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Transaction commit in a realistic timing model

Transaction commit in a realistic timing model Animportant problem in the construction of fault-tolerant distributed database systems is the design of nonblocking transaction commit protocols. This problem has been extensively studied for synchronous systems (i.e., systems where no messages ever arrive late). In this paper, the synchrony assumption is relaxed. A new partially synchronous timing model is described. Developed for this model is a new nonblocking randomized transaction commit protocol, which incorporates an agreement protocol of Ben-Or. The new protocol works as long as fewer than half the processors fail. A matching lower bound is proved, showing that the number of processor faults tolerated is optimal. If half or more of the processors fail, the protocol degrades gracefully: it blocks, but no processor produces a wrong answer. A notion of asynchronous round is defined, and the protocol is shown to terminate in a small constant expected number of asynchronous rounds. In contrast it is shown that no protocol in this model can guarantee that a processor terminates in a bounded expected number of its own steps, even if processors are synchronous. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Distributed Computing Springer Journals

Transaction commit in a realistic timing model

Coan, Brian; Welch, Jennifer
Distributed Computing , Volume 4 (2) – May 12, 2005
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References (17)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 by Springer-Verlag
Subject
Computer Science; Computer Communication Networks; Computer Hardware; Computer Systems Organization and Communication Networks; Software Engineering/Programming and Operating Systems; Theory of Computation
ISSN
0178-2770
eISSN
1432-0452
DOI
10.1007/BF01786634
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Animportant problem in the construction of fault-tolerant distributed database systems is the design of nonblocking transaction commit protocols. This problem has been extensively studied for synchronous systems (i.e., systems where no messages ever arrive late). In this paper, the synchrony assumption is relaxed. A new partially synchronous timing model is described. Developed for this model is a new nonblocking randomized transaction commit protocol, which incorporates an agreement protocol of Ben-Or. The new protocol works as long as fewer than half the processors fail. A matching lower bound is proved, showing that the number of processor faults tolerated is optimal. If half or more of the processors fail, the protocol degrades gracefully: it blocks, but no processor produces a wrong answer. A notion of asynchronous round is defined, and the protocol is shown to terminate in a small constant expected number of asynchronous rounds. In contrast it is shown that no protocol in this model can guarantee that a processor terminates in a bounded expected number of its own steps, even if processors are synchronous.

Journal

Distributed Computing – Springer Journals

Published: May 12, 2005

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