distributed routing program is for there to be no inter-transaction affinities at all, which means there are no restrictions in the choice of available target regions for dynamic routing. However, even when inter-transaction affinities do exist, there are limits to the scope of these affinities, the scope of the affinity being determined by affinity relation and affinity lifetime.

Understanding the relations and lifetimes of transaction affinities is important in deciding how to manage them in a dynamic routing environment.