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A Dynamic Primary Configuration Group Communication Service

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Distributed Computing (DISC 1999)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1693))

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Abstract

Quorum-based methods for managing replicated data are popular because they provide availability of both reads and writes in the presence of faulty behavior by some sites or communication links. Over a very long time, it may become necessary to alter the quorum system, perhaps because some sites have failed permanently and oth- ers have joined the system, or perhaps because users want a different trade-off between read-availability and write-availability. There are sub- tle issues that arise in managing the change of quorums, including how to make sure that any operation using the new quorum system is aware of all information from operations that used an old quorum system, and how to allow concurrent attempts to alter the quorum system.

In this paper we use ideas from group management services, especially those providing a dynamic notion of primary view; with this we define an abstract specification of a system that presents each user with a con- sistent succession of identified configurations, each of which has a mem- bership set, and a quorum system for that set. The key contribution here is the intersection property, that determines how the new configurations must relate to previous ones. We demonstrate that our proposed specifi- cation is neither too strong, by showing how it can be implemented, nor too weak, by showing the correctness of a replicated data management algorithm running above it.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA

    Roberto De Prisco

  2. Basser Dept. of Computer Science, University of Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia

    Alan Fekete

  3. MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA

    Nancy Lynch

  4. Dept. of Computer Science and Eng., University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

    Alex Shvartsman

  5. Dip. di Informatica ed Applicazioni, University of Salerno, Italy

    Roberto De Prisco

  6. MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA

    Alex Shvartsman

Authors
  1. Roberto De Prisco
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  2. Alan Fekete
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  3. Nancy Lynch
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  4. Alex Shvartsman
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department for Computer Science 6211 Sudikoff Laboratory for Computer Science, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, 03755, USA

    Prasad Jayanti

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© 1999 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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De Prisco, R., Fekete, A., Lynch, N., Shvartsman, A. (1999). A Dynamic Primary Configuration Group Communication Service. In: Jayanti, P. (eds) Distributed Computing. DISC 1999. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1693. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48169-9_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48169-9_5

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